[sdiy] Better waveforms of our nature

[David Moylan]

Not quite.  A sine wave only represents one harmonic/overtone.  So if 
you add one an octave up you're just adding that single harmonic, no 
other even harmonics.  You can build it up with multiple sines (if you 
have extra oscillators) a la additive synthesis, but in the analog 
domain they wouldn't be precisely in tune.  They can also be formulated 
via waveshaping rather then separate oscillators.

For instance, you can rectify a triangle to get a double (or more) 
frequency triangle, then sine shape etc.  I think Buchla did this in a 
module.

On 10/17/2016 08:02 PM, mskala at ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2016, Donald Tillman wrote:
>> I got bored with the traditional set of audio VCO waveforms.  And
>> instead of just throwing more waveforms at the situation, I looked into
>> the larger issue of what we want from a waveform and the ways use them.
>> And things got interesting.
>
> It seems to me that "even harmonics" is really just all harmonics of a
> note one octave higher - so except for minor differences in the shape of
> the amplitude drop-off, all of these can be done easily by adding a sine
> wave to a traditional oscillator at twice the frequency.  Can we think of
> a different kind of waveform that breaks further from the traditional
> ones?  Maybe an irregular pattern of harmonics, such as all prime-numbered
> harmonics, would be interesting.
>