The shape of the wave is the color of the tone. Swap the oscillator and the timbre changes completely — and the spectrum shows you exactly why.
Volta has four basic shapes: sine, saw, square, and triangle. Right now the source is a saw — bright and buzzy, packed with harmonics.
Change saw to sine, square, or triangle and listen. A square skips every other harmonic and sounds hollow; a triangle is gentle and rolls off fast.
Oscillators are just signals, so they add: square (freq pitch) + saw (freq pitch) layers two colors into one voice.
Detuning a layer a few cents (+ saw (freq pitch + 9Cents)) makes the two waves drift in and out of phase — instant width.
The starting point#
The lesson opens with this song in the editor. Every edit recompiles and plays.
-- Waveshapes: the color of the tone. Try sine / saw / square / triangle.
tone = patch {
source = saw (freq pitch),
ampEnv = adsr 5ms 200ms 0.4 150ms,
gain = vel * 0.4
}
loop = play tone !"c3 e3 g3 e3"What to watch#
Watch the spectrum: a saw is a tall stack of bars, a sine one lonely spike, a square skips every other bar, a triangle fades fast to the right.
Goals#
The workbench checks these as you work; the solution is there when you want it.
- Use a shape that isn't a saw
- Layer two oscillators with +
- Stretch: detune a layer a few Cents
Make it yours#
Audition all four shapes, then design a two-layer voice: one layer for body, one for shine.
Further reading#
Language reference in the reference.