An interactive workshop slide deck covering the fundamentals of subtractive synthesis. Built for Synth Library Portland, this deck walks through the building blocks of a synthesizer voice: oscillators, filters, envelopes, VCAs, LFOs: with live, playable visualizations on every slide.
What’s covered
- Voltage basics: amplitude, time, and shape; the idea that CV and audio are the same thing at different speeds
- Timbre: the four classic waveforms, fundamentals and overtones, and how filters shape sound
- Pitch: frequency, the 1V/oct standard, keyboards, sequencers, and sample & hold
- Rhythm: gates, triggers, and ADSR envelopes
- Dynamics: the VCA and how it shapes amplitude over time
- Modulation: LFOs and envelopes as modulation sources routed to pitch, filter, and amplitude
- The classic voice: how all these pieces connect in the Minimoog signal path
Every concept has a hands-on interactive demo: click waveforms to hear them, drag filter cutoffs, play a keyboard, trigger envelopes, and watch modulation in real time.
Start Slideshow Looks best at 16:9