Oscillators

The audio signal of a synthesizer is generated by the oscillator. You can choose from a selection of waveforms that contain various types and amounts of harmonics. The level relationships between the fundamental tone and the harmonics of the chosen waveform are responsible for the basic sound color or timbre.

Waveform types

Sine wave: Clean and clear-sounding, a sine wave contains only the first harmonic; in other words, it is the fundamental tone. The sine wave, used alone, can create “pure” sounds like whistles, the sound of wet fingers on the rim of a glass, tuning forks, and so on.
Sawtooth wave: Clear and bright-sounding, a sawtooth wave contains both odd and even harmonics, as well as the fundamental tone. It is ideal for creating string, pad, bass, and brass sounds.
Square and pulse waves: Hollow and woody-sounding, a square wave can contain a wide range of odd harmonics, as well as the fundamental tone. It is useful for creating reed instruments, pads, and basses. It can also be used to emulate kick drums, congas, tom-toms, and other percussive instruments—often when blended with another oscillator waveform, such as noise.
The square wave can be reshaped to make the waveform cycles, or pulses, more rectangular, by using a pulse width modulation (PWM) control. The more rectangular the wave becomes, the more nasal it sounds. When modulated in this way, the square wave is known as a pulse wave, and contains fewer harmonics. It can be used for reeds, basses, and brass sounds.
Triangle wave: A triangle wave contains only odd harmonics, as well as the fundamental tone. The triangle wave’s higher harmonics roll off faster than those of a square wave, making the triangle wave sound softer. It is ideal for creating flute sounds, pads, and vocal “oohs.”
Noise: white, pink and red, blue: Noise is useful for emulating percussive sounds, such as snare drums, or wind and surf sounds. There are more noise wave colors than those listed, but they are rarely found in synthesizers.
- White noise: The most common noise waveform found on synthesizers. White noise contains all frequencies—at full level—around a center frequency.
- Pink and red noise: These noise colors also contain all frequencies, but they are not at full level across the frequency spectrum. Pink noise decreases the level of higher frequencies by 3 dB per octave. Red noise decreases the level by 6 dB per octave.
- Blue noise: Blue noise is inverse pink noise, and increases the level of all frequencies in higher octaves by 3 dB.

You can deform the basic waveforms to create new waveforms, which results in a different timbre, or tonal color, thus expanding the palette of sounds you can create.

There are many ways to reshape a waveform, the most common of which is changing the pulse width of a square wave. Other ways include changing the phase angle, moving the start point of a waveform cycle, or combining multiple waveforms in multioscillator synthesizers.

When waveforms are reshaped in these and other ways, the relationships between the fundamental tone and other harmonics change, thus altering the frequency spectrum and the basic sound being produced.