MOTM

You make a good point about graphically design waveforms not always 
being interesting musically. Nevertheless, an awful lot of the 
waveforms in my Wiard MiniWave DO sound useful and different, even if 
some of them look like Batman's cowl. There are also banks with 
emphasis on varying harmonics too - 1 bank has fundamental plus each 
of the first 15 harmonics each as a separate wave, another has 
fundamental plus the 3rd harmonic at 15 different amplitudes...

Not continuously variable for sure, but lots o' power with only 1 or 
2 CVs necessary to impose control.

Moe

--- In motm@egroups.com, "Tkacs, Ken" <ken.tkacs@j...> wrote:
> 
> The problem with a graphic oscillator is that the visual shape of a 
waveform
> doesn't have much real bearing on what the sound will be. And 
changes to
> that shape aren't the least bit intuitive, and are generally pretty 
useless.
> The concept sounds great at first---like you will be able to draw 
any
> waveform imaginable and have it at your fingertips. But the reality 
is that
> most sounds you get from it will be terrible.
> 
> When I was in college I had proposed a similar Idea and an engineer 
friend
> mocked something up for me as a demo. It sounded like a great idea--
-draw
> ANY waveform!! When we played around with the prototype, our 
reactions were
> like... "oh." That approach is great for producing sounds akin to 
distorted
> 60-cycle hum (and not even in a good way...I like noise, but these 
just
> sounded like electronic 'problems'). We dropped the whole thing.
> 
> That's why I get wary whenever someone comes out with a Wavetable-
based
> oscillator boasting "99 banks of new waveforms," and then you look 
at their
> manual, web page, whatever, and they show scope traces of the "new"
> waveforms. "Here's the one that looks like a row of houses, here's 
the one
> that looks like an upside-down row of houses" (as if that would 
sound
> different), here's the one where every other cycle is a square or
> sawtooth..." And you *know* that they designed these new waveforms 
by their
> look, not with any regard to the useful portions of the spectrum 
that they
> offer.
> 
> If they had really come up with some neat complimentary waveforms, 
I would
> expect to see an FFT of them, not just a scope trace.
> 
> Ensoniq attempted to create some interesting waveforms for their ESQ
> machines. On their own, they are of limited use, but they were 
digitally
> designed to compliment the basic waveforms. These were then saved 
into the
> wavetables. They didn't have names like "row of houses" because 
they didn't
> look like anything simple. (Simple waveforms, like tri, sine, 
square, etc.
> are 'easily' made with analog anyway). Instead they were just called
> something like "Digital #2 with emphasized 9th and 10th partials."
> 
> I'm not trying to be a wet rag on the idea; I'm just saying that 
the idea in
> practice isn't anywhere near as cool as it sounds. You think you 
will have
> the ultimate VCO but really it just grinds out nastiness. Additive 
is
> different---there, as you, let's say, move a slider up, you can 
hear that
> partial coming into play, and it sounds good and smooth and 
continuous as
> you move it, just like a lowpass filter sounds as it opens up 
(not "just"
> like---I'm trying to explain the 'continuity of it). Just changing 
a thin
> slice of a graphically-divided waveform wouldn't work anything like 
that.
> 
> When you go out looking for new waveforms, you have to ask yourself 
why.
> Certainly you want something different that the Big 4 to compliment 
them.
> But simple bold waveforms are "bottom heavy" by nature, with very 
strong
> fundamentals. That's why their shapes are so defined, if you know 
what I
> mean (that and phase). With subtractive synthesis you end 
up "brightening" a
> tone by either adding another oscillator an interval higher (which 
is cool,
> but it imposes a 'spaced-out,' newly fundamental-heavy series 
higher up, and
> the ear can identify that), or else you highpass filter, which is 
still
> trying to pull-up the closely-packed, upper harmonics from a 
waveform that
> had very little energy up there in the first place.
> 
> What would be cool would be to have waveforms *designed* to be up 
there,
> with harmonic series' to match where they land when being applied 
to the
> base waveform (I don't know how to describe this stuff without 
paper).