What Is a Wavetable? – Daniel Fisher

Daniel Fisher, Sweetwater’s synth guru, presents a crash course on what wavetable synthesis is and how you can use it creatively in your productions. If you’ve ever played with a wavetable synthesizer, you may be wondering exactly what’s going on under the hood, this video is for you.

0:00 - Intro
0:42 - Sweeping Through Waveforms
2:30 - Morphing Waveforms with an LFO
3:33 - Thanks for Watching!

#Sweetwater

[sweetwater]

Thanks for exploring wavetables with us! If this video helped you, make sure you like, comment, and subscribe!

[HowtoDNB]

Hahaha man that intro joke was pro level

[Ioganstone]

2:20 So amazing. It has that New Retro Wave handcrafted sound. Now I found a vst that has that wavescan/automorph ability. Cloud by The Colorspace. Now I finally understand wavetables too.

[-one]

Thanks you for this straighforward explanation on the wavetables, very useful for someone who's looking for a quick and clear "high-level" comprehension of a complex technology and how it could be used in music production. (and I liked the opening quite much! :)

[krea]

Thanks for showing this simple and easy to understand class session. 🎵🎶

[photophilous]

Ok, I have to admit...great opening gag! (Memories of the Enterprise tilting in the 1960's Star Trek episodes LOL).
You are consistently awesome in your synth explanations Daniel Fisher...keep it up!

[uhoh]

I hope you do more of this kind of fundamental explanation in future, thank you!

[christianhemker]

That was a great explanation with examples. Thanks.

[cltnthecultist]

Well, I guess I’m gonna go get a hydrasynth. That thing is just spectacular

[modalmixture]

Great video! It might also be important to point out that certain companies, who should really know better (cough looking at you Nord), use ‘wavetable’ in the more limited sense that you can have oscillators that are more complex waves than just sine, saw, square, etc - but without the ability to index the waves and sweep or interpolate them with a modulation source. It’s the wave without the table, and when I was learning synthesis it was the source of a lot of confusion about what wavetable really is.

[Rhythmattica]

Thats why I love Ensoniq Such a great extension of Wolfgangs seed that is wavetables.
Great to revisit these capabilities 30 years later.

[fabianlehner]

Thanks for the video. I really liked Daniel Fisher's explanation, but find it distracting (and somewhat absurd) to have background music in a video about music.

[Myriadmusics]

reminds me of the soundtrack to Fez :)

[x.]

Cool Video. And what exactly is now a wavetable? :D

[kisho]

Which are currently the most sophisticated/flexible wavetable synths?

[jjrusy]

I wonder what the next synth in the hydra family will be able to do.
BTW, sweetwater needs to stock some ACTIVE MIDI SPLITTERS. not all of this wimpy 5v midi can power the passive splitters. (i have 2x quadra-thru and a merger, so i live it) i have to use old beefy gear as MIDI buffers like my alesis sr-16 or DX7 etc. the clock doesnt seem to get through the quadras consistrently either. seriously, you have a sh!t ton of synths/controllers out there running on 5v, please add the necessary accessory gear, or i will either have to make my own, or buy it elsewhere. retarded = using a DX7 to buffer a beatstep so it can run a quadra thru.

[damion]

No need for the annoying background music on this video.

[entropybentwhistle]

Wondering if this isn’t similar to what the Kaos pad does on the Modwave that Korg teased during NAMM week in January. There’s been nothing else about it since that time except for conjecture from the usually prone to sensationalism synth YouTube channels (who shall remain nameless). I thought there might be some leaked Beta tester footage to keep interest up, since we already know it’s coming and that surprise is out of the bag.