Modulation changes everything when you route control signals from sources to destinations. Turning knobs by hand while a synthesizer is producing a tone is a great...
Exploring harmonic relationships beyond chords and intervals. Chords. What are chords? Oh, that’s right, they are collections of notes sounded at the same time. They have...
Modular Synthesis for Beginners… Modular Synthesis for Beginners with Jim Aikin When synthesizers first started to take off, back in the ’60s and ’70s, oscillators were...
Make your synth talk with subtractive synthesis and ring modulation. Recently I discovered it’s easy to make surprisingly realistic vocal sounds, called phonemes, using any subtractive...
Practically every electronic musician uses MIDI, but many have only a vague understanding of exactly what it is, what it isn’t, and how it works. You...
Managing the horizontal and vertical dimensions of musical space. Chords. Who doesn’t love chords? Generally speaking and to most people, chords appear to be the basic...
Ever wonder why some moments in your favorite pieces of music seem so deeply satisfying? Most often, it’s because the composer has carefully designed such moments...
Everything just adds up when you understand how harmonics work. As musicians, we work with sound. Sure, wearing the right pair of pants in the photo...
Feed your synth audio from your phone or tablet, and synthesize your surroundings. Many years ago (probably before I got my first synth), I read that...
Omnisphere is one of the most popular soft synths ever, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s ever used it. One of its greatest strengths is its versatility—the...
Helpful Tips from Marty Cutler’s THE NEW ELECTRONIC GUITARIST: Adapting synthesizers to guitar, guitar technique, and programming, all working together to improve tracking. Guitars and technology...
If you’re going to be programming synthesizers, you’ll need to understand what oscillators do. The sounds produced by synthesizers come from modules called oscillators. A lot...
Has the Fourths String Layout become a new standard for finger positioning? Most electronic music today is played on a MIDI piano keyboard. This layout has...
Do you believe in magic? What should you do when you’ve fallen under its spell? The real beginning of any musical piece is not how it...
How to make synths sound as infinitely interesting as acoustic instruments. Why do acoustic instruments sound so expressive and interesting, even without accompaniment? When you play...