Warning in Front of the Sound Doc.
From LFO to libsnd
Sound Synthesis
On the subject of music—meaning acoustics, or rather, radio and other types of signals...
First, the science of sound:
The human ear usually perceives round wave signals—meaning sine signals / sinusoidal signals—as either very pleasant or highly annoying.
Furthermore, there are two other types of signals, called SAW or BIN signals. SAW signals show jagged peaks when you measure them.
BIN signals, on the other hand, show up as a blocked curve during measurement, which is why they are also called block signals [square waves].
Normal music mainly follows the "sine curves" that were previously declared as wave signals.
Additionally, there are sound manipulation options, which are mainly used by synthesizer pianos.
Nowadays, in an almost fully digitized world, there are also "software synthesizers." They are barely inferior to their hardware counterparts anymore—in fact, due to their price point and versatility, they are actually a bit ahead of hardware synths.
Nevertheless, it is still worth relying on "analog synths."
I like to explain why like this:
Mixing notoriously works better in analog because you can put more intuition and feeling into it, giving the tracks more soul. Mix-master engineers especially know how to appreciate what that means.
Back to the topic—I didn't want to get carried away talking about the types of synths, but rather write about music as a science.
In this regard, sound manipulation first requires a crash course on the topic of:
Radio frequencies [Funk]
SAW and BIN signals can be dangerous at certain volumes—take "infrasound" as an example. This is why, inside buildings, you are forced to rely on WAVE/SINE signals.
Infrasound of the SAW signal variety will otherwise quite literally saw your house down.
BIN signals can interfere with the reception of standard broadcast radios, which is why they usually need to be kept quiet. In fact, both mentioned signal types, SAW and BIN, should be shaped to be rounder, at least in the master mix, if possible.
How do you shape signal types into something else?
In this regard, you can work with "layering"—meaning additional instruments on additional tracks that you weave into each other as a sonic framework.
The other methodology would be—and now we get to the actual LFO part:
You can edit the sound of a MIDI instrument in many ways.
For example, the aforementioned "Low Frequency Oscillators" (or "LFO"). Other sound manipulation options would be "envelope arranging"—meaning "Cur" or "Curve"—or even reducing filters on certain signals according to their oscillation frequency. Mostly they consist of what is called "Fil" or "Detune" (or "DET"), all the way to "DEC," which is hard to understand from a German perspective but actually means "Detune Enhanced Coding."
Furthermore, how many sound manipulation options exist nowadays mostly depends on the software, or rather, on the firmware of the hardware synthesizer pianos.
Since a firmware is "just" software too, the so-called sound volume mostly depends on the synthesizer's accuracy, measured in special buffers called "latency values." These either lag or react very precisely after a key press.
The lower the required "latency value" from the instrument to the software, the more precisely you can play.
Which is why it is important to configure high latency values [sic]* to be able to play exactly like a metronome in case of doubt, after about two notes.
What is a metronome?
A metronome is mainly used to measure a drummer, to seriously speak of staying in time.
That said, one type of synthesizer also features a metronome as a manipulation option: the so-called "SEQs," or spelled out:
Sequencers, also known as samplers.
Which brings us almost to the end, as otherwise it would completely get out of hand with too many topics, and I "only" wanted to provide a crash course from sound to music.
By the way, there are still many possibilities that I didn't go into now. But going from LFO to libsnd, I even overshot the mark a bit. There are still aspects missing regarding the topic of:
Shaping, arranging—otherwise I would actually be done.
By "sound shaping," people usually don't mean getting a shave, even if it almost sounds like it.
Arranging is sometimes shaping, but sometimes it is also an overlapping of different signals into music as it is meant to sound.
Overlapping [clashing/muddy frequencies] is mostly undesirable in my field of music, but it happens to most beginners.
Minimalism consisting of drums, bass & lead instruments are common arrangements in my direction.
Anyone who has to manage an orchestra will either love overlapping or hate it—anything in between is a rarity.
It is also referred to as overdubbing.
Furthermore, one could now delve into specific software synths, but that would be too much for me, and I'm not sure if anything was forgotten regarding the technical terms?
