Audio Synthesis Recipes

Percussive onset + ring-out + faintly stretched partials. That inharmonic stretch is the “warmth” that isn’t in a pure-harmonic tone.

9+ stretched partials (B≈0.001), ~4 ms strike + broadband thunk, per-partial decay, double-decay tail; velocity→loudness & brightness together.

A glassy inharmonic bell-bark at onset melting into a near-sine body. Wurlitzer = add a touch of reedy second-harmonic grit.

Carrier sine + modulator at ~14×, index decays in ~150 ms (the bark), body sine decays over 2–3 s; velocity→index.

A sharp quill click over a thin, bright, dynamically-flat pluck — the absence of velocity response is half its character.

Bright plucked string (KS or rich saw + fast attack), prominent pick/quill click, fast-ish decay, lid/case formants; velocity does nothing (the quill plucks the same every time).

Funky, percussive, almost nasal twang — the pickup narrows the spectrum and the attack is everything.

Plucked/struck string through a magnetic pickup: narrow bright spectrum, very fast attack, short decay, strong upper-mid; often distorted/wah’d.

Pick attack + pluck-position comb filtering + wooden body resonance, dulling as it rings.

KS: 12 ms noise burst → tuned delay + lossy lowpass loop; pluck position notches certain harmonics (comb); body + soundhole formants (~100–200 Hz). Nylon = softer burst, darker loop.

Clean: bell-like sustain. Distorted: harmonic saturation + near-infinite sustain — the clipping, not the string, is the timbre.

Plucked string, narrower pickup spectrum, long sustain (solid body loses little energy); distortion = waveshaping/clipping that adds harmonics and compresses dynamics; cabinet formants.

Fat fundamental with a fingered thump or slap snap on the attack.

Low plucked string, strong fundamental + 2nd, short bright attack click, medium decay; finger vs. pick vs. slap changes the onset noise.

A soft pluck with a long, pure, harmonic ring — cleaner and less percussive than a piano.

Like piano but gentler onset (no hammer), very low inharmonicity (flexible strings), long clean decay, no sustain pedal damping by default.

Bright pluck with shimmer from paired strings beating against each other.

Paired strings detuned a few cents → chorus/beating; bright fast pluck; tremolo picking = rapid re-triggers.

Twangy, percussive, fast-dying — the drumhead resonance is the giveaway.

Plucked string coupled to a drum head: very bright, very fast decay, strong attack transient, slight membrane “plonk”.

A buzzing, sustaining shimmer — the sympathetic strings keep ringing under the melody.

Main plucked string + a flat “jawari” bridge that buzzes (waveshaping/added high harmonics) + many sympathetic strings (extra detuned KS voices ringing).

A dry, woody pluck that dies fast — the orchestral string body without the bow.

Short bowed-string body but plucked: fast attack, quick decay, body formants, slight pluck noise.

Singing sustained saw with expressive vibrato; bow position (sul tasto→dark, sul ponticello→glassy) = move the filter.

Sawtooth → gentle lowpass + body formants (~300–3 kHz); ~80–120 ms bow attack; vibrato ~5–6 Hz, delayed; bow pressure→brightness.

The bowed-saw identity shifted down with a rounder, chestier body resonance.

Same engine, lower range, larger body formants moved down, slightly slower attack, woodier lowpass.

The shimmer of many players beating — detune + numbers, not a single richer voice.

4–9 detuned saws (±3–12 cents) + timing/phase spread; slow swell; collective vibrato.

Articulation tricks: flutter, wood-clatter, or a glassy whistle over the same bowed core.

Tremolo = fast amplitude/retrigger flutter; col legno = mostly bow-wood noise (N+E); natural harmonics = near-sine at a node.

A droning bowed sound with a percussive buzz ticking underneath.

Bowed (wheel) drone saws + a buzzing bridge (rhythmic waveshaping) + sympathetic drones.

The brightness bloom coupled to loudness is the whole identity — play soft = dull, hard = blazing.

Sawtooth; fast amp attack; filter env attack slightly LONGER than amp → brightness bloom; velocity→cutoff; delayed vibrato; optional FM/noise rasp burst at onset.

Brass bloom plus glissando slides connecting pitches.

As trumpet, lower, with portamento (slide) between notes; broader bore = slightly rounder.

Rounder, more distant brass — the bloom is softer and the top is rolled off.

