Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how that tech are you. It's time for a
Speaker 1: classic episode. It's a Friday, so let's listen to part
Speaker 1: two of the two part episodes that I did started
Speaker 1: last week. This is the Mogue Story, Part two. If
Speaker 1: you have not heard part one that published last Friday,
Speaker 1: so you should go check that out. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published back on February ten, two thousand sixteen. Enjoying filters.
Speaker 1: You probably heard about filters, right. You run this through
Speaker 1: a filter. What filters are are doing is there specifically
Speaker 1: changing the harmonic content of a signal, and it lets
Speaker 1: you narrow down the range of frequency that are allowed
Speaker 1: in any produced sound, like you can specify which harmonics
Speaker 1: are allowed to go through, which ones are not allowed
Speaker 1: to go through, and that alters the quality, the tonal
Speaker 1: quality of any sound you make. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: start talking about some particular filters, and our producer, extraordinary
Speaker 1: Knowl is going to provide us with some examples of
Speaker 1: some of the stuff we talk about. So from this
Speaker 1: point forward. Uh, Noel is really gonna have free rein
Speaker 1: to go crazy Broadway style. I encourage him highly to
Speaker 1: interrupt us as often as possible with strange noises. If
Speaker 1: he hasn't already, I expect him to do so from
Speaker 1: this point forward. As the wonderful thing about Noel not
Speaker 1: being in the room where we record, we have no
Speaker 1: way of knowing what he's going to add after this
Speaker 1: is done. But at any rate, Uh, so you can.
Speaker 1: You can change the amplitude, which obviously changes the volume,
Speaker 1: and you can change the frequency, which changes the pitch.
Speaker 1: Those are very basic, right, but beyond that you can
Speaker 1: start to really have fun with it. So filters are
Speaker 1: ways to change the timbre of the sound, even within
Speaker 1: a single note. So you can press a note with
Speaker 1: no filter, it's gonna sound one way, and then you
Speaker 1: apply a filter and press that same key to create
Speaker 1: that same note, but it's going to have a different quality.
Speaker 1: So one of the basic types of filters would be
Speaker 1: what's called a low pass filter or a high pass filter.
Speaker 1: Very simple concept. The name tells you what it lets
Speaker 1: it do. So a low pass filter and let's low
Speaker 1: frequencies pass through. It blocks high frequencies now you can
Speaker 1: define what where's your cut off, so you can say,
Speaker 1: like any frequency above this is not allowed through. Anything
Speaker 1: that's lower than that can go through. Now I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask the question I think some listeners may be wondering,
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, why would there be multiple frequencies
Speaker 1: playing when you've got a single tone playing? Shouldn't that
Speaker 1: be one frequency? If you're playing one pitched note, you
Speaker 1: could be playing one pitch note if you're if your
Speaker 1: wave is just a sign wave, right, A sign wave
Speaker 1: is a pure tone. It means it's a fundamental frequency.
Speaker 1: There's no harmonic added to it. But that's the it's
Speaker 1: only one type of waveform you can play with a synthesizer.
