The Logic Off Topic list

Hi folks,
This may be an obvious question to some, but it's not that obvious to 
me. The question is as follows:
I've got an old Kawai K4 synth with some cheasy and some great 
sounds, :-). Now for some reason, which I don't understand, the 
programmers have included some sine waves into the set of wavetables.
With wavetables I mean samples of one or two cycles. There are 9 sine 
waves included, starting with a basic one and the subsequent ones are 
an octave, a quint above that, a quart above that one, a perfect 
third, a dimished third, another diminished third, a second and 
another second.
Now, they sound like they are just transposed, if you listen to them; 
at C7 they alias like hell, :-)(cool effects, btw). What confuses me 
is, why would they include these, when there is a option to transpose 
the waves from -24 to +24, meaning that an octave is 12 steps? It 
would be a waste of ROM I would say. Or is it about 'equal 
temparature' that they've included these, given the fact that these 
waves are not multisampled?
You can make nice organ sounds with these sines, especially when you 
can combine four of these on the K4.

Synth programming tip for the day: Try beefing up the sound of a 
sawtooth wave with a sine wave, while keeping the amplitude of the 
sine at 75% of the sawtooth wave. It can make the sound of a simple 
saw wave sound 'thick', ;-).
Yoonchi.

>Hi folks,
>This may be an obvious question to some, but it's not that obvious to
>me. The question is as follows:
>I've got an old Kawai K4 synth with some cheasy and some great
>sounds, :-). Now for some reason, which I don't understand, the
>programmers have included some sine waves into the set of wavetables.
>With wavetables I mean samples of one or two cycles. There are 9 sine
>waves included, starting with a basic one and the subsequent ones are
>an octave, a quint above that, a quart above that one, a perfect
>third, a dimished third, another diminished third, a second and
>another second.
>Now, they sound like they are just transposed, if you listen to them;
>at C7 they alias like hell, :-)(cool effects, btw). What confuses me
>is, why would they include these, when there is a option to transpose
>the waves from -24 to +24, meaning that an octave is 12 steps? It
>would be a waste of ROM I would say. Or is it about 'equal
>temparature' that they've included these, given the fact that these
>waves are not multisampled?
>You can make nice organ sounds with these sines, especially when you
>can combine four of these on the K4.

I may be incorrect, but believe the K4 implements a 'limited'
additive synth capability. The whole point of the extra sine
wavetables is to enable additive synthesis with the first
however many harmonics. I don't know the machine, but would
assume there are at least a few envelopes which can be assigned
to control the amplitude of the various harmonics over time.

>
>Synth programming tip for the day: Try beefing up the sound of a
>sawtooth wave with a sine wave, while keeping the amplitude of the
>sine at 75% of the sawtooth wave. It can make the sound of a simple
>saw wave sound 'thick', ;-).

A rough equivalent here would be to provide band limited gain to the
fundamental frequency of the saw wave, which is more or less what
adding the sine does.

HTH
S.

Thoughts from the mind of yoonchinet, 15-12-2001:

>Now for some reason, which I don't understand, the
>programmers have included some sine waves into the set of wavetables.
>With wavetables I mean samples of one or two cycles. There are 9 sine
>waves included, starting with a basic one and the subsequent ones are
>an octave, a quint above that, a quart above that one, a perfect
>third, a dimished third, another diminished third, a second and
>another second.

... was the question, and the answer is:

>You can make nice organ sounds with these sines, especially when you
>can combine four of these on the K4.

Think of e.g. Hammond drawbar organs, whose entire idea is to allow 
you to add sine-waves of different frequencies.  Nice organ sounds 
indeed :-).

I love it when people answer their own questions :-).

