Refining Sound: a Practical Guide to Synthesis and Synthesizers

Refining Sound This page intentionally left blank Refining Sound A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SYNTHESIS AND SYNTHESIZERS Brian K. Shepard 1 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shepard, Brian K. Refining sound : a practical guide to synthesis and synthesizers / Brian K. Shepard. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-992294-9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-19-992296-3 (alk. paper) 1. Electronic music—Instruction and study. 2. Synthesizer (Musical instrument) 3. Music—Acoustics and physics. I. Title. MT723.S44 2013 786.7′4—dc23 2013000232 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To Jenny, my love and my life This page intentionally left blank FOREWORD vii ynthesizers are wonderful musical instruments that come in many shapes, sizes, and Scapabilities. From monstrous modular setups to minimal iPhone apps, they all sound good and are great fun to play. But right there is a big disconnect: How can there pos- sibly be any relationship between the two? The common elements are oscillators, filters, and other basic building blocks, all clearly explained in Brian Shepard’s Refining Sound: A Practical Guide to Synthesis and Synthesizers. Synthesizers are easily the most versatile musical instruments ever invented. The wide range of sounds they are capable of generating is simply amazing. With this ability comes a certain amount of complexity, so learning the basics of synthesis will go a long way when you want to produce a sound. My company, Dave Smith Instruments, faces a dilemma shared by other manufacturers of synths: we continuously design and release new instruments, and at some point have to write an operation manual for the new product. We try to fully describe all the features in a clear manner, but we simply cannot go into depth providing a tutorial on the basics of synthesis. That’s where this book is invaluable! I can highly recommend it to any musician who wants to go beyond playing factory presets. Software synthesizers have become a good resource, providing a great feature-to- price ratio. Refining Soundtakes advantage of this by presenting numerous examples that the reader can try using free software. You can go as deep as you like, using these instruments to first understand the basic concepts and then go in whatever direction you would like. Even better, a companion website gives the reader numerous resources to learn more or explore other synthesis concepts (sounds like “extra credit”). Needless to say, these are all resources I would have loved to have access to forty years ago! As a designer of hardware analog and digital-analog synths, my hope is that you the reader will want to go beyond software and apply your synthesis skills to hardware synths. There are few things as fun as turning knobs on an instrument, hearing the results, and letting the sound lead you into new musical directions! Dave Smith Dave Smith Instruments This page intentionally left blank PREfACE ix ike many musicians who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, I have long been fasci- L nated with synthesizers and electronic instruments. The musical—and often literal— pyrotechnics of rock synthesizer virtuosi such as Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman as well as the gorgeous classical interpretations of artists like Wendy Carlos and Isao Tomita were a great inspiration to this young musician and composer. As I was beginning to purchase and use my own instruments, synthesizers were in the midst of a huge transfor- mation from the large, modular, analog instruments made famous by performers such as those listed above to the smaller, all-in-one, digital instruments we commonly see today. Although these newer instruments offer numerous amazing sound-making capa- bilities, they usually do so with an increasing complexity that tends to obscure how the sound is actually created. On the older analog instruments, it was quite easy to see what elements were creating and modifying a sound; you simply followed the patch cables. If a module didn’t have anything plugged into it, it wasn’t doing anything. If the output of a module was plugged into the input of another module, the second module was modifying the output of the first. For most of us making the transition to digital instruments, we kept that cable “picture” in mind as we dealt with the software connections in our new synthesizers. Now, having taught synthesis for more than twenty years, I find that most of the people with whom I work do not have that earlier model on which to base their experi- ence and understanding. They tend to see the inner structure of a synthesizer as a “black box” that mysteriously makes its sound, and they usually have no concept of the individual elements in a synthesizer and how they work, much less how they interact with each other, to produce those wonderful sounds. Without this understanding, users might tweak some settings and controls in a trial-and-error approach until they have something they like, but in most cases they just settle for the presets that come on the instrument. Part of the problem has been the design of the instruments themselves. At times it seems as if manufacturers have gone out of their way to cloud the internal workings of their instruments by giving new names to standard elements. (I’ve long suspected that some manufacturers have a “Department of Silly Names” that comes up with these moni- kers.) Until the development of computer-based software synthesizers and their large graphical user interfaces (GUIs), the internal workings were further obscured by the tiny LCD displays and confusing navigation systems found on most hardware instruments. Thus, it is little wonder that many users found their synthesizers confusing and intimi- dating to program, and gave up on the idea of creating their own sounds. Although every synthesizer model has its differences, in most regards they are actually quite similar to each other. Regardless of the manufacturer or model, there will be oscillators, ways to combine the oscillators, envelope generators, filters, modulators, and effects processors. The name, number, quantity, quality, and arrangement of these elements may change from one instrument to another, but the elements themselves, and their operation, are quite consistent from device to device. Preface I wrote Refining Sound as an attempt to demystify the synthesizer and its elements as x well as to illuminate the sound-making process from start to finish. In teaching synthesis over the years, I have found many wonderful resources that cover different aspects of synthesis at all levels of knowledge and skill. Many of these resources are listed and de- scribed in Appendix I of this text and on the companion website pages. What I have not found is a text that introduces and illustrates the entire synthesis process to the college-level musician who may not have a strong math or engineering background. In this book, I have attempted to provide detailed information on synthesis appropriate for college students, yet without requiring a strong background in mathe- matics. Concepts are explained with numerous illustrations and interactive demonstra- tions and a minimum of mathematical formulae. For students and instructors wishing to delve deeper into the math and science of synthesis, additional resources and links are provided on the companion website. I think of synthesis as the process of creating and refining sound. Much like the jew- eler or metallurgist who refines raw materials through numerous stages to create a beau- tiful work of art, the synthesizer artist begins with raw sound waves and transforms them through multiple refinement stages to create the exciting new sounds for which these instruments are famous. My goal is to help you understand the stages of that refinement process by—meta- phorically speaking—taking the synthesizer apart to explore its inner workings. As we do so, we will examine each stage of synthesis, its contribution to the sound, and how it interacts with other elements and stages. In every chapter, there will be opportunities to get “hands-on” with the individual elements so that you can see and hear—and most importantly, understand—what each of these refinement stages is contributing to the finished product. In the final chapter, we will “reassemble” the synthesizer as we create some of the most common types of synthesizer sounds from start to finish.

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