More on harmonics

[klankeffect]

mayby good book ore something where i can learn about this stuff

[kristofason]

why do you need to know this AK? I dont mean that in a funny way, im just inquisitive...(because i havent go a clue what it all means!)

[AK]

why do you need to know this AK? I dont mean that in a funny way, im just inquisitive...(because i havent go a clue what it all means!)

Mostly sound design purposes through additive synthesis and sampler use but also for experimental composition. By that I mean something like composing with a set of fundamental frequencies as opposed to any specific diatonic scale.

I also create a lot of my own percussive sounds and tended to add additonal harmonics based on the hz value of notes within the scale I was working in. Unfortunately, this can leave you with sounds that do not have much character and feel a little contrived, like a synthetic conga which sounds like it's playing 5ths, or a tritone or a minor 3rd etc. But since experimenting with new frequencies/partials, I found I'm creating much more colourful and interesting sounds and rather than adding random frequencies, I wanted to experiment with frequencies that might occur naturally in other types of waveforms.

So in a nutshell, my reasons are probably just to understand more about sound itself, more complex sound design, a deeper knowledge of harmony and dissonance, additive synthesis, fm synthesis and the notion of composing with a handful of specific frequencies related to certain analog type waveforms - but the latter is just total experimentation and something which I've yet to do. Might sound absolutely awful but who cares? It's just something I wish to experiment with.

[steevio]

its really useful to apply this stuff.
i've always used partials (harmonic series) rather than 12tet for my tuned percussion, its sounds somehow more natural. it may be slightly out of tune with other elements, but thats not always a bad thing for percussion.

another one is bass, if youre using a pulse wave for your main bass sound, its useful to alter the pulsewidth till it tunes in with other elements.
for instance say you've got a square wave G bass note dominating in your tune, the fifth harmonic will be a quite flat B, so even with a fairly closed up filter, you will hear that coming through it may well clash with other elements of your track in that frequency range, (for instance it will sound bad if the track is mostly G minor ) but by adjusting the pulse width you can reduce the amount of that harmonic coming through, and emphasise more friendly ones.

so higher stuff like percussion its quite nice to have unusual harmonics, but bass is a place where you probably dont want them.

knowing about harmonics is very useful.

[AK]

another one is bass, if youre using a pulse wave for your main bass sound, its useful to alter the pulsewidth till it tunes in with other elements.
for instance say you've got a square wave G bass note dominating in your tune, the fifth harmonic will be a quite flat B, so even with a fairly closed up filter, you will hear that coming through it may well clash with other elements of your track in that frequency range, (for instance it will sound bad if the track is mostly G minor ) but by adjusting the pulse width you can reduce the amount of that harmonic coming through, and emphasise more friendly ones

That's an interesting point, is this something you'd have any control over or is it just by ear? By that I am assuming the amount of width available on a pulse waveform would make the frequencies of the harmonics guesswork, or am I wrong?

All fascinating stuff and yeah, definitely useful.

[steevio]

another one is bass, if youre using a pulse wave for your main bass sound, its useful to alter the pulsewidth till it tunes in with other elements.
for instance say you've got a square wave G bass note dominating in your tune, the fifth harmonic will be a quite flat B, so even with a fairly closed up filter, you will hear that coming through it may well clash with other elements of your track in that frequency range, (for instance it will sound bad if the track is mostly G minor ) but by adjusting the pulse width you can reduce the amount of that harmonic coming through, and emphasise more friendly ones

That's an interesting point, is this something you'd have any control over or is it just by ear? By that I am assuming the amount of width available on a pulse waveform would make the frequencies of the harmonics guesswork, or am I wrong?

All fascinating stuff and yeah, definitely useful.

if you dont want to get into the mathematics of it, simply record a drone of the bass while slowly sweeping the pulse width in steps, then check each step with a spectrum analyser. you'll see how the various harmonic peaks change in amplitude, and they do quite drastically.
of course if you've got a bassline with more notes then it gets more complicated.
but once you've seen this in front of you on the screen, you'll understand whats going on straight away, and be able to apply it.

it just happened to me in a tune i was writing last week, i noticed that a bass note seemed to be clashing with a low conga type sound which was made with a triangle wave being FM'd by a pulse wave, even though the fundamentals of each were in tune. of course i just did it by ear, and altered the pulse width of the bass till it sounded right, but out of interest i wanted to see what was going on, and there was various harmonic dissonances going on.
its something we tend not to think about too much, but if you get into it quite deeply, you can really clean up your bottom end and bring it into better focus.

[s.k.]

by ear is best, but if you wanna get technical about it -

with a duty cycle of 1/3 - every third harmonic will be gone,
if duty cycle = 1/4 - every fourth harmonic will be missing,
if duty cycle = 1/5 - every fifth harmonic will be missing,
and so on...

naturally, when the duty cycle of a pulse wave is 1/2, or exactly half a whole cycle of the wave, then every 2nd harmonic is missing, which makes it you guessed - a square.

[Roqqert]

I see you stopped thinking, right at the point where you posted that silly post.

touche'

i already made more tracks right at the point you were thinking