Speaker 1: You can actually create different types of waveforms like saw
Speaker 1: tooth waves or square waves or triangular waves, and each
Speaker 1: of those contains harmonics, harmonics being uh multiples of your
Speaker 1: fundamental frequency. Your fundamental frequency is always going to be
Speaker 1: the loudest, the one with the greatest amplitude. Right, So
Speaker 1: the note you're playing, there's a specific frequency associated with
Speaker 1: that note, its amplitude is going to be the greatest
Speaker 1: in the full sound wave. But with these other waveforms triangular, square,
Speaker 1: and saw tooth, you get multiples of that particular frequency
Speaker 1: that also show up, and those are harmonics. But if
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear any of those high harmonics,
Speaker 1: you just want that deep, nasty bass rumble. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could do it a low pass filter. And what that
Speaker 1: does is it actually you would think it would be
Speaker 1: like a really base sound, but it really kinds makes
Speaker 1: it sound sort of muffled and dark. And then if
Speaker 1: you wanted instead to do the opposite, you could put
Speaker 1: a high pass filter. On high pass filter, obviously, the
Speaker 1: higher frequencies are allowed to pass through and it blocks
Speaker 1: the lower frequencies. Sounds kind of bright and jangle exactly
Speaker 1: much much brighter sounds. So Noel, I'm sure can give
Speaker 1: us examples of what sounds like to listen to some
Speaker 1: tones played through a low pass filter and some tones
Speaker 1: played through a high pass filter. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of others that I want to mention that also are
Speaker 1: our pass filters, but they are a little different from
Speaker 1: low and high. Uh. There's the band pass filter, which
Speaker 1: allows a group of frequencies that are between the high
Speaker 1: and low ends to pass through. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you're saying, alright, anything below this frequency. I want you
Speaker 1: to cut out anything above this frequency. I want you
Speaker 1: to cut out everything in between can pass, and that
Speaker 1: gives you a different sound or band. Reject filters which
Speaker 1: specify a specific range of frequencies that are not allowed
Speaker 1: to go through, but everything else can. So it's essentially
Speaker 1: like bouncers. Okay, here's a list of people. They absolutely
Speaker 1: are not allowed in the club. My name is always
Speaker 1: on that list all the time. At least that's what
Speaker 1: they tell me. Um, but apparently my friend, uh, Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 1: he gets in all the time. Now, beyond those filters,
Speaker 1: you can do some other fun stuff. For one thing,
Speaker 1: you remember I said that an analog sound wave is
Speaker 1: continuous course, right, so it doesn't have a quick you know,
Speaker 1: a discreete uh you where there's a stop start. Partly
Speaker 1: because of that, cut offs like where you say, here's
Speaker 1: where I want the filter to begin, are a little hazy.
Speaker 1: So uh, when you when you have your these uh
Speaker 1: these filters, you also have a transition band. The transition
Speaker 1: band is a small band of frequencies that will still
Speaker 1: play through where you've set your cut off. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, if you say you're cut off is five
Speaker 1: thousand hurts. Anything below five thousand hurts cut that off.
Speaker 1: It's not a hard stop at that frequency. There's actually
Speaker 1: it trails a little bit, which gives kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting effect. Right, So that's really cool. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: you can start to do things like adjust a filter
Speaker 1: while you're actually playing a tone. You can do this
Speaker 1: by hooking up different modules together. I'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of the other modules in this I can. And that's
Speaker 1: where you get like, like the frequency wah, well maybe,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's the way it sounds like the pitch.
Speaker 1: The pitch remains the same, but the tone of the
Speaker 1: of the note is different. So the pitch doesn't change,
Speaker 1: but the the quality of the sound changes. Noel, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it could play for us the sound of a note, uh,
Speaker 1: where the filter is changed while the note is still playing,
Speaker 1: so that we can kind of get an idea of
Speaker 1: what that sounds like. And another thing you can do
Speaker 1: is play with resonance. Uh. And one way you can
Speaker 1: play with resonance is you take the frequencies that are
Speaker 1: close to that cut off frequency where you know you've
Speaker 1: you've set the filter boundaries, and instead of just having
Speaker 1: them play out to a speaker, you feed them back
Speaker 1: into the filter. This creates a feedback loop and I
Speaker 1: believe it's called lopeo. How many more times are we
Speaker 1: going to have that joke? All right? So it creates
Speaker 1: a feedback loop, and it also changes the timbre and
Speaker 1: volume of of the pitches that you're playing, which is
Speaker 1: really cool. Um. So that's all in just talking about filters.
Speaker 1: There are other modules that we can mention that. That's
Speaker 1: just one subset of modules. Another one is called the
Speaker 1: envelope generator. You know, there's a great scene in that
Speaker 1: documentary where I don't know if you saw this one,
Speaker 1: because I think you saw part of it where Bob
Speaker 1: Mog himself is showing off one of his machines and
Speaker 1: he sort of like rubs his hand luxuriously over the
Speaker 1: envelope while he speaks of it. Does it get uncomfortable? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: it's kind of sweet. You can tell he you know,
Speaker 1: he has he as a love for this envelope. He
Speaker 1: has a relationship with this envelope. And you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: what the heck is this thing? Anyway? Well, it's another
Speaker 1: section of the board. Yeah, and and it's you know,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine as we're talking about these different oscillators,
Speaker 1: these different waveforms, and these different filters, it's already starting
Speaker 1: to sound pretty complicated. I mean, you've got all these
Speaker 1: different knobs and stuff to control things, and maybe you
Speaker 1: want to have various effects apply to your music, but
Speaker 1: you can't by hand constantly adjust this or employ a
Speaker 1: second person too on the fly make these changes to
Speaker 1: filters so that the notes you produce have the quality
Speaker 1: that you want. Envelopes are kind of like macros in
Speaker 1: the software world, where you make shortcuts where you hit
Speaker 1: control and a letter and suddenly it creates like a
Speaker 1: series of commands that otherwise would take you multiple mouse
Speaker 1: or key strokes to actually execute the same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: except in this case we're talking about analog circuitry UM.
