{"id":6,"date":"2008-05-13T15:13:39","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T15:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2013-05-23T10:42:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T10:42:58","slug":"basic-synthesis-part-3-%e2%80%93-envelopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/basic-synthesis-part-3-%e2%80%93-envelopes\/","title":{"rendered":"Basic Synthesis: Part 3 \u2013 Envelopes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Envelopes are the key to the articulation of your sound. Without them your patch will immediately start off at full blast, and stay there, and then disappear all of a sudden when you let go of the key. Envelopes, although difficult to understand at first allow you to change that, so you can create expressive and dynamic sounds with your synthesizer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">The standard envelope is in 4 main stages, described below:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin-top: 0cm;\" type=\"disc\">\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Attack \u2013 the sound rising up to its maximum level. If it\u2019s set to nothing, the sound plays at full blast straight away, whereas if you set it quite high then the sound gradually fades (good for string sounds).<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Decay \u2013 this is how long the sound stays at the level the attack brings it up to. If it\u2019s set as high as it will go, it will stay at the maximum level forever (rendering the sustain stage useless).<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Sustain \u2013 this is the level that the sound stays at after the decay stage has passed. Some synthesizers also have a dedicated \u2018sustain time\u2019 setting, which decays the sustain stage after an adjustable amount of time too.<\/li>\n<li class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Release \u2013 a bit like reverb at the end of your sound \u2013 it is how long the sustain level takes to die down to silence. Set the release to nothing and you won\u2019t get that effect \u2013 it will be instant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">The key to programming envelopes on your synthesizer is to practice and visual the envelope. Think of it like a graph with 4 stages, and you are plotting points higher or lower on the domain as the sound changes through the stages of the envelope. The sound rises through the attack, it dies down through he decay, it stays at the selected level in the sustain, and when you let go it disappears through the release.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">Filter envelopes are just that \u2013 they articulate the filter using an envelope. To do this, there is usually a knob dedicated to the filter frequency (cut-off point) just for the filter envelope. Turn the normal filter cut-off down, and turn the filter envelope cut-off higher, and then program the filter envelope like a normal envelope. Takes a while to figure out, but its worth it \u2013 for example, turn the sustain on the filter envelope off, forget about the release and attack (set them to zero), and make the decay short \u2013 then turn up the release and wow! The thing to remember here is that its not the volume (amplitude) that your changing, it\u2019s the cut-off frequency with the envelope, so you can create great effects with clever programming \u2013 such as emulating brass sounds by increasing the attack on the filter envelope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Envelopes are the key to the articulation of your sound. Without them your patch will immediately start off at full blast, and stay there, and then disappear all of a sudden when you let go of the key. Envelopes, although difficult to understand at first allow you to change that, so you can create expressive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innovativesynthesis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}