Programming Sound with Pure Data

A Short Interlude: Synthesis Types

Before we go on, let’s talk a bit about what we’ve been doing in this chapter at a higher level. Synthesis, you’ve learned, is the process of putting together sounds from component parts. There are different methods of synthesis, and so far in this chapter we’ve used one: subtractive synthesis. As the name implies, subtractive synthesis is the process of taking away frequencies to leave behind the desired ones.

We used subtractive synthesis to tune the white noise to the frequencies that sounded best in the waves and wind patches. We did this with two kinds of filters, a low-pass filter and a band-pass filter. Here is a list of filter types:

• Low-pass filters remove high frequencies.

• High-pass filters remove ...