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MRAT 6030 - MIDI and Sound Synthesis > Fundamentals of Synthesizer Programming Ch. 2 - Sources > Flashcards

Fundamentals of Synthesizer Programming Ch. 2 - Sources Flashcards

1
Q

What does an oscillator do?

A

generates a repetitive electronic signal in the form of a periodic waveform

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2
Q

What two properties of sound does a waveform represent?

A

pitch/frequency and shape/timbre

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3
Q

What are the three oscillator controls for pitch?

A
  • fine tune (detune)
  • coarse tune
  • octave selector
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4
Q

What does fine tune do?

A

adjusts the pitch of an oscillator by small intervals over a short range

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5
Q

Coarse tune adjusts the pitch of an oscillator by _____ _____ over a _____ _____.

A

larger intervals, wider range

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6
Q

What oscillator control changes pitch by octaves?

A

octave selector

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7
Q

What interval does the fine tune control change pitch by?

A

cents

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8
Q

The coarse tune control changes pitch by _____.

A

semitones

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9
Q

What is the range of the coarse tune control?

A

one to several octaves

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10
Q

What is the range of the fine tune control?

A

half or whole step

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11
Q

What is the range of the octave selector control?

A

four or more octaves

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12
Q

What are the oscillator controls for harmonic content?

A
  • waveform selector

- pulse width

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13
Q

What are the 5 main types of waveforms?

A
  • sine
  • triangle
  • square
  • sawtooth
  • pulse
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14
Q

What is a sine wave?

A

pure tone containing only fundamental frequency

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15
Q

What types of waves contain odd harmonics only?

A

triangle and square

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16
Q

What type of wave contains odd and even harmonics?

A

sawtooth

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17
Q

What does a pulse wave do?

A

varies by shape and harmonic content using pulse width control

18
Q

What does changing pulse width change?

A

duty cycle

19
Q

What is duty cycle?

A

relative time that waveform is on during one cycle

20
Q

What does a triangle wave sound like?

A

brighter, fuller, and louder than sine wave

21
Q

What does a square wave sound like?

A

brighter and louder than a triangle wave

22
Q

What does a sawtooth wave sound like?

A

bright and buzzy

23
Q

What is pulse width modulation?

A

controller such as LFO affects pulse width, causing a thicker sound that varies at the rate of the LFO

24
Q

What does a noise generator (NG) do?

A

generates random noise that includes all frequencies

25
Q

What is the control on a noise generator?

A

noise color

26
Q

What does noise color do?

A

changes the overall spectrum of noise

27
Q

White noise has equal energy per _____.

A

bandwidth

28
Q

Pink noise has equal energy per _____.

A

octave

29
Q

For pink noise, _____ increases as _____ increases.

A

amplitude, frequency

30
Q

What is beating?

A

periodic fluctuation in loudness caused by slightly detuning two oscillators

31
Q

What are three advanced oscillator functions?

A
  • hard sync
  • ring modulation
  • frequency modulation
32
Q

What does hard sync do?

A

allows you to change timbre by forcing one oscillator to restart its cycle in sync with the start of the other oscillator’s cycle

33
Q

What does ring modulation do?

A

combines frequencies from 2 oscillators to produce a new audio signal that contains sum and difference frequencies of the 2 original frequencies

34
Q

If two oscillators produce sine waves at 250 Hz and 600 Hz, the output of the ring modulator would be sine waves at _____ and _____ Hz.

A

850, 350

35
Q

What kind of sound does ring modulation produce and why?

A

metallic, bell-like timbres since the harmonics may no longer be integer multiples of the fundamental frequency

36
Q

What is frequency modulation?

A

one oscillator (modulator) becomes the control signal for another oscillator (carrier)

37
Q

The audio output from a carrier includes its _____ and _____.

A

frequency components, complex sideband frequencies above and below that frequency

38
Q

What are sideband frequencies in frequency modulation?

A

(sums and differences of the carrier + (modulator frequency x sideband number))

39
Q

As sidebands move further from the carrier frequency, amplitude _____.

A

decreases

40
Q

What does FM amount control?

A

allows you to adjust sidebands; increasing amount increases amplitude and number of sidebands

41
Q

What does FM sound like?

A

produces even more complex bell-like tones than ring modulation

MRAT 6030 - MIDI and Sound Synthesis (15 decks)

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