Interesting sound design trick for ethereal chord pads with a wavetable synth: modulate wave scan speed with key/pitch tracking such that higher pitch means faster scan speed. Makes it such that each note’s timbre is always in a slightly different spot/rate than the other notes in the chord. Got the idea from a video on old school 90’s IDM techniques, where they would load one shot, single note samples from a monosynth into a sampler and then use looping/ping-ponging of the sample to play chords. Because it was the days before readily available time stretching each note would run through the sample at a different speed, and I figured pitch modulating wave scan speed would do something similar.
I do something like this with the Hydrasynth. The 2.0 firmware lets you set modulation values per voice. I thought it was a bit gimmicky at first, but if you set it up to use different wavetables or scan rates per voice, you get some really interesting results.
Interesting sound design trick for ethereal chord pads with a wavetable synth: modulate wave scan speed with key/pitch tracking such that higher pitch means faster scan speed. Makes it such that each note’s timbre is always in a slightly different spot/rate than the other notes in the chord. Got the idea from a video on old school 90’s IDM techniques, where they would load one shot, single note samples from a monosynth into a sampler and then use looping/ping-ponging of the sample to play chords. Because it was the days before readily available time stretching each note would run through the sample at a different speed, and I figured pitch modulating wave scan speed would do something similar.
I do something like this with the Hydrasynth. The 2.0 firmware lets you set modulation values per voice. I thought it was a bit gimmicky at first, but if you set it up to use different wavetables or scan rates per voice, you get some really interesting results.