| DJMaytag |
if you wanna go with the instruments that are the most recognized, then this should sum up the types:
Subtractive: Moog Minimoog
Additive: Kawai K5000
FM: Yamaha DX-7
Wavetable: PPG Wave, Waldorf Wave/Microwave XT
Granular: Reason's Malstrom
Look these up to be more specific.
Subtractive takes raw waveforms and uses filters to subtract frequencies. Typically uses the sawtooth, square, & triangle waves. Typically associated with analogue synthesis, but most modern samplers and ROMplers have filters in them as well.
Additive uses a series of sine waves to build up a waveform. Some additive synths also use filtering like in subtractive synthesis.
FM (frequency modulation) uses raw waveforms and modulates the frequency of a carrier waveform with 1 or more modulators. Depending on the configuration, which is variable, you can have a multiple modulators "FM'ing" a single carrier, a chain of modulators in series all eventually "FM'ing" the carrier, and then various combinations of both. FM is typically thought of as DIGITAL due to the DX-7 and various DX-series synths, but it is possible to do with analogue synthesizers with some truly amazing results, but is very difficult to achieve due to the tendency of analogue oscillators to warm up after a while and have the pitch drift slightly.
Wavetable is way too difficult to explain, but the simplest explanation is that there are a sequence of waveforms available to sweep through instead of using a constant oscillator tone like a sawtooth or square wave.
Granular is something that I haven't a clue how to explain, but I have some ideas on how things work when using the Malstrom (but sometimes I get wildy different results than what I was expecting!) |
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