Oscillators
The oscillator of the constructor allows to create completely malleable and morphing waveforms. Of course, it is possible to create the usual suspects, such as sawtooth, pulse, triangle etc. However, this would not do justice to the possibilities inherent in Flexion's oscillators which can create timbres that appear to directly contain other effects such as eqs, flangers, filters etc. and other more "unknown" things.
Oscillator Controls and Macros
This section provides the usual controls that one would expect from an oscillator.
Pitch Control
The Pitch-Control allows to set the pitch offset the oscillator should sound at - relative to the played note on the keyboard. The inner dial of the control specifies the pitch offset in semitones and the outer and smaller dial allows to make smaller adjustments in cents. Internally, the pitch offset is represented as a floating point number. The digits before the comma represent semitones while the digits after the comma represent the values in between. Via Flexion's digit-dragging feature, it is possible to dial in any value at high precision. Furthermore, the pitch-dial is build on top of Flexion's underlying stereo signal flow and can represent independent values for the left and the right channel via its multi-view functionality.
Phase Offset Control
The Phase-Offset allows to shift the entire waveform left or right. This shift affects all internally generated frequencies at once. As with the pitch control, this control features multiple-views and digit-dragging.
Interesting effects can be achieved, when this dial is modulated by a stereo control signal. This way, the frequencies that are part of the waveform will add and cancel each other.
Amp/Pan/Width Control
This control has three functionalities.
Amp-Mode - scales the overall loudness of the oscillator.
Pan-Mode - panorama control for left and right channels
Width-Mode - scales the relation between mid and side signals
More information about this dial can be found here.
Waveform and Partials Definition
The Oscillator module is layered threefold:
Time-Domain Waveform
Spectral-Domain Waveform
Partial Rules
We start with the time-domain waveform which generates a foundation of partials together with their complex changes over time. A partial is a relative frequency that is contained in a waveform and whose magnitude (loudness) and phase offset is subject to change over time. The spectral-domain waveform allows to impose a magnitude-altering envelope to the generated partials which can have the effect of an equalizer or a filter. The partial rules allow to alter the partials in a more "rule-based" way by specifiying thing such as: "every uneven partial should be attenuated by 60dB" etc.
The Time-Domain and Spectral-Domain waveforms are constructive waveforms that can be changed over time in complex ways via flexcurves. The partial-rules are a suite of tools that can be combined and positioned independently.
The Domain-Switcher allows to switch between the three Domains and edited them independently. Via the on-off switches, it is possible to toggle each Domain and hear their contributions in isolation.
When the Time-Domain is switched off, the magnitudes of the partials that are used in the other Domains is equal across all relative Frequencies. The resulting sound is very harsh but can be low-pass-filtered via the Spectral-Domain Waveform.
Next to altering the amplitude and phase offset of a partial, it is also possible to alter its frequency through partial rules or the modifier sub-modules. A partial whose frequency is not harmonically related to another partial with the fundamental frequency is - strictly speaking - not a partial of the underlying waveform anymore. It is an independent frequency and the underlying waveform will loose its periodicity and may also loose its perceived pitch.
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