| The Secret Of The Big Red Button |
Technique : Synthesis |
July 2004 |
Synth Secrets After over five years, Synth Secrets reaches its conclusion (and conclusions!). Will we ever look at synthesis in quite the same way again?
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| More Creative Synthesis with Delays |
Technique : Synthesis |
June 2004 |
| Synth Secrets In the penultimate instalment of this long-running series, we delve deeper into what can be achieved with just a few delays and some creative routing...
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| Creative Synthesis With Delays |
Technique : Synthesis |
May 2004 |
| Synth Secrets Effects can play just as important a role in sound creation as the elements in a synth's signal path — provided you have access to their constituent parts. We take a closer look at effects synthesis using simple delays.
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| From Analogue To Digital Effects |
Technique : Synthesis |
April 2004 |
| Synth Secrets When synthesizing sounds, the effects you place after your synth's output are often as important as the synth itself (just think of last month's Leslie). As we near the end of Synth Secrets, we consider how a digital effects processor works.
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| Synthesizing The Rest Of The Hammond Organ: Part 3 |
Technique : Synthesis |
March 2004 |
| Synth Secrets We conclude our analysis of the fabulously complex beast that is the Leslie rotary speaker.
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| Synthesizing The Rest Of The Hammond Organ: Part 2 |
Technique : Synthesis |
February 2004 |
| Synth Secrets As with so much surrounding the Hammond organ, there's much more to the Leslie rotary speaker than meets the eye, and synthesizing its effects involves considerably more than just adding vibrato, as we find out this month...
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| Synthesizing Hammond Organ Effects: Part1 |
Technique : Synthesis |
January 2004 |
| Synth Secrets So, you can synthesize a Hammond's tonewheel generator -- but what about its all-important effects? This month, we look at recreating the Hammond's percussion, vibrato, overdrive, and reverb -- and find that it's harder than you might think...
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| Synthesizing Tonewheel Organs: Part2 |
Technique : Synthesis |
December 2003 |
| Synth Secrets If you followed last month's advice, you'll know how to synthesize a basic Hammond tone on a Roland Juno 6. But can the same technique be applied to any other synth?
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| Synthesizing Tonewheel Organs |
Technique : Synthesis |
November 2003 |
| Synth Secrets Long before Bob Moog built his first synth, there was the Hammond tonewheel organ; effectively an additive synthesizer, albeit electro-mechanical rather than electronic. So emulating a Hammond with an analogue synth shouldn't be too hard, right? Well...
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| Practical Flute Synthesis |
Technique : Synthesis |
October 2003 |
| Synth Secrets As we saw last month, there's much to synthesizing a convincing flute sound — and yet basic analogue monosynths have offered reasonable flute patches for 30 years. Surely the process can be simplified?
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| Synthesizing Simple Flutes |
Technique : Synthesis |
September 2003 |
| Synth Secrets The Monty Python team once famously claimed that being able to play the flute was a simple matter of 'blowing here, and moving your hands up and down here'. But there's a lot more to it than that...
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| Synthesizing Pan Pipes |
Technique : Synthesis |
August 2003 |
| Synth Secrets The characteristic sound of flute-like instruments is complex — but fortunately not so complex that it can't be emulated fairly successfully with a synthesizer...
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| Synth Secrets |
Technique : Synthesis |
July 2003 |
| Articulation & Bowed-string Synthesis The skilful articulation of a synthesized string patch can improve it no end, even one created using very basic building blocks, as we saw at the end of last month. But we can take this approach much further...
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| Practical Bowed-string Synthesis (continued) |
Technique : Synthesis |
June 2003 |
| Synth Secrets After putting all our bowed-string synthesis theory into practice on a Korg 700 last month, we found that the result was only acceptable as a string sound with a lot of wishful thinking. Can we improve on it?
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| Synth Secrets: Practical Bowed-string Synthesis |
Technique : Synthesis |
May 2003 |
| Synth Secrets Having looked at the mechanics of how a bowed string instrument generates its sound last month, it's time to put these principles into practice, using nothing more complex than a miniKorg 700 monophonic synth...
