[sdiy] Timbral musings

[Ian Fritz]

Hi Scott --

At 11:42 AM 2/15/2003, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
>My cent and a half...

Thanks for the note.

>I went to the site and listened to these again as well.  I'm thinking that 
>such
>sweeps don't really do justice to what the shaper can actually do in a usable
>patch.
>
>I'm wondering what the effect of using an ADSR to drive the shaper would be,
>I'm guessing one could get some nice "natural" sounds that are different from
>using a VCF.

I would say that the sounds would be somewhat similar to the sweeps on the 
demos.  I mostly like shapers for getting the base timbre the way I want 
it, and usually use them in conjunction with filters. But for demos it 
seems fairer to present them raw.

>And what about using a random voltage (noise -> S&H, clocked at regular
>intervals, several times per second) to drive the shaper?  I think that the
>stepped changes would be rather profound???

I've been thinking about doing something similar for the demos of the new 
waveshaper.  This beastie now has two timbre-modulation inputs. It could be 
interesting to step these at random
at a slow rate to show the variety you can get.

>I'm personally still agonizing over several other aspects of using a VC
>waveshaper.  I really want to play with your NIC based one.  My first issue is
>that neither of my FatMan synths are modularized.  This needs to be done soon,
>as in first.  I also need to build a few EGs to use with it.

Ah well, first things first, of course.

Best regards,

   Ian