Synthesis Basics

An interactive course on electronic sound — hear every concept, then find it on your device

No device needed — every lesson makes sound in the browser

1. Lesson 1The three things you hearPitch, loudness, and timbre — every knob on every synth ultimately moves one of these three.
2. Lesson 2Waveforms and harmonicsEvery repeating wave is a stack of sines. Which ones, and how loud, is the whole story of tone color.
3. Lesson 3Envelopes: shaping a note in timeADSR, the four-stage loudness contour — with the typical times that make plucks, keys, and pads.
4. Lesson 4Filters: carving the recipeA filter removes harmonics you already have. Cutoff chooses where the cut starts; resonance and slope decide what its edge sounds like.
5. Lesson 5The filter envelope: brightness over timeLesson 3's contour, aimed at lesson 4's knob — the single move behind most "movement" in synth sounds.
6. Lesson 6LFOs: a periodic hand on the knobVibrato, tremolo, and wah are one mechanism — a slow oscillator turning a parameter, over and over.
7. Lesson 7Delay and reverb: the space around the soundBoth effects are made from copies of the sound, played back late. A delay's copies are few enough to count; a reverb's are thousands, fused into one tail.
8. Lesson 8Drive and compression: energy and densityTwo effects that get confused because both make a sound feel bigger. Drive adds harmonics to the waveform; compression evens out loudness across time.
9. Lesson 9Subtractive synthesis: the whole chainOscillator, filter, two envelopes, an LFO: every module from this course, finally working together as one instrument.
10. Lesson 10FM synthesis: recipes from two sine wavesTwo sine waves and two numbers. Ratio decides which harmonics can exist; modulation index decides how many of them carry energy.
11. Lesson 11Sampling: playing a recording as an instrumentA recording has a length. Repitch and stretch are two different answers to what should happen to that length when the pitch moves.
12. Lesson 12Granular synthesis: a sample under the microscopeCut a recording into 20–400 ms windows and fire them in a stream. Position, size, density and spray are the four numbers that decide what the stream sounds like.
13. Lesson 13The sequencer mindsetSixteen steps and a page structure. A trig is a small record placed on one of them, and the loop keeps running while you edit it.
14. Lesson 14Parameter locks and conditions: the Elektron soulHold a step and turn a knob and that step keeps its own value. Add a probability or a condition and the bar stops repeating exactly.
15. Lesson 15The workflow: from init patch to finished soundFourteen lessons condensed into one repeatable design loop, carrying the numbers each of them left you.