What is lfo

But LFOs are just one potential modulation source. A source is any signal or value that can be used to modulate a parameter in a synth patch. This parameter is known as the destination — a property of the sound that can be varied depending on the level of the source and the amount of modulation applied. Generally, you will find even more destinations than sources on your synth.

This is because really any parameter on your synth can be a destination. Having said this, not every parameter will respond to modulation in a desirable way, but you should definitely experiment to get a feel for how different sources work with different destinations. As you can see, it is entirely possible to use one LFO to change the behavior of another. The relationship between sources and destinations can even be a bit blurry in this sense.

In a broad sense, destinations are inputs and sources are outputs, but considering many sources have destinations attached to them, you can make some very complex webs of modulation. LFOs have a number of controls that change how they act upon the sound. Although this will be different for every synthesizer, there are a few common controls you will want to become familiar with here. This is perhaps the most important control.

You can think of this as the rate of modulation, so if the LFO is tied to the oscillator pitch, the rate control will change how fast the pitch changes. At high settings, the LFO will have a very noticeable effect on the tone, creating inharmonic effects similar to ring modulation.

You may see a few different terms used for this control depending on the synth. Common alternative labels include Speed, Freq, and Hz. This is the overall wave shape of the LFO. Most often you will be presented with a menu of static waveforms such as saw, square, pulse, triangle, and sine waves. This is very similar to how standard oscillators work in many analog and subtractive synths.

More advanced synthesizers will let you customize the wave shape to be anything you want. For example, Serum lets you draw in your own shapes with a variety of tools. Due to the level of specificity here, the LFO section on Serum can easily double as a step sequencer. You can even modulate the breakpoints with other modulation sources to create complex LFO shapes that evolve over time, as you can see in this video:.

This will change the overall output of the LFO, and will greatly affect how much modulation is occurring. Instead, you will likely find individual depth controls at each destination or only deal with LFO depth in the context of a modulation matrix.

It really depends on how complex your synthesizer is. So setting the LFO depth is different for every synth. In Serum, the LFO depth appears as a colored band around whatever control is being affected. You can also change this in the Matrix tab with the Amount fader. A modulation matrix is a screen that shows all your modulation side-by-side , listing mod sources, destinations, and the level of each connection.

You will only find this on digital synths, very few analog synths can make this work. This controls the fade-in time of the LFO, allowing it to increase in intensity as the note is held. Some other synths will also have a fade-out time for the LFO as well.

In Serum, this will properly delay the onset of the LFO, ensuring that it kicks in at full depth after a given time. It will depend on what is being modulated. The LFO rate parameter sometimes called speed is how frequently the oscillation occurs.

This value will be in Hertz, often from 0 to 10Hz or 20Hz. If the LFO rate is set to 1Hz, it will go back and forth every one second. LFOs are simple.

They allow you to constantly manipulate or change some value. This back and forth change then creates the constantly evolving or changing sounds found in many audio effects. Back to Bass Effects To use the many interactive features of StudyBass, please enable javascript.

Let's break the term down since a lot of people get confused by the name. Frequency Remember, frequency refers to how frequently something happens. Oscillator To oscillate means to move, or vary, up and down, or back and forth between two points. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

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