FM synthesis tips and tricks

[jemmons]

IMHO, you can’t understand FM as long as you’re looking at waves. You have to see it in the frequency domain or it’ll make no sense.

Your approach to FM synthesis?

FM is both incredibly complex and shockingly simple. Complex because it’s the literal opposite of the subtractive synthesis we’re used to. Instead of starting with harmonically dense waveforms and removing harmonics with filters, FM takes the most harmonically simple wave form (sine), and adds harmonics to it with modulation. If we try to look at it from the subtractive standpoint of the waveforms generated (AKA: the time domain, AKA: with an oscilloscope), it looks crazy! But if we look at FM…