Grid for drawing waveforms? (suggestions)

[Sendy]

Hi, I'm Sendy, I bought Zebra when I read about it's oscillators because I've always wanted to do arbitrary transformations to the waveform geometry, and I just can't look at another synth that limits you to static waveforms. To me this is a more interesting field than filtering, which has become very predictable over the years

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has thought it would be useful to have a kind of grid in the waveform area, showing you the midpoint of the wave in both X and Y, and also 1/3rd, 1/4 and other harmonic points, for aiding the construction of 'perfect' geometric waves?

At the moment, I'm using the 16 little wave previews under the main display (or rather, the boundaries between them) to measure distances, but this is a bit fiddly. Perhaps if there were a grid, snapping for the control points might even be useful?

Just a thought from a newbie user.

Also another question. I'm interested in wave wrapping effects, for example the 'triangle-mod' wave on the (much hated) JP-8000. It's basically a triangle where you can control the vertical wrapping of the waveform. Is there a way to do this in Zebra 2? Ideally I'd like to be able to wrap the wave multiple times around the upper/lower boundaries so big sweeps are possible. I've created a simple mock-up by hand drawing, which is as good as I can get it but not perfect, yet still sounds quite cool (most of these effects sound like a variation on PWM).

Wrapping a sawtooth wave also produces a very cool 'sawtooth pwm' type effect. I know because I have the beta version of Helix and it can do wave wrapping. But the beta version of Helix is not Zebra so of limited value to me

Sorry for the long post, I'm just really into this stuff. It seems with Osc. FX Zebra can do pretty much everything else you can think of to the wave, so I think this would be a neat addition, if it's feasible.

...

As a side note, I think it would be possible using a waveshaper with a row of sawtooths as it's shape (one sawtooth for each wrap you want), and carefully controlling the volume of the wave to be modulated into the shaper, but I haven't been able to set something like that up in any of my synths.

p.s. This is my first post... If I am posting in the wrong place, please let me know...

Sendy

[Sendy]

Ah well, nobody wants to say hi, fair enough.. Incase my post was too obtuse here are my suggestions for Zebra in a nutshell -

1) Grid in wave display for drawing 'pure' waveforms
2) Customizable waveshaping with user waveform and input level, or simply a 'vertical waveform wrapping' oscillator effect that can wrap multiple times.

I have found a way to do this on my microKorg XL so surely Zebra should be able to do it

[Urs]

Ooops, I really hadn't seen it

1) a grid is part of the planned overhaul of the waveform editor (maybe similar to how the MSEGs work)

2) hmmm... I don't quite understand... do you have a scanner/camera to show your drawing? (I have a brilliant idea for a new OscFX this moment though...)

[AL321]

+1 for the harmonic markers!

Good to hear about the grid too. That will be a big help.

[bmrzycki]

(I have a brilliant idea for a new OscFX this moment though...)

@Sendy: Howdy and welcome to the Zebra community!!

[mcnoone]

Hi Sendy.
Welcome to kvr.

It's odd that I didn't see this post before today.
Maybe it was moved from another forum or something.

[Sendy]

No problem Urs, obviously you're very busy making new stuff, but you should have hordes of minions to scour these forums for ideas for you . There is certainly a lot going on it seems. Thanks for the welcome here.

Glad that the grid is already planned. That will be very useful.

Regarding the wave wrapping, it's simple, but hard to explain in text. Imagine the waveform in a box. You amplify the waveform, and the parts that poke out of the top and bottom 'wrap around' vertically to the opposite edge and protrude from there. Depending on the waveform, changing the amplitude (and hence the amount of wrapping that occurs) sounds like a cross between phasing and PWM, due to it creating moving sheer vertical faces in the wave. Increasing the input volume causes more of the wave to wrap around until eventually it wraps around multiple times, in which case it sounds similar to oscillator synch.

I'll try and post a video clip of it happening soon, if not a diagram.

[Urs]

Hey Sendy,

Gotcha about the effect. That should indeed be possible to achieve by OscFX, easily

Urs

[Sendy]

Hey Sendy,

Gotcha about the effect. That should indeed be possible to achieve by OscFX, easily

Urs

Given the complexity of the existing FX, that doesn't suprise me. Here is the ultra hi-fidelity picture I made to explain it anyways, even though it's prolly not needed.



Fig. 1 is a triangle wave (duh) showing the clipping levels

Fig. 2 shows the wave 50% wrapped, the arrows show the direction the waveform components move as you increase the input level. The dotted line is a reference of the original shape.

Fig. 3 is a fully 100% wrapped triangle wave, it's kinda convoluted so I circled the original high and low peak of the triangle wave, and marked the beginning, middle and end of the cycle. It's possible to continue to increase the input level and wrap the wave multiple times, which makes a higher pitch.

Some synths offer waveshaping which lets you do this kinda thing, but few let you vary the input level, which is what makes the cool stuff happen.

Thanks for listening anyway. Looking forward to your new effect ideas

[rexlapin]

Thanks for the drawing. I was having trouble visualizing
what you were talking about, but this made it very clear.
Cool idea too!
Cheers,
Scott

[Sendy]

Thanks for the drawing. I was having trouble visualizing
what you were talking about, but this made it very clear.
Cool idea too!
Cheers,
Scott

No problem, I care about this stuff ^_^. It's an interesting sound, somewhere between PWM and osc. synch. But mainly it just looks so damn cool on an oscilloscope

[Howard]

Another related effect is "mirror" - parts of the wave that would otherwise lie beyond the maximum/minimum values are vertically flipped over into the valid range.

Nice OP, by the way, which I also missed at the time...

[Sendy]

Another related effect is "mirror" - parts of the wave that would otherwise lie beyond the maximum/minimum values are vertically flipped over into the valid range.

Nice OP, by the way, which I also missed at the time...

Thanks. Glad you mentioned the mirror effect. The Helix beta lets you do this stuff but I find the parameter range too shallow. If some can't picture it, a 100% mirrored sawtooth wave is a triangle wave.

I find hard clipping on the waveform level (as opposed to as a global effect) is quite useful as well, for morphing things into square waves (by squishing the waveform against the clipping limit).

I've also heard of a synth that has something called 'soft sync', it works like normal hard sync but instead of retriggering the slave, it reverses playback direction, so there are no hard edges to it. Sounds worthy of investigation...

[rexlapin]

In regards to "soft sync", I believe the FXpansion DCAM synths
Strobe and Cypher have continuously variable degrees of sync
(soft to hard) but I don't know if they use reversing of the
playback direction to accomplish it.
Cheers,
Scott

[Gino Cortesi]

Hi Sendy,

This sounds like a really cool OscFX.

Although the diagram is "hi fi" it made me realize that a picture would help to explain any of the OscFx (in the manual or in the UI)

Best regards,

Gino