CHAPTER 23. LIVE INSTRUMENT REFERENCE
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Built-in Waveforms
The oscillators come with a built-in collection of basic waveform types
sine, sawtooth,
square, triangle and noise
which are selected from the Wave chooser in the individual
oscillator displays. The rst of these waveforms is a pure, mathematical sine wave, which
is usually the rst choice for many FM timbres. We also added Sine 4 Bit and Sine 8
Bit to provide the retro sound adored by C64 fans, and Saw D and Square D digital
waveforms, which are especially good for digital bass sounds. The square, triangle and
sawtooth waveforms are resynthesized approximations of the ideal shape. The numbers
included in the displayed name (e.g., Square 6 ) de ne how many harmonics are used
for the resynthesis. Lower numbers sound mellower and are less likely to create
aliasing
when used on high pitches. There are also two built-in noise waveforms. The rst, Noise
Looped, is a looping sample of noise. For truly random noise, choose Noise White.
User Waveforms
The User entry in the Wave chooser allows you to create your own waveforms by drawing
the amplitudes of the oscillator's harmonics. You can also select one of the built-in waveforms
and then edit it in the same way. The small display next to the Wave chooser gives a realtime
overview of your waveform.
When your mouse is over the Oscillator display area, the cursor will change to a pencil.
Drawing in the display area then raises or lowers the amplitudes of the harmonics. As you
adjust the amplitudes, the Status Bar will show the number of the harmonic you're adjusting
as well as its amplitude. Holding
and dragging will constrain horizontal mouse
movement, allowing you to adjust the amplitude of only one harmonic at a time.
You can switch between editing the rst 16, 32 or 64 harmonics via the switches to the
right of the display. Higher harmonics can be generated by repeating the drawn partials
with a gradual fadeout, based on the settings in the Repeat chooser. Low Repeat values
result in a brighter sound, while higher values result in more high-end roll-off and a more
prominent fundamental. With Repeat off, partials above the 16th, 32nd or 64th harmonic
are truncated.
The
(PC) /
Ctrl
(Mac) context menu on the harmonics display offers options for
editing only the even or odd harmonics. This is set to All by default. The context menu also
