Wavefolder Chaos! (Prepare for Noise)

Описание: In the second installment of the video series That Sounds Weird, we're looking at wavefolders and the many ways you can misuse them. These are among my top tips for making your modular synth go "$!*(&@(&@(#*$&^!)"

Wavefolders are a relatively uncommon type of audio processor. First "commercially" introduced in instruments from the mid-1970s by Donald Buchla, these odd sound-shaping tools remained relatively obscure until Eurorack modular synthesizers started gaining traction in the 2010s. The basic idea is this: you send in a simple sound (like a sine wave or a triangle wave), and a more complex, jagged, and harmonically complex sound comes out. What's more, the resulting timbre can be continuously varied—creating smoothly evolving sounds, inharmonic clangs, growls, snarls, and everything in between. This sound is now commonly associated with instruments like the Buchla Music Easel, Buchla 259, and even the Serge Modular Music System.

The thing is—wavefolders can do much more than just turn sine waves into gnarlier waveforms. When you add a wavefolder in a feedback path, it creates nonlinearities that can destabilize the entire structure of your patch...and many wavefolders can even self-oscillate when subjected to feedback. (Shoutout to Thomas Ankersmit!)

So, in this video, we're looking at several unconventional ways to use wavefolders: prepare for sonic chaos.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Introduction
00:36 How Wavefolders Work
6:28 Brief Wavefolder History
8:54 Oscillator Self-Modulation
15:26 Wavefolder Feedback

Sarah Belle Reid is a Canadian performer-composer, active in the fields of electroacoustic trumpet performance, intermedia arts, music technology, and improvisation.

www.sarahbellereid.com