The Sinewave is the most basic waveform. It is the purest waveform because it has the fundamental (the note, the frequency played on the keyboard or program in a DAW) and no harmonics.
A filter has no effect on a sinewave in part to reduce its volume (as well as the triangle wave we’ll cover that later in the course)
The sine wave is commonly use as a sub oscillator or to fatten-up the sound. Because of its simplicity, when the sine wave is played in the lowend, it becomes pure and clean energy. The subwoofer brings out the sound and energy of the sine wave.
The sine wave is also the foundation of FM synthesis but as the Analog Four is Analog and there’s no sine wave at your disposal on this synth. I will not be covering the sine wave any further – I will cover in a later article on how you can get close to a sine wave with the Analog Four.
The sinewave (or something close to it) is the perfect candidate to sound design a kick it can be the body sound of a snare. It can be a sub-bass stacked. It can also be an organ and all sort of layering elements in drum sound design. It is also the secret weapon of a sound engineer to make Bass guitar more powerful in the mix.
Sine wave is also the main ingredient in the 808 Bass drum – In HipHop and Miami Bass they made the acclaimed 808 Bass from the Kick Drum… Because of its « boominess » by softening the trigger on its attack and putting the sustain of the sound longer. Many producers were able to sample this result and play it chromatically! It was done originally by Dr.Dre and later on by the Beastie Boys
It created the Miami style established and well known today. This music genre continues to evolve these days though.
See why I said every urban music was tied closely to one another. This is from the the sinewave tone.
Let’s be clear I’m in Love with the Sine wave. I’m not the only one there’s a label record called sinewave – it was the one from New York founded by Damon Wild in the mid’90s.
You can hear people to claim they didn’t like square waveform on the sub… I wouldn’t say that the square in the Low-end is interesting but different. By this difference it doesn’t vibrate the same way as a sine wave. Therefore when you mix you may enhance lows with tape saturation and may have some distortion depending on your settings. The is because it brings harmonics to the sound and at some point you may be close to what the square wave is by nature.
Hip-Hop, Techno, etc : we’re all urban music at the end of the day!
Have you seen 808 The Movie ?
This movie connects all of the genres the TR808 affected and this film is awesome (amazon prime link)
And let’s be honest TR808 is also Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”
It’s just a gigantic and sexy song written on Marvin’s settings of the TR-808. No one touched it but Marvin.
This movie explains something very well from a hardware insight point of view relative to few music genre. This movie explains well to me what “urban music” is and how hiphop, house, techno are all tied together by influences and not only by sharing some ingredients in terms of sounds.
It’s way more than that though, Electro at the time of it’s origin could be perceive as futuristic hiphop !
I will share you here a beautiful and recent example of what Electro is and it’s not “Electro” standing as a shortcut for electronic music (of all sorts) but Electro as a musical genre. (if you want to go further along just google Juan Atkins and listen the beginning of what’s called Detroit Techno then check out…)
https://rodkirkpatrick-kpproductions.bandcamp.com/track/welcome-to-ataraxia
See why I said every subgenere of urban music was tied together.