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| Synthesizing Bowed Strings: the Violin family |
Technique : Synthesis |
April 2003 |
| Synth Secrets Following our success at synthesizing the sound of analogue string machines, we hone our techniques with a view to recreating the sound of the real thing...
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| Synth Secrets |
Technique : Synthesis |
March 2003 |
| Synthesizing Strings • PWM & String Sounds Pulse-width modulation is a vital tool in achieving lush-sounding synthesized string pads - so what if your synth doesn't have it? Fear not - for PWM can itself be synthesized. Here's how...
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| Synth Secrets |
Technique : Synthesis |
February 2003 |
| Synthesizing Strings: String Machines Analogue synths can't synthesize every sound, but the attempts made to replicate the sound of orchestral strings were so successful that so-called string machines became much-loved instruments in their own right. We begin a voyage into the world of synthesized strings...
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| Synth Secrets |
Technique : Synthesis |
January 2003 |
| Synthesizing Acoustic Pianos On The Roland JX10 When trying to copy a real piano with an analogue synth, if one patch doesn't quite do it, two just might...
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| Synth Secrets |
Technique : Synthesis |
December 2002 |
| Synthesizing Acoustic Pianos On The Roland JX10 How did they make that sound on a subtractive synth? We continue to dissect the analogue 'Acoustic Piano' Perfomance from Roland's 1986-vintage JX10.
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| Synth Secrets |
Technique : Synthesis |
November 2002 |
| Synthesizing Acoustic Pianos On The Roland JX10 As explained last month, synthesizing the sound of an acoustic piano is difficult, but it can be done reasonably realistically, as the 1986-vintage Roland JX10 shows. We find out how Roland managed it...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
October 2002 |
| Synthesizing Pianos Surely the only convincing synth pianos are sample-based ones? A sound as rich and expressive as that of an acoustic piano is far too complex to be rendered by subtractive synthesis... isn't it? We find out...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
September 2002 |
| Synthesizing Cowbells & Claves Having learned last month how to synthesize tuned bells, we turn this month, in the last of this series on the subject of percussion, to untuned bells - in the form of the humble cowbell - and claves.
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
August 2002 |
| Synthesizing Bells Having come up last month with a reasonably realistic cymbal patch, its time to take the principles of synthesizing metallic percussion one stage further, and produce bell sounds. But there's more to this than you might think...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
July 2002 |
| Practical Cymbal Synthesis Synthesizing realistic cymbals is complex, but not impossible - after all, over 20 years ago, Roland's TR808 drum machine featured synthesized cymbals. We look at how they managed it, and attempt to create cymbals on another affordable analogue synth.
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
June 2002 |
| Synthesizing Realistic Cymbals Having analysed the complex process by which a cymbal makes its sound, it's time to synthesize our own...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
May 2002 |
| Synth Secrets: Analysing Metallic Percussion The task of synthesizing convincing metallic percussion defeated many synth giants - you only need to listen to Kraftwerk's weedy cymbals on 'The Model' to be persuaded of that. So why is it so difficult? We find out...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
April 2002 |
| Practical Snare Drum Synthesis Last month, we revealed just how hideously complex the sound-producing mechanism of the snare drum can be. Nevertheless, synthesizing the sound is not as hard as it seems, as we find out with the aid of a Roland SH101...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
March 2002 |
| Synthesizing Drums: The Snare Drum If you thought synthesizing realistic bass drums was complex, that's nothing compared to snares. So how is it that the analogue snare sound is so well known? And how do you go about creating it? We find out...
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| SYNTH SECRETS |
Technique : Synthesis |
February 2002 |
| Practical Bass Drum Synthesis Moving from last month's theoretical bass drum synth patch to its practical application on affordable analogue synths, we also take a look at how the world's most famous drum machines produce this fundamental rhythm sound...
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