What would infinite square waves sound like?

Let's get really really experimental this week and explore an absurd topic: What would infinite square waves sound like. You may have heard of additive synthesis before where we take a bunch of sine waves to synthesize complex evolving waveforms. But what if we did additive synthesis with an infinite amount of square waves instead? It shocked me to figure out that if we summed together an infinite series of square waves spaced an octave apart we could recreate a perfect sawtooth waveform. And even though we don't have access to infinite oscillators we don't need a perfect sawtooth because we can only hear the harmonics up to about 20kHz anyway... so with just 9 square oscillators I can create a sawtooth wave that sounds indistinguishable from a real sawtooth waveform.

If you watch the whole video you will probably learn a lot about fundamentals of sound design including fourier transform, harmonic series, and additive synthesis. If you have no interest in the theoretical stuff I still highly suggest skipping to the second half of the video to check out the practical sound design using this trick. I have been doing this stuff for a while, and it's hard to find new techniques, but I can honestly say I have never seen anybody set up their pad like this!


about #Astrobear:
Astrobear is the electronic music project of John Janiczek. This project explores multiple genres with a common theme of blending polar opposites like aggressive electro bass lines with gentle ambient melodies. Astrobear was discovered when his remix of Hyperlandia by Deadmau5 was selected as the winner of the Microsoft Original by Design competition. Now, Astrobear enters 2023 releasing his first track with the Mau5trap label, titled “So Says the Sea”, as a part of the “We Are Friends 11” compilation album. Building off of this momentum, Astrobear is planning to grow the project beyond the bedroom producer gig with an increased focus on releasing and performing his music.

▶︎ Astrobear online:
Find my music and content organized at: https://fanlink.tv/astrobear
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#sounddesign #phaseplant #harmonics #electronicmusic #audioengineer