Diary 2025-08-13
I kind of expected that I was going to get more work done today, but it seems that my focus and motivation have been a bit low.
As I mentioned, I have been looking into music and synthesis some, and I've got some notes on how to put stuff together:
- Instruments aside from, like, pure percussion have a repeating steady-state.
- This means that they can be approximated with harmonic additive synthesis.
- But getting all of the higher harmonics right is a pain.
- There are two ways to nudge a waveform without disturbing the period:
- Phase modulation by a wave with the same period;
- Amplitude modulation by a wave with the same period.
- These can be done independently, and also waves with the same period can be linearly combined.
- I knew of all of this in the context of the major synths, except I hadn't considered the stuff, which I'm still not totally sure I get, about coupling resolving inharmonicities. Like, it would be nice if that were a thing, but if it were, why do pianos need to be tuned like that?
The thing to investigate is what subtle phase modulation does to a pure tone, and to see how things change with more harmonics.
For now, once again, I've got to get ready to sleep.
Good night.