I just skimmed the newly uploaded How To Use NI Massive videos, and I wanted to share my experiences with the wavetable synths.br
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When I first got Massive, I went through all of the wavetables and listened to them to try to figure out what was going on with the sounds. Some of them have such crazy movement across the wavetable that it’s hard to understand exactly what’s going on. You move the wavetable position ever so slightly and suddenly you have a pile of harmonics you didn’t have before.br
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Some of the sounds were so complex that I felt kind of lost just listening to them. It wasn’t until Serum came out that I realized that I could just look at with a scope to see exactly what was going on with the wavetable.br
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If you haven’t used an oscilloscope before, it shows you the wave form zoomed way in. Here’s what that looks like.br
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This is Massive’s first wavetable Square-Saw I with the wavetable position all the way to the right. This gives us a saw wave.br
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Same wavetable, this time position all the way to the left. It’s a square wave.br
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The saw wave and square wave are fairly uneventful since everyone knows what they look like and sound like. br
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Now it’s somewhere in the middle. When you move the wavetable position between the two, you get a mix of square and saw, which again isn’t all that exciting, but you can see exactly how the wavetable morphs between the two waves, square and saw.br
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But then…br
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These two are from the Chrome wavetable in different positions. They are wildly different sounding, wildly different looking, and you get a wide range of different sounds when moving the wavetable position between them. br
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This is the part I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why I was hearing the sounds I was hearing, or how they were formed. I didn’t understand what a wavetable was with a simple explanation. It wasn’t until I saw the wave forms and moved the wavetable position while viewing the scope that I realized what was happening.br
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You can use an oscilloscope with any synth, not just wavetable. You’d be surprised how different something as simple as a saw wave can be between soft synths or even hardware synths. It has helped me with my understand of why certain waves and synths sound better or different than others.br
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Anyway, if you think a visual aid would help you out when you’re working with something like Massive or any synth in general, just get a software oscilloscope and have a look. It’s obviously not a necessary step for making music. For me, it helped me understand the synth more. I can see how it’d be helpful for anyone interested in sound design, although probably if you’re into that, then you already know about it.br
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Free Scopes:br
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Oscilloscope for Ableton Live - requires Max for Livebr
[url=http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1124/oscilloscope]oscilloscope version 1.0 by roembach on maxforlive.com
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Smexoscope - 32bit only, might work with a 64bit bridgebr
[url=http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=4]http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=4[/url]br
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These are the only two free scopes I’ve used that worked for me. They both work really well though. I have used Image Line’s Wave Candy, but it’s windows only. There are other scopes out there though along with a plethora of other monitoring tools. br
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Again, none of this stuff is necessary for music creation. This is just what helped me understand wavetable synths easier.