Additive Synthesis

Do you love the sound of additive synthesis, but not understand how it works? Want to create your own additive synthesis patches but don't know where to start? Do you want to be able to modify additive synth presets, but get lost with all of the complexity? We have prepared the following guide to help make all of this easier for you.

Additive Synthesis is quite a common and popular form of synthesis nowadays, commonly conjuring up thoughts of shimmery, metallic pads, though additive synthesis can produce nearly any sound you can think of, if you know how to make it.

While Subtractive Synthesis is very much like carving a piece of art from a solid block of stone, starting with a complex waveform and filtering and manipulating it into shape, Additive Synthesis is more like a painting, with individual waves coming together to form a final sound, much like an artist starting with a blank canvas and adding bits and pieces to it until the final result is achieved. The concept of additive synthesis is based around the fact that every sound is made up of a number of simple sine waves, each with it's own starting point, phase and envelopes, each of which provides it's element of the sound.

When creating a sound with an additive synthesiser you use a number of generators or oscillators to create individual components of the final sound, each oscillator providing a number of partials or harmonics of it's fundamental frequency. Most good additive synthesisers, such as Ableton's Operator and Camel Audio's Cameleon 5000, give you a great amount of control over each generator or oscillator to allow you a great deal of control the tonal and timbrel qualities of the final sound. An simple example of the setup of an additive synth is as follows:

Most additive synthesisers tend to provide similar filters, amplifiers, LFOs and envelopes than those that are found in a typical subtractive synth, allowing near endless sonic possibilities.

So now you know the basics, get stuck in and see what sort of additive goodness you can create!