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Subject: Re: [motm] OT General Synthesis Questions

From: elhardt@...
Date: 2001-08-01

>>My specific question relates to VC of the filters... should the keyboard
control voltage cause the filter cutoff frequencies to track the pitch source
on a 1:1 basis to
preserve the sound? Or is the tracking less than 1:1, or are the filters
simply fixed and the useful range is less than 2 octaves?<<

Typically you would use a number of bandpass filters that are tuned to fixed
frequencies. But those will be different depending on whether you are doing
male/female or what vowel sound you are trying to get. However, synthesizer
filters never seem to have steep enough rolloffs to get a really clear sound.
You really need to gang up on them to get rid of a lot of the synthetic
electronic waveform sound.

>>Another question is, what is the "best" waveform to use as the excitation
source for 'voice' configurations? (I was thinking of an 80/20 pulse from a
300 VCO but would a sawtooth be better?)<<

Pulse is better than sawtooth in most cases, but mixing in noise really helps
a lot, especially for a large chorus of voices. That's what I did on a Nord
Modular Mellotron patch I did. Perhaps even using noise as a modulation
source to roughen up the sound would also help.

-Elhardt