Synthetization (article)

Audio synthesis may initially seem like an obscure arcane art with strange terms like VCOs, LFOs, CV, Subtractive, Additive and Frequency Modulation being bandied about by studio geeks who always seem to exhibit some serious studio tans. Now, of course, if you want to do audio synthesis properly you’ll want to learn as much as possible about how different synthesizers work and which synth sounds you can produce with them. There’s a lot to learn when it comes to synths so it could seem like a massive mountain to climb when you start out. That said, there are different ways to learn basic synth programming and in this post we take a look a 5 ways you can go about learning audio synthesis and keep it fun. But first, let’s cover a few of the main synth terms, just to refresh our memories on the basics of synths...

A  synthesizer,  in  the  most  basic  sense,  is  an  analog,  digital  or  software  instrument  that  produces  audio signals. This  is  achieved  in  different  ways  by  different  synths  but  in  simple  terms  it’s  all  about generating  and  manipulating  audio  signals  and  sounds.  Like most things in music production and audio engineering, a synth is a system with inputs, processing and outputs. The inputs of synths come in most cases from a controller of some sort. A MIDI keyboard or pad is a good example of the typical type of input devices used with synths.  The controller sends pitch, velocity and gate instructions to the synth. Inside the synth the pitch triggers the oscillator which generates the initial audio.  The velocity instructions control the amplifier and the gate signals do the same, usually via an envelope generator (ADSR). The audio waveform generated by the oscillator then passes through a filter which shapes the tone by removing frequencies from the signal.  After the filter the signal goes to an amplifier where the volume is controlled. The oscillator, filter and amp components can all be modulated by modulators such as LFOs and envelopes. So, let's take a look at the basic components of synths before we delve a bit more into audio synthesis techniques and different ways of learning audio synthesis further below.