How do we create overtones

in regards to oscillators?

Comments

  • You can stack oscillators and control some of their pitches with the Pitch (overtone) module. This is additive synthesis in the sense you are using different oscillators tuned to harmonics of a base oscillator.

    You can also distort or fold the actual audio signal using saturation to create overtones - this is additive synthesis in that you are creating additional harmonics.

    FM and phase modulation also creates overtones.

  • “You can stack oscillators and control some of their pitches with the Pitch (overtone) module. This is additive synthesis in the sense you are using different oscillators tuned to harmonics of a base oscillator.”


    How do you stack oscillators?


    “You can also distort or fold the actual audio signal using saturation to create overtones - this is additive synthesis in that you are creating additional harmonics.”


    I’ve been doing this though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.

    Folding the signal creates some very interesting results.


    “FM and phase modulation also creates overtones.”


    When creating overtones using an FM operator is that the FM index or is it something else?

  • edited June 2022

    @bcrichards

    Okay, I’ve finally understood what the “Pitch Overtone” module is for and how to use it.

    I was routing an audio signal into it’s CV input.

  • stacking oscillators would be using a mixer or layers to hear multiple oscillators. The synthesis method of frequency modulation and phase modulation at audio rates itself adds harmonics or overtones to the carrier operator.

  • edited June 2022

    “stacking oscillators would be using a mixer or layers to hear multiple oscillators.”

    Okay, I’ve been doing this anyway so it’s good to know how to describe what I’m doing.


    “The synthesis method of frequency modulation and phase modulation at audio rates itself adds harmonics or overtones to the carrier operator.”


    Is this via the FM index as mentioned before and can we quantify the overtones using phase width modulation?


    Edit. I almost forgot the “Ratio” in regards to the FM operator.

  • Pitch Overtone helps you getting overtones with equal distance (linear, speaking in terms of Hertz).

    It can be useful because increasing the pitch signal by equal steps would increase the pitch by an equal amount of notes which is a logarithmic function.

  • @gravitas my understanding in regards to phase and frequency modulation, albeit limited, is that the shape and frequency (or ratio) of the modulator signal as well as the FM/PM index (amount) of modulation all work together to add harmonics. As @rs2000 mentions with the Pitch (overtone) module, you can add precise harmonics by stacking tuned oscillators together. This works like an additive synthesizer like Addstation. PM + FM + distortion add harmonics all over the spectrum.

    Use a Spectrum analyzer to see where you are adding overtones in the spectrum in relation to your base oscillator or input signal.

  • @bcrichards

    ”my understanding in regards to phase and frequency modulation, albeit limited, is that the shape and frequency (or ratio) of the modulator signal as well as the FM/PM index (amount) of modulation all work together to add harmonics.”

    This is good know as in ‘both the shape and the freq creates an overtone or overtones”.


    “As @rs2000 mentions with the Pitch (overtone) module, you can add precise harmonics by stacking tuned oscillators together. This works like an additive synthesizer like Addstation.”

    I realised this as soon as understood that the Pitch (overtone) module needed a cv/pitch signal not an audio one

    and up until now I viewed the Pitch (overtone) module as a strange transpose module which in a way it is.

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