common waveforms

[p4c]

im finding too many ppl who dont know anything about sines, sawtooths, all dem simple waveforms. And i dont see a search function and havent encountered a topic explaining them yet, so yeah. heres a quick and simple intro just so you aspiring electronic artists arent completely clueless lol

the most common waveforms are these:

Sine
==sounds like this

Sawtooth
==sounds like this

Square
==sounds like this

Triangle
==sounds like this

Here are what they look like.

im hoping that you know that sounds are vibrations in the air, and different shapes of the vibrations produce distinctive sounds, more and more complex ones forming the tight instruments you hear all over the AP and in all music. natural instruments are different since they usually dont follow these simple waveforms or simple transformations of them [i.e. adding them together, multiplying them, if you're in high school/college (or a really smart middleschooler) you would learn about that in pre-calculus.]

aaaand you should also know about the parts of a given sound produced by a synth, the ASDR Envelope: it consists of the attack, the decay, the sustain, and the release.

=Attack is when the instrument starts up and reaches peak sound levels.
=Decay is when it softens up a bit.
=Sustain is where the volume holds.
=Release is when the sound fades off.

picture

changing the length/level of these sounds makes u sound much more controlled and tight, think about violinists. If they are feeling particularly intense, they can start off the sound loud, soften it up a bit and then hold the note for a while to feel spiritual and emotional, and then slowly fade away. yeah, learn it. its useful.

[Rig]

Sweet - I'll put this thread in my collection!

[p4c]

tightttt :)

[Jala-Fox]

Good help for the newbies

[Koriigahn]

At 12/31/07 10:52 PM, Jala-Fox wrote: Good help for the newbies

AKA me.

Ive been on FL for 6 month's now i i didnt have a clue what ADSR meant. WELL NOW I DO THANK'S TO YOU! <3<3

[Tome89]

Over the following weeks: pulse width modulation waves, subtractive synthesis, filters, parameter modulation, low frequency oscillators, frequency modulation, amplitude modulation, ring modulation and much more.

[p4c]

oops. i meant adsr envelope. sorry to dig this back up haha. im linking another guy to it.

[gregaaron89]

One of my favorite waveforms, and I've only seen this in Sylenth1 (but it might be in other synths, I don't know), is the trisaw. It's a triangle + saw hybrid. That + square = goodness!

[Darren-M]

remember dude and dudettes, squares are fat! and can easily screw up a good mix. use them on leads or eq them accordingly.

once you understand what those 4 sound like + a little filter knowhow you can pretty much make 70% of the synths you hear out there.

[gregaaron89]

At 7/14/09 05:51 PM, Darren-M wrote: remember dude and dudettes, squares are fat! and can easily screw up a good mix. use them on leads or eq them accordingly.

Since when?! It's all objective as to what you're doing. 8 bit is ALL squares (mostly) and that certainly doesn't "screw up the mix" LOLWUT?

[Darren-M]

yeah you are right it depends on what your dooing, but in alot of electro and D&B... well i guess more modern dtyles its easy to make a bass too fat and have it swallow up other stuff.

good point though, didnt think of how it was used in 8bit