Readings Response #3 - Modulation Synthesis
Matthew Steckler
Audio Art
2.8.07
Readings Response: Modulation Synthesis
I've read through passages of this reading a few times
through so that I may sound more intelligent, or at
least relevant, when I respond herein. The truth is,
though, that I possess a slow learning curve with the
application of technical topics in music, or anything
really scientific. I can loosely grasp the concepts in
the abstract, but until I sit and run the gamut of
trials and errors in Max I'm as good as lost. I look
forward to this process now that my old computer seems
to be working and I have a new machine and some new
recording gear to boot.
I think the ability to understand synthesis processes
will be more important to my music than I've
previously given it credit for. I've always trusted
others to generate my patches for me, my role as the
musician was to discover the best ones, then figure
out how to organize them (again, reference to the Cage
and Russolo readings). But even if I never make great
patches from scratch, understanding the underlying
techniques and their audible results will help me to
find the patches I had in mind and modify them to my
taste (my previous experience with them prior was with
virtual rack soft synth apps like Reaktor and Reason
with the little knobs and faders, but I realize now
that's cheating, ha ha... but really? Each person only
has so much time... oh, but I digress...).
My hope is to harness these homegrown patches and put
them into a high-end DAW like Logic that can integrate
MIDI and audio, and become a Bjork-like male sprite,
churning out deliciously weird pop experiments in my
own home office. Is this possible? I don't yet fully
realize the potential of Max...
The diagrams clarify the reading much better than do
the formulae, but then I am a visual person. The FM
synthesis section was interesting because of the
connection to the Yamaha DX7, though I myself never
had a real attachment to those sounds. I would love,
by contrast, to find out what went into making those
classic Moog sounds, or even the Rhodes and B-3. I
believe that oscillators have something to do with all
of these.
I see now that this aspect of music is very much the
scientific inquiry model, whereby a hypothesis is
posited, "What would happen if... [enter a carrier -
modulator signal configuration]" and the results are
dutifully documented, but the music side of it is,
we're free to take our result or leave it to the dogs.
Much of the documenting involves identifying the
elements at play, and representing their relationship
toward one another with pictures and equations, so as
to fully appreciate the beauty of each sound
generation's guiding principles. Ah yes, this one
happens to carry a sideband with a negative frequency,
that one has a choppy waveform due to the "imperfect"
analog character of the diode, this one has infinite
spectra with equidistant bands, etc... as in science,
we love playing with shapes in our music and then
relishing most the mutant deviant bastard offspring.
One HUGE question I have: how do digital signals
begin??? Is there a vibration to make a frequency
occur, as in the natural world? I feel ignorant that
this most basic principle was not addressed in my
education.
My understanding of this reading is incomplete without
my trying it out, but one thing that made an immediate
impression was learning that integer ratios between C
and M create harmonic sound while irrational ratios
create percussive, inharmonic sound. Like the overtone
series, this has a beauty put forth by nature herself.