Saw with a darker lowpass (mellower), slower bloom, hand-in-bell = a gentle high-cut formant; wide warm vibrato.

Brass identity at the bottom: round, slow, weighty.

Low saw, fat fundamental, slow gentle bloom, broad body.

A pinched, vocal “wah” — the mute imposes a fixed resonance the open horn doesn’t have.

Brass core + a strong fixed bandpass formant; Harmon = a sharp peak you can sweep (wah); nasal, thin, buzzy.

Almost a pure tone — the breath noise is what makes it a flute and not a sine.

Triangle/sine (few harmonics) + filtered breath noise loudest at attack; soft attack; vibrato ~5 Hz.

Variations on near-sine + air; the amount and color of breath separates them.

Flute engine: piccolo = octave up, more breath; recorder = purer, less breath; pan flute = strong breathy chiff at onset.

The purest wind voice — close to a flutey sine with almost no overtones.

Vessel (Helmholtz) resonator → essentially a single sine + tiny 2nd harmonic, gentle attack, light breath.

A breathy, vocal, bending flute — the noise and pitch inflection carry it.

Flute core with heavy breath, pitch bends (meri/kari), and noisy attacks.

Hollow and woody because even harmonics are missing — the square wave is the shortcut.

Square wave (= odd harmonics), gentle lowpass, medium reedy attack, slight breath, subtle vibrato.

Reedy and vocal — the formants and breath make it sing; full harmonic series, unlike the clarinet.

Sawtooth (conical → full series) + strong vocal formants + plenty of breath; medium attack; growl = add noise/FM.

Pinched and nasal — a tight formant on a reedy double-reed buzz.

Narrow pulse or saw + a strong nasal formant pair (~1–3 kHz), thin and bright, quick reedy attack, vibrato.

The dark, woody, slightly comic double-reed — oboe character moved low.

Low narrow-pulse/saw + low formants, woody, soft attack.

Organ-like flat sustain with a reedy buzz and, for accordion, that detuned musette beating.

Free reeds: saw/square stack, near-instant on, flat sustain, fast off; accordion = two reeds detuned (musette tremolo); vibrato via bellows.

Literal additive synthesis — drawbars are harmonic faders; the absence of dynamics is the identity.

Sum of near-sine partials at drawbar ratios (16′,8′,5⅓′,4′…); rectangular envelope; key-click transient; scanner vibrato / Leslie chorus.

Massive, static, additive — voiced by stop selection, with a breathy chiff as pipes speak.

Stacked stops at octave/fifth ratios; flue = flutey near-sine + a little chiff at onset; principals = brighter saw-ish.

The snarling, buzzy organ color — a reed, not a flue.

Buzzy saw/pulse + formant (the resonator), flat sustain.

Cheap, bright, reedy 60s organ — complex-tone partials instead of clean sines.

Drawbars of complex (not pure) tones → brighter, buzzier, thinner; fast vibrato.

Pitch and vowel are independent: harmonics set pitch, formants set the vowel.

Sawtooth/pulse glottal source → 3 high-Q bandpass formants. “ah” ≈ F1 700 / F2 1200; “ee” ≈ 300 / 2300; “oo” ≈ 300 / 870. Vibrato ~5–6 Hz.

Vowel formants plus ensemble shimmer — a section of singers, not one.

Several detuned vowel-voices (ensemble) + slow attack + collective vibrato + reverb.

Formants without pitch → unpitched, breathy vowels.

Filtered noise (no glottal source) shaped by the same formants.

A whistling harmonic floating over a drone — one formant picking out partials.

Drone source + one extremely narrow sweepable formant that isolates single upper harmonics.

Dark, round, mellow — the 1:4 overtone sits with the orchestra, so it blends and dies quickly.

Fundamental + overtone at ≈4× (two octaves, “octave tuning”) + weak ~9.2×; soft mallet; tube resonator on the fundamental; fast wood decay.

Bright and cutting — the 1:3 overtone (clarinet-like) makes it ring out over everything.

Fundamental + overtone at ≈3× (a twelfth, “quint tuning”) + a spike near 5×/7×; harder mallet; short decay.

Shimmering metallic sustain with that rotating-disc tremolo — the one tuned-bar instrument that breathes.

Aluminium bars, overtone at ≈4×, long decay; motor-driven disc valves → amplitude tremolo; pedal sustain.

Tiny bright bell-like ping — high enough that the inharmonicity reads as sparkle.

