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I'm looking for ideas for either free or inexpensive software
synthesizers for the following purpose: I'm developing a college
physics course on the physics of sound/music to which I am planning on
adding a lab component. The idea is for students to be able to create
their own sounds by combining/manipulating various oscillators and
observe their effects. This should help them in understanding of simple
concepts (overtones) and eventually they might perhaps even understand
the idea of timbre (what a goal!). Keeping this in mind, the program
should have a clean layout and allow for multiple oscillators (and
waveforms), envelops and filters. However, price is an issue since I
will be forced to acquire multiple copies for an entire lab!

Please share your ideas!!!

TIA

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
I'm looking for ideas for either free or inexpensive software
synthesizers for the following purpose: I'm developing a college
physics course on the physics of sound/music to which I am planning on
adding a lab component. The idea is for students to be able to create
their own sounds by combining/manipulating various oscillators and
observe their effects. This should help them in understanding of simple
concepts (overtones) and eventually they might perhaps even understand
the idea of timbre (what a goal!). Keeping this in mind, the program
should have a clean layout and allow for multiple oscillators (and
waveforms), envelops and filters. However, price is an issue since I
will be forced to acquire multiple copies for an entire lab!


I believe Matlab actually has some functions built into it to do this
sort of thing, and your lab machines probably have matlab on them already.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Jay Kadis]

In article .com,
wrote:

I'm looking for ideas for either free or inexpensive software
synthesizers for the following purpose: I'm developing a college
physics course on the physics of sound/music to which I am planning on
adding a lab component. The idea is for students to be able to create
their own sounds by combining/manipulating various oscillators and
observe their effects. This should help them in understanding of simple
concepts (overtones) and eventually they might perhaps even understand
the idea of timbre (what a goal!). Keeping this in mind, the program
should have a clean layout and allow for multiple oscillators (and
waveforms), envelops and filters. However, price is an issue since I
will be forced to acquire multiple copies for an entire lab!

Please share your ideas!!!

TIA

There are lots of free Linux software synthesizer programs that might do
what you want.

-Jay

--
x------- Jay Kadis ------- x ---- Jay's Attic Studio ----x
x Lecturer, Audio Engineer x Dexter Records x
x CCRMA, Stanford University x http://www.offbeats.com/ x
x---------- http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jay/ ------------x

[philicorda]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:45:23 -0700, greatday__ wrote:

I'm looking for ideas for either free or inexpensive software
synthesizers for the following purpose: I'm developing a college
physics course on the physics of sound/music to which I am planning on
adding a lab component. The idea is for students to be able to create
their own sounds by combining/manipulating various oscillators and
observe their effects. This should help them in understanding of simple
concepts (overtones) and eventually they might perhaps even understand
the idea of timbre (what a goal!). Keeping this in mind, the program
should have a clean layout and allow for multiple oscillators (and
waveforms), envelops and filters. However, price is an issue since I
will be forced to acquire multiple copies for an entire lab!

Please share your ideas!!!

I would suggest my fave modular synth software, "pure data".
It's free, runs on Win,Mac and Linux and it's possible to make virtually
any kind of synthesis in it, assuming you can be bothered to piece it
together out of very basic building blocks.

PD is a very clean and simple program, which is great if you like creating
sounds from scratch, but also means that making even a simple vco-vcf-adsr
style monosynth is a good few hours work.

Also worth a look is JMax, which is free and runs on Win/Mac/Linux.
It's prettier than PD, and has oscilloscope modules which would be useful
for demonstrating waveforms and timbres.

--
Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years (British Antarctic Survey 2006)

[Gordon Airporte]

wrote:
I'm looking for ideas for either free or inexpensive software
synthesizers

The unimaginatively named Synth1 VST instrument is pretty cool:
http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/index.html
(Page is in Japanese, scroll down for the English language installer.)
Also, free.
I'm told it's emulating one of the Nord synths.