Wavetables

Just a quick note this week about something I have made. It’s a Java application, and it creates wavetables for Pigments out of mathematical concepts. I might do a more detailed post about this eventually but I don’t have time at the moment.

If you need an explanation, wavetables are audio samples whose purpose is to provide a set of wave shapes for a synth oscillator, which can then interpolate between them to create timbral effects. Pigments is Arturia’s flagship softsynth, and it’s fairly simple to create wavetables for it.

My idea was to create the set of shapes in each case using mathematical techniques, often relying heavily on concepts similar to keyframed animation.

I’ve been trying to come up with a scripting language to replace the rather extensive and untidy code, but it’s turning out to be quite difficult, because the ideas that went into the code are very broadly inclusive and imaginative, so it’s hard to pin down a common logic. This rough sketch on my notepad will give you some idea how that went…

Some of the sounds I managed to make were quite fresh to my ears, and I’m fairly sure that most of them have never been created by anyone else. I’m quite excited that I’ve managed to do this, and I’m considering how to go about making this available to others. At the moment it’s not ready to release, as it was just an experimental application and I need to tidy it up a lot so that I can curate a collection and announce it properly. That may take some time!