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Sound Design

The document discusses sound design and synthesis fundamentals including harmonics, overtones, sound sources, effects, control modules, voltage controlled oscillators, and common waveforms. It explains that natural sounds are a mixture of frequencies and how to create and layer different waveforms to craft new sounds.

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Yapidis Manopoylos
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25 views2 pages

Sound Design

The document discusses sound design and synthesis fundamentals including harmonics, overtones, sound sources, effects, control modules, voltage controlled oscillators, and common waveforms. It explains that natural sounds are a mixture of frequencies and how to create and layer different waveforms to craft new sounds.

Uploaded by

Yapidis Manopoylos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=jWorjBDcty4 (Sound Design COMPLETE course - EVERYTHING you


need to know to craft any sound)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJLIS2MkFe4 (Sound Design and Synth Fundamentals)

Harmonics and overtones:

A sine wave vibrates in one frequency, no other sound in nature does. Natural sounds are a cocktail of
many frequencies

Lower Fundamentals

Overtones = Harmonic and inharmonic

Sounds with too many inharmonic overtones don't have a distinguishable note, rather they're called
inharmonic sounds, such as percussive waves.

Harmonic sounds have a harmonic series comprised of the lower fundamentals and a series of
overtones.

Sound Design:

To create any given sound, we use 3 different things:

1. A sound source, which can be literally anything, most often some sort of audio sample, which will
serve as a basis to our sound

2. Effects that will transform and process your sound

3. Control modules which can't produce sound on their own but they're able to control parameters of
the sound source and effects in order to transform the sound and provide movement (LFOs, envelopes
etc.)
VCO:

VCO stands for "Voltage Control Oscillator" and it's the heart of all synthesizers. How they sound
depends on the shape of their oscillation, or the "waveform".

These are the most famous waveforms:

1. Sine: Smooth and soft, is often used as a subbass to double other synth sounds. It's made of only one,
pure frequency, i.e. a single "harmonic".

2. Square: Hollow sound, it reminds of old video game sounds, and with more harmonics than the sine
wave it also sounds "richer". Square waves usually have a parameter called "parallel width", and the
more asymmetric the wave is the more metallic it sounds.

3. Triangle: Soft and a middle ground between the former two.

4. Sawtooth: Aggressive and richer in harmonics so it sounds fuller. Its fullness make it a good candidate
for filters.

Layering:

Learning to layer these different waveforms is a crucial concept in sound design. Try to layer different
combinations of them and change the respective volume of each one of them, it can lead to drastically
different results in tone.

Another good practice is to use multiple identical waveforms and move each of them either an octave or
a fifth apart. Moving them lower can add a lot of weight to any given sound and is usually done with
triangle or sine waves, whereas moving them up can aid a sound to punch through the mix.

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