Small steel bars: bright, high, partials not well-tuned (audibly inharmonic), short metallic ping.

A music-box-like bell tone with a soft, rounded onset.

Hammered steel plates over resonators: glockenspiel-ish but soft, sweet, gentle attack, longer decay.

Round metallic pluck with a faint inharmonic buzz — thumb-piano warmth.

Plucked metal tine: strong fundamental + a couple of slightly inharmonic partials + a “buzz” overtone; medium decay, body resonance.

A small, bright, slightly inharmonic chime — sparse and toy-like.

Struck steel comb tine: bright near-bell partials, fast attack, medium decay, thin and delicate.

Unusual for metal: a genuinely harmonic, singing, shimmering struck tone.

Hammered pan note tuned so the first few harmonics are real (1,2,3 strong) + metallic shimmer; medium decay.

An ethereal, almost pure-sine sustained tone with a glassy edge.

Rubbed glass: near-sine fundamental + faint partials, slow swell (driven, not struck), pure.

The minor-third tierce over the strike note is the melancholy “bell” color; the hum rings on after.

Additive: hum (×0.5), prime/strike (×1), tierce (×1.2 = minor 3rd), quint (×1.5), nominal (×2) + higher inharmonics; sharp strike, very long uneven decay (hum lingers).

A clear chimed pitch that isn’t physically the lowest partial — your ear infers it from the upper modes.

Upper modes tuned near 2:3:4 so a strike note emerges (no real fundamental there); bright metallic attack, long ring.

Same inharmonic bell DNA, scaled in size and ring time.

Bell partial set, shorter (handbell) or very high & sustained (crotales).

A clanky, pitch-ambiguous hit — a few dissonant metal modes.

Two or three clashing inharmonic partials, fast decay, no clear pitch.

A bright sustained metallic ting with no definite pitch.

Very dense high inharmonic partials ≈ bright metallic noise + faint pitch, long shimmer.

A swelling, shimmering metallic cloud — the bloom after the hit is the signature.

Dozens of inharmonic partials + noise + a low mallet thump; soft mallet → the sound builds and shimmers after the strike (energy spreads between modes); huge decay.

Broadband metallic noise; ring-mod gives the inharmonic “clang” a filter alone can’t.

Bandpassed white noise + a few ring-modulated square pairs for metallic edge; fast attack, long wash (crash) or pingy stick attack + sustain (ride).

A short, bright, metallic chick — cymbal recipe with a fast gate.

Highpassed noise + ring-mod metal; closed = ~40 ms gate, open = long; tight transient.

The one tunable drum — near-harmonic loaded modes give it a real, if dark, pitch.

Kettle loads the membrane so prominent modes approach ~1:1.5:2:2.4 (definite pitch); sine-ish partials + short pitch drop + mallet noise; long resonant decay.

The pitch-drop “thump” — a falling sine is 90% of a kick.

Sine/triangle with a fast downward pitch envelope (e.g., 120→40 Hz in ~50 ms) + a click transient; short body decay.

A tuned “doom” with an audible downward bend.

Like kick but higher and more resonant: pitched sine + downward bend + a little head noise + body ring.

Tone + noise rattle together; the noise band is the snare wires.

A tonal shell (two detuned sines, fast pitch drop) + a burst of bright noise (the snares) gated to ~150 ms.

Hand-drum tone — pitched membrane with slap articulation; tabla is the most melodic.

Sharp tonal slap (pitched, fast decay) + open/muted variants; tabla adds a pronounced pitch bend and clear tuning.

A deep, dry boom — minimal pitch, maximal body.

Low broadband boom: noise + low sine, fast decay, big body.

A dry tonal “tock” — one short resonant pop.

A short resonant click: bandpassed noise or a quick sine ping, ~30–60 ms, high-mid.

A filtered noise “chh” — color and envelope are everything.

Highpassed noise burst, ~30–80 ms, soft attack; rhythmic re-triggering makes the groove.

A jingly metallic swish over a soft hit.

Bright metallic noise (many tiny jingles) + a head-hit transient; longer shimmer on shakes.

Noise with a stuttered multi-tap attack — that’s what says “clap” not “snare”.

Several closely-spaced noise bursts (the “many hands” flam) into a short reverb tail.

A rasping, ratcheting texture — pulsed noise.

Rhythmically amplitude-modulated noise (a train of grains).