Understanding Synthesizers Properly

Many explanations online of synths fail to teach key concepts properly

Erik Engheim
11 min readApr 8, 2024
Abstract art of synthesizer sound waves (Credit: Erik Engheim)
Abstract art of synthesizer sound waves (Credit: Erik Engheim)

I decided to write this article because I have been confused as a beginner of how synthesizers work. Now that I look back, I realize that experts at the music stores I went to as well as on YouTube taught me some of the core concepts wrong. That made it hard for me to fully grasp how a synthesizer is actually used to build up a sound in multiple steps.

The thing many fail to explain properly is why a synthesizer generates square waves or sawtooth waves at is source rather than sine waves. If that is clear to you already, then you don’t need to read this article. But, if you are like me and wondered why a synthesizer would start its whole pipeline for generating electronic sounds by making harsh sounding square waves and sawtooth waves instead of more natural sounding sine waves, then you have come to the right place.

If you have no idea what I am even talking about, but still want to learn about how synthesizers work, then read on anyway because I will take this slowly from the start.

Moog Matriarch synthesizer. (Credit: www.moogmusic.com)
Moog Matriarch synthesizer. (Credit: www.moogmusic.com)

A Guitar Analogy for…

--

--

Erik Engheim

Geek dad, living in Oslo, Norway with passion for UX, Julia programming, science, teaching, reading and writing.