Using Multiple Oscillators for Vintage Analog Synthesizers & Keyboards

Video Transcript

"My name is Dan Rapport. Today we are going to be talking about analog synthesizers. So the first component of any analog synthesizer are its oscillators. In this case this particular synthesizer has three oscillators and the octave switches allow you to get different octaves since there is a limited amount of keys on the keyboard and you will see that the octave switches are used like an old organ tab, which originally said that these different octaves were the feet of the organ; organ columns. So what we have here is the octave tabs that allow you get the different octaves and then a wave knob, which allows you to get different wave shapes, all the way from a sawtooth to a square wave, a sine wave, you can get any type of wave out of these oscillators. And then the second two oscillators have frequency knobs as well, which allow you to detune the oscillator, so I can give you a quick example of that. Here is an example of the octave switch, and here is an example of the wave changing. So as you can see the wave controls really shape the sound and the harmonics that are available within the sound. This switch here allows you to sink the first two oscillators together: that’s with them off; that’s with them on. This switch here allows you do frequency modulation on the oscillators: that’s with it off, that’s with it on. The switch here allows you to take the third oscillator and take the keyboard control of the third oscillator on and off. This is it on; that is it off. It is now completely independent from the keyboard section and what this allows you do is you can switch it into a low frequency mode and make it another low frequency oscillator, which will get to an another section."