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html

--- In logic-ot@y..., Spectro <spectro@o...> wrote:
> >Hi folks,
> >This may be an obvious question to some, but it's not that obvious 
to
> >me. The question is as follows:
> >I've got an old Kawai K4 synth with some cheasy and some great
> >sounds, :-). Now for some reason, which I don't understand, the
> >programmers have included some sine waves into the set of 
wavetables.
> >With wavetables I mean samples of one or two cycles. There are 9 
sine
> >waves included, starting with a basic one and the subsequent ones 
are
> >an octave, a quint above that, a quart above that one, a perfect
> >third, a dimished third, another diminished third, a second and
> >another second.
> >Now, they sound like they are just transposed, if you listen to 
them;
> >at C7 they alias like hell, :-)(cool effects, btw). What confuses 
me
> >is, why would they include these, when there is a option to 
transpose
> >the waves from -24 to +24, meaning that an octave is 12 steps? It
> >would be a waste of ROM I would say. Or is it about 'equal
> >temparature' that they've included these, given the fact that these
> >waves are not multisampled?
> >You can make nice organ sounds with these sines, especially when 
you
> >can combine four of these on the K4.
> 
> I may be incorrect, but believe the K4 implements a 'limited'
> additive synth capability. The whole point of the extra sine
> wavetables is to enable additive synthesis with the first
> however many harmonics. I don't know the machine, but would
> assume there are at least a few envelopes which can be assigned
> to control the amplitude of the various harmonics over time.

Now why didn't I think of that? :-). Yes, every one of those 4 
oscillators has it's own amplitude envelope, and a pair of those go 
through the filters with envelopes.
You've given me an idea now, ;-). You can put for of those 
oscillators in a program(single in K4 terms) and you can stack 8 of 
those programs in a multiprogram(multi in K4 terms). Only problem: my 
polyphony will be reduced to 1, :-D. Still can have a killer sound, 
maybe.

> >
> >Synth programming tip for the day: Try beefing up the sound of a
> >sawtooth wave with a sine wave, while keeping the amplitude of the
> >sine at 75% of the sawtooth wave. It can make the sound of a simple
> >saw wave sound 'thick', ;-).
> 
> A rough equivalent here would be to provide band limited gain to the
> fundamental frequency of the saw wave, which is more or less what
> adding the sine does.

That's right. Or you can emphasize one of the other harmonics.
Thanks,
Yoonchi.

--- In logic-ot@y..., Hendrik Jan Veenstra <h@k...> wrote:
> Thoughts from the mind of yoonchinet, 15-12-2001:
> 
> >Now for some reason, which I don't understand, the
> >programmers have included some sine waves into the set of 
wavetables.
> >With wavetables I mean samples of one or two cycles. There are 9 
sine
> >waves included, starting with a basic one and the subsequent ones 
are
> >an octave, a quint above that, a quart above that one, a perfect
> >third, a dimished third, another diminished third, a second and
> >another second.
> 
> ... was the question, and the answer is:
> 
> >You can make nice organ sounds with these sines, especially when 
you
> >can combine four of these on the K4.
> 
> Think of e.g. Hammond drawbar organs, whose entire idea is to allow 
> you to add sine-waves of different frequencies.  Nice organ sounds 
> indeed :-).
> 
> I love it when people answer their own questions :-).

Ok, ok, :-). I knew I was smart enough to answer my own question, :-
). But my question was why they included these sine waves, while you 
have the possibillity to transpose and detune every wave up to +/- 2 
octaves with steps of half a note. And the answer to that was also in 
my mail. Some of the sine waves are more than 2 octaves up, compared 
to the basic one; can't reach that high with simple transposing the 
basic one.
Btw, how many sine waves does a Hammond use? Eight? Maybe I should 
search this one the web.
Thanks for your reply,
Yoonchi.

Thoughts from the mind of yoonchinet, 17-12-2001:

>  > I love it when people answer their own questions :-).
>
>Ok, ok, :-). I knew I was smart enough to answer my own question, :-)

OK, granted... :-)

>Btw, how many sine waves does a Hammond use? Eight? Maybe I should
>search this one the web.

16', 8', 5 1/3', 4', 2 2/3', 2', 1 3/5', 1 1/3', 1

if I remember correctly.

Based on a C1, this would be C1, C2, G2, C3, G3, C4, E4, G4, C5 respectively.


cheers,
HJ
-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html