modulating/mixing waves together? How to? HELP

loss1234

Let's say i have five waveform sources. maybe a few are octaves up or down of a square wave. maybe one is a triangle wave. and maybe one is the original square. maybe a few 40106 oscillators as well.

i want to figure out a few ways to take these and have them INTERACT with each other. i dont want to simply mix them. I want to have them effect each other.

The one Idea i had was an R2R ladder. I suppose XMOD is another (for x times y)

but what about FM or AM or any other ways i am not aware of. I basically want to make new and interesting waveforms by having the waves mess with each other.

thanks for the help

Blue Hell · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:09 pm Post subject:

Think "voltage controlled circuits", once a parameter of a module is voltage controlled you can put audio into the control input which may result in interesting things. Basically you can connect anything to everything when the voltage ranges are standardized.

Another interesting feature is oscillator sync, or you could trigger an envelope at audio rates.

loss1234 · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:45 pm Post subject:

ok. so what about sources that have no voltage control? can they only be used as modulators and not be modulated? or would r2ring work?

i suppose 4070's allow one way to xmod stuff right?

back to the experimenting!

thanks

bearblock · Joined: Sep 27, 2006 Posts: 83 Location: uk Audio files: 1

R2R as in a digital-analogue converter? that is basically a mixer with precisely fixed gain for each channel. in binary the bits represent 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 etc. so the DAC just has to mix all the digital signals together with the correct weights to generate an analogue signal.

loss1234 · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:34 pm Post subject:

so it looks like i will have to use vactrols then. see a lot of the sources i am using are cmos chips.

4024's/4040's etc. and they obviously dont have much in the way of cv control. but i could add it with a vactrol i suppose.

an r2r works in the case of a psuedo random gen so i figured i could use it to make 4 or 5 waves become one

thanks

RF · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject:

Hey loss -

I've looked at this circuit several times - it might be an interesting addition to what you are doing.

http://www.cgs.synth.net/modules/cgs43_cascade_mixer.html

Good luck -

bruce

Peake · Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject:

Check out the circuits Buchla used in the 259 and Easel complex oscillators.

http://rubidium.dyndns.org/~magnus/synths/companies/buchla/

There is FM, AM, and more going on. AM, when voltages are standardized (enough waveform voltage to fully open a VCA) is an often overlooked effect, especially at audio rates.

Also, sequential switches at audio rates switching between other oscillators or used to send modulation to pitch/amplitude etc.; Boolean logic modules for audio, and then out to pitch modulation; patching the filter output back into the oscillator pitch input; adding various filters in modulation paths; etc.