Hey Plugheads,
Our journey into the world of sound design continues — and I’m excited to announce Lesson 4, dedicated to one of the most essential and fascinating aspects of synthesis: waveforms.
If you’re into electronic music, production, or just curious about what makes a sound feel “metallic,” “warm,”“hollow,” or “punchy,” — this lesson gives you the foundation to start hearing (and shaping) sound differently.
🔍 What’s inside Lesson 4
▶️ Simple vs. Complex Waveforms
We start by exploring why the sine wave is considered the purest waveform — containing only the fundamental frequency, with no added harmonics.
On the other hand, all other waveforms are complex, made up of additional partials (aka harmonics).
🪚 Sawtooth Wave
The queen of bright, aggressive tones: the sawtooth wave includes all harmonics in the natural series, each with an amplitude inversely proportional to its order.
⬜ Square Wave
Hollow and bold: the square wave contains only odd harmonics. In this lesson, I also explain how the Pulse Widthparameter works, and how modulating it with an LFO can lead to much more expressive sounds.
🔺 Triangle Wave
Similar to the square wave, but softer: it also contains only odd harmonics, but their amplitude decreases much faster — in proportion to the square of their order.
⚪ Sine Wave
The pure starting point. No harmonics — just a single frequency. A sine wave is like a blank canvas: not exciting on its own, but essential for building everything else.
🎓 Why this lesson matters
Understanding waveforms is foundational for any sound designer, beatmaker, or producer.
They’re the building blocks of everything — from basses to FX, pads to leads.
📹 Check out Lesson 4 in the course playlist if you haven’t already. And if you missed the earlier lessons, I highly recommend going back to catch up — the concepts build on each other.
In the next lesson, we’ll dive into the VCF (Voltage-Controlled Filter) and start really sculpting our sounds. 🔊
See you there,
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