Are wavetable synths even "musical" at all?

[ghettosynth]

Coldest synth of all time!

[ghettosynth]

Ooh, DIY Modular Wavetable.

[ghettosynth]

FM and Wavetable for a double dose of musicality!

[BertKoor]

I don't think Blackadder and A Bit of Fry & Laurie were aired in the U.S. I imagine there's a lot of home brew TV junk flooding the US market. The other fellow of Fry and Laurie you might have heard of, or seen, if TV was your thing then. He played Dr. House from 2004 to 2012.

Back to Strawinsky and his lolitas quote, here it is on film at 2:10 :


This interview was supposedly done in the early 60's, so that explains that.

[osiris]

Oh God no, we've had (and loved) Blackadder for decades. They did show Fry and Laurie once, but I think US audiences were at this point convinced Laurie was the Doctor from House.

[jancivil]

That's where I encountered the name and it attached to something, Fry and Laurie. I can even picture his face.
never been good with names

[jancivil]

The Stravinsky video is blocked, some copyright problem for the US.

I remember one use of a wavetable synth I can be certain about and I have never heard any synth that was more lush.

[havran]

I think people need to stop obsessing over the idea of gear sprinkling fairy dust onto their tracks and instead learn how to write a melody.

Writing random off-topic verbiage has nothing to do with wave-table synths, I'll have you know.

[havran]

We must publically identify wavetable designers now.

Sir, I especially liked this post of yours. Thank you.

[havran]

f**k melody. and 'beats'.

Sounds like modular

Or textural.

[havran]

Sure, but now I think I might be a pariah in some circles.

(I really don't understand why some people seem to have gotten huffy.)

[foosnark]

You expressed an unpopular opinion. You're entitled to whatever opinions you have of course, and it was pretty funny how you expressed it... but it also doesn't really make a lot of sense, given how ubiqitous wavetables actually are among digital synths (whether they're marketed that way or not). Wavetables can sound like all sorts of things, 95% depending on the table contents and 5% on the implementation. Saying you don't like wavetables, is like saying you don't like samplers because of that ORCH2 sample that got overused decades ago.

Almost any time you hear a digital synth producing a sine wave, it's using a lookup table to convert from a phase accumulator (rising sawtooth) to a sine. That includes the classic FM synths... where phase modulation is done by simply adding the modulation signal to the sawtooth before doing the lookup.

[osiris]

I've always wanted to sample an MRI machine. But now, every EDM lead sounds like one.

[kritikon]

Sure, but now I think I might be a pariah in some circles.

(I really don't understand why some people seem to have gotten huffy.)

I'm with you. Wavetables have their uses, but there aren't many wavetable synths that get any juices going for me at all. And TBH I think comparing them to hair clippers is being a bit too nice. Somebody mentioned MRI scanners - wavetables sound like hair clippers stuck to an MRI scanner while somebody who has a Prince Albert piercing is still trying to shave their pubes with it. Wavetables are like scratching your fingernails on a metal blackboard - you either love it or hate it, not much inbetween. G-Force added wavetables to impOSCar3 and as far as I'm concerned, they worserised it rather than betterised it.

You're not on your own, at least we're in a minority of 2.

[CrystalWizard]

I've always wanted to sample an MRI machine. But now, every EDM lead sounds like one.

Ha,ha. I would like to sample lots a gadgets in a hospital. I have a few that i made in one of my visits but i couldn't have my fone with me in many situation. I had a friend that played CPAP machine live onstage with Faust. I put together a whole rig including a very small mic, mixer, transducer, and effects.

on topic:
Are flutes even musical at all?
In my hands significantly less so than a wavetable synth. Even a wavetable synth is more musical with me playing it. If a wavetable synth can't sound musical then neither can a variety of subtractive synths. One can use 1 waveform...