MainStage Mondays: Synth 101- Oscillators

This month I’ll be taking my readers through the basics (and I mean VERY basic) parts of synthesis. Most tutorials I read are super involved and exhaustive, which is great if you have the time to devote. I’m going to keep mine short and sweet. 

Today we’ll be covering oscillators. Oscillators are what generates sound in a synth. There are hundreds of different tones, but the most common are square, triangle, saw, sine, and white noise waves. Click here for a great video explanation of each tone, and to hear what they sound like.

The ES P synth is super simple to use, and include all the basic oscillator types I cover in this blog.

Early synths only allowed you to play a single oscillator. Modern synths usually have around 2-3 that you can blend together. 

Use the volume sliders on each oscillator to create a blended tone.

Use the ES P synth to experiment with different oscillator blends to hear how they “color” each other. 

That’s it! We’ll talk about filters next week and how they can affect tone. Thanks!