Tech Preview: Hive Wavetables

[Hanz Meyzer]

Thanks.

[yemski]

Here's a great resource for creating single cycle waves

http://scw.sheetsofsound.com/editor.html

[Sound Author]

^^ VERY cool!

[ZeePok]

 
Great stuff, yemski. Thanks!

[knowix]

Wavetable sound request*:

Whistle tone operatic female vocal*. If you've ever heard Sarajevo by Max Richter, you'll have heard its very ambiguous operatic vocal sound. I initially thought it was synthetic, but I read someone saying it was Patricia Rozario (can't find any online evidence of that actually).

When female vocals get that high they start to approach a clear thereminish sound. The kind of mixture of simplicity and complexity that might just suit a wavetable.

*because I won't be able to make it myself
*opera experts might disagree on my use of whistle tone to describe extremely high opera vocals.

[hakey]

The higher pitched a sound, the more it sounds like a pure sine wave (the harmonics lie above the limit of human hearing, so aren't heard).

A theremin is usually a sine wave (edit: it's actually a wave-shaped waveform), albeit modified by amplification. A distinctive feature of the sound a theremin produces is the vibrato/tremolo which, being entirely due to hand movement, has a human quality to it not unlike a singing voice.

Vibrato and tremolo cannot be captured by a wavetable.

Try a sine wave or a heavily filtered saw with some vibrato and tremolo (lfo*modwheel/aftertouch).

[Delta Sign]

Yeah, that sound in Sarajevo is crazy. For the longest time I couldn't even figure out if it's a vocal or a violin (the portamento gives it away, though)
The whole album is great. I love how everything is based on that one simple motif.

As hakey suggests, with such a sound, the expression is the most important part. Falsetto and whistle tone resisters also usually have a lot less overtones and dynamics than the median register, not only because the harmonics become too high, but also because of how the different body resonances of the human voice work. With falsetto singing, only a part of the vocal cords do all the work (basically), which transposes the voice up by one octave and contributes to the lack of overtones. Unless you are someone like Thom Yorke, it indeed often results in an almost sine like sound without a lot of controllable expression.

For a great example of falsetto done almost inhumanly well, listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHbHZOcpCZ0
Sorry for the off topic.
Back to making wavetables

[yellowmix]

Whistle tone operatic female vocal*. If you've ever heard Sarajevo by Max Richter, you'll have heard its very ambiguous operatic vocal sound. I initially thought it was synthetic, but I read someone saying it was Patricia Rozario (can't find any online evidence of that actually).

Grace Davidson in a live performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miw-uCCWk8E

Sarah Leonard is credited on the album, confirmed by Max Richter as the voice in Sarajevo: https://twitter.com/maxrichtermusic/sta ... 9943702529

[yemski]

Good example of this type of vocal by my boy Stui Love, on a track I was involved a few years back, ( I did the keys, string arrangement, and co-produced with DJ Survival aka Steve Kielty). For some reason I'm not credited here. The swines Anyway, record company politics aside, the vocal technique kicks in at 5:16. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ed7rEt9QY

Stui was such a good singer, pity it didn't happen for him.

[yemski]

On the subject of Hive's Wavetables. Did a bit of experimenting last night and one thought that occurred to me was that you're gonna need more modulation sources. There's a reason why most of the wavetable synths I can think of, Europa, Serum, Sektor, Icarus, VPS Avenger, etc have numerous modulation sources. It just gives you the level of control that you need for this type of synthesis. A couple of msegs and/or multipoint lfos wouldn't go amiss, that's for sure. Check out some of the Serum patches I sent to Viktor and you'll get what I mean. Other than that, slight problem, (that I'm 100% sure you're working on), this is a great addition to a synth that has always been one of my favourite synths without this. As it is, I could see myself writing a load of patches with this. Spent hours experimenting just with the, relatively simple, modulation that's there now.

[Biome_Digital]

On the subject of Hive's Wavetables. Did a bit of experimenting last night and one thought that occurred to me was that you're gonna need more modulation sources. There's a reason why most of the wavetable synths I can think of, Europa, Serum, Sektor, Icarus, VPS Avenger, etc have numerous modulation sources. It just gives you the level of control that you need for this type of synthesis. A couple of msegs and/or multipoint lfos wouldn't go amiss, that's for sure. Check out some of the Serum patches I sent to Viktor and you'll get what I mean. Other than that, slight problem, (that I'm 100% sure you're working on), this is a great addition to a synth that has always been one of my favourite synths without this. As it is, I could see myself writing a load of patches with this. Spent hours experimenting just with the, relatively simple, modulation that's there now.

Completely agree, needs some modern LFO's so we can so do those hard bass wobbles. It's the only thing missing now I think.

[hakey]

That's what's planned for Hive 2.0

viewtopic.php?p=7206122#p7206122

[Urs]

Hence the 2-step release. Make people familiar with the new sonic options, then add what's still needed.

It's going to seem "anemic" in comparison to what these other synths offer, but like I said a gazillion times before, there's a good chance that less is more.

[yemski]

Hence the 2-step release. Make people familiar with the new sonic options, then add what's still needed.

It's going to seem "anemic" in comparison to what these other synths offer, but like I said a gazillion times before, there's a good chance that less is more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WGOzIVoICY

[yemski]

Here's an arp patch I wrote using Serum WTs. For oscillator one I used a wavetable with various basic waveshapes mixed with a saw then skewed using the remap function of Serum. Oscillator 2 is sort of weird, kind of like an inverted sync sweep. There is probably a more correct nomenclature for this This has oscillator detune at about 25%. Both wavetables are swept using an lfo via a random source. This combination of random source with lfo is also applied to decay and release of the amp envelope, with seq also modulating filter and various other parameters. The seq is also set to 10 steps. These all combine to create an arp that while regular and repeating also has random elements, serving to make it more lively and less repetitious.

https://soundcloud.com/yemski/arp-test-1