Any waveform can be recreated from the right collection of sine waves. Carefully choosing their relative frequencies and amplitudes, sine waves can assemble into triangle, saw, square and any other imaginable shape. In fact, this is what people mean when they say that a waveform has a fundamental frequency and various harmonics (harmonics are the extra sine waves and the fundamental is the main sine wave). This idea comes from Fourier, who also gave us the mathematical tools to break down complex waveforms into sine waves, methods which are at the heart of frequency spectrum visualizations, autotune, and plenty more.
This oscillator is designed to perform the reverse process – assembling sine waves to produce waveforms. It builds triangle, saw, and square waves from constituent sine waves, and it opens up the parameters so you can go beyond too. It’s additive synthesis, but structured to give you a direct link to the classic waveforms of subtractive synthesis.
Four banks of dials balance the contributions of 16 frequencies, and each bank is pre-configured to produce a traditional waveform, which is output along the bottom. By varying knob positions, you can completely alter the waveform to into one of the other waveforms, subtle variations of the classics, or your own inconceivable concoctions. If you want access to the composite harmonics on individual, dedicated outputs, you’ll find those along the right side of the module (just slide the 4-position switch to select which bank’s harmonics to forward to the jacks). You can send the individual harmonics through VCAs to modulate their relative volumes for evolving tones, or you might individually process them through different effects chains…
There’s also a noise source on hand, and CV inputs for frequency and phase modulation. Self-patch an audio output to a modulation input for complex oscillation.
By rebalancing the harmonic content of common waveforms, you can subtly customize tone, explore west coast synthesis with more structure, or explore radical constructions of your own making. There’s also quite a bit of educational joy to be had, with a hands-on opportunity to see how (non-sine) waveforms really do consist of combinations of harmonics.
(below: watch how individual sine waves, from the right-side jacks, sum to produce a saw wave) https://www.youtube.com/embed/ofp2w45gGc4?si=gy6Hb_qSIKPjSP-Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofp2w45gGc4: Additive Waveform Assembler
PLAYERTRON 