Hi the five most common waveforms are
square, sawtooth, pulse, triangle and sin wave.


Please explain all other waveforms found in synths like Serum or whatever don't get the same attention as these do.

 

Because they are made with the basic ones you quoted. And it's not uncommon in certain genres, actually the base recipe for many

 

because it is catagorized under Pulse,wave,saw-width modulation I believe.

 

You're asking something that needs a tutorial-level explanation: https://www.dancemusicproduction.com/products/dance-music-production-synthesis-in-sound-design

 

The waveforms you mentioned are the easiest to represent mathematically, and therefore to recreate in the first synthesizers. Since soft synths are often made to emulate hardware, it's natural for them to use the same waveforms.

The sine wave is the building block of synthesis. With it, you can create all other waveforms. If you look at any sound through a spectrum analyzer such as SPAN (which is free), you will see a combination of sine waves. If you need more information than that, I'm sure you wouldn't looked it up yourself. There's plenty of good resources on synthesis.

 

You're actually going to want to use an oscilloscope to analyze wave forms, and see what happens to a sine wave as you manipulate it (for example).

 

I can make whatever sound in nature you want.

Other waveforms are just sinewaves with more harmonics. Subtractive synthesis cannot work with only sinewave, because it subtracts harmonics. Sinewave is only one harmonic. But on the other hand you have additive synthesis that can make any sound you want with only sinewaves. However, even additive synthesis can profit from using other waveforms with more harmonics because you can get some really interesting results.

 

all those waveforms are created easily with any Grain/Granular/formant etc etc synth , check it out

Ask Video - The Foundation Of Synthesis
101 - The Synthesis Of Synthesis
102 - The Oscillator
103 - The Filter
104 - Control Voltage
105 - The VCA and Other Tools
106 - Designing Timbres

then load up :

Syntorial http://www.syntorial.com/tutorials/ , try it out with both Primer VSTi its company synth and together make your own presets on your favorite synth , Andromeda,Virus,Supernova,Vanguard,Sylenth1,z3ta++,Luxonix_Ravity,WWAYM_Synth,MHC-Spacesynth,EnergyPro etc etc

 

Last edited: Apr 27, 2017

The basic waveforms are like potato, rice and ketchup. You gotta know how to cook with them, or you're just not a chef.

The fancy waveforms from Serum are like that weird sauce your friend got you from Cuba, with some kind of little snake floating in there, deader than dead. If you're confused where to use that one weird sauce, no one will mind. They don't know either, when the dead snakes and shit starts, everyone is just going by random experiment.

 

Geometry.

Rhetorical: Why do kids draw circles all the time but very rarely nonagons or dodecagons?

Same idea.

 

Sine wave is the basic of these basic waves.

 

Sine, square, saw and triangle are basic, single cycle waveform shapes. Pulse is essentially the same as square with an additional width control (ie Pulse Width Modulation). A square is symmetrical and it's positive and negative values are identical.


By adjusting the width in a pulse wave you can have varying positive and negative values and an asymmetrical shape.


The basic waves on their own are like primary colors. The fundamental building blocks. By mixing different amounts of these primary colors (waveforms) together, you can create any color in the spectrum (timbre).
Serum uses wavetables which is a collection of up to 256 waveforms that you can import or draw in by hand and morph between the individual frames resulting in more complex and intricate sounds.

It can help to understand why a wave sounds the way it does when you can see the audio output on a spectrum analyzer and notice the relationship between the waveform and the harmonics generated.

http://beausievers.com/synth/synthbasics/#sine
http://synthesizeracademy.com/harmonics/
http://synthesizeracademy.com/waveforms/

 

basic waveforms has lowest cpu cost and less coding difficulty

 

Been playing around with diva and the scope on it.

Now I can make a saw wave turn into a sine wave of equal volume with cutoff and resonance. From my understanding I am cutting out the higher frequencies to make a more rounded sine wave appear, then using resonance to amplify the narrow band of frequencies near the cutoff level. Thus making the sine wave louder but there is a point where too much resonance distorts the signal into not a sine wave.

This would be considered subtractive synthesis yes? Removing aspects of the original signal and changing it in a way you want.

Now I was thinking, you cant really make a sine wave into a saw wave through subtractive synthesis, because there would be nothing left, so this is where additive synthesis comes in yes?

You add harmonics ontop of a sine wave and that would introduce a saw wave?

Just smoking a j while relaxing late night playing around and thought about all this so I figured Id ask. This is all rudimentary stuff but it is understanding the purest of basics that leads to a solid foundation.