Speaker 1: So envelope generators can react to an incoming signal and
Speaker 1: then send out a new signal to a different module.
Speaker 1: And so it's another if then gates. So if signal
Speaker 1: X comes into the envelope generator, then send y signal
Speaker 1: to this other module so that you get the effect
Speaker 1: you want. And one type of envelope generator, one common
Speaker 1: one is the A D S R, and that stands
Speaker 1: for attack, decay, sustain, and release, which are kind of
Speaker 1: like four phases in a note. So have you ever
Speaker 1: played with a synthesizer where you pressed down on a
Speaker 1: key and the sound kind of comes up to a
Speaker 1: level and then backs off just a little bit. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the slow attack. That's the attack. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: attack in decay actually, because the rise in volume is
Speaker 1: the attack when it hits its peak and starts to
Speaker 1: come back down just a bit. Like let's say that
Speaker 1: there's a scale of zero to one, you press down
Speaker 1: the key, it goes from zero up to one, then
Speaker 1: it falls back to maybe point seven. That that fall
Speaker 1: back to point seven would be the decay phase. So
Speaker 1: the attack phases going from zero to one decay than
Speaker 1: one to point seven. That part happens usually pretty quickly, right,
Speaker 1: And then you still got the key held down. As
Speaker 1: long as you have the key held down, the note
Speaker 1: is playing, that's the sustain. When you release the key,
Speaker 1: you get to the release phase, which trails the note off.
Speaker 1: And you can adjust all of these things. You can
Speaker 1: adjust it so that the attack takes longer, so that
Speaker 1: the build up to the peak and then the decay
Speaker 1: is more you know, it's it's taking kind of the
Speaker 1: scenic route, or you can make the release last a
Speaker 1: really long time so that the note trails off like
Speaker 1: you have a long, sort of sustaining note. Um. All
Speaker 1: of these are things you can adjust using this type
Speaker 1: of technology, which gives you an incredible amount of flexibility
Speaker 1: when you are tried to create a specific sound. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that I think really makes synthesizers
Speaker 1: in general, and the mogue in particular, incredibly special. It
Speaker 1: makes me wish that I were capable of playing one. UM.
Speaker 1: I only plink around on keyboards, so it's pretty pathetic.
Speaker 1: Noel is like a master Jonathan. What's the song you
Speaker 1: always play when you sit down at a piano. Everybody
Speaker 1: has that annoying thing. They do the one song they
Speaker 1: know how to play, and they sit down and they
Speaker 1: do it well. There are two songs that I tend
Speaker 1: to play. One is the theme to Raiders of the
Speaker 1: Lost Arc. I mean, that's great triumphant music and it's
Speaker 1: Nazi killing music, it is. And then the other one
Speaker 1: is Jesu joy a Man's Desiring. That's that's kind of
Speaker 1: the two that I do. But I also I've also
Speaker 1: been known to do oh de Joy. Okay, so that's
Speaker 1: a bit of the old that's right. I've been obviously
Speaker 1: the the actual Joy movement, which is from you know,
Speaker 1: a much longer symphony, the Ninth Symphony. It's only that
Speaker 1: one section that I do. I can't play the any
Speaker 1: of the rest of it, and I can't really play
Speaker 1: that one very well. It's like two finger typing. It's
Speaker 1: like that, except with keyboard. I'm sure you're an astonishing blinker. Yeah. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: you know, if I get want to get fancy, you know, chopsticks,
Speaker 1: that's where it's at. A big fan of the Jaws
Speaker 1: theme myself. Yeah, nice, nice. I've been known to to
Speaker 1: do the uh, the musical motif from Close Encounters of
Speaker 1: the third kind um, which you can play just on
Speaker 1: the black keys. We'll be back with more on the
Speaker 1: Mogue story after this quick break. There's one other thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention. A couple other things, actually. One
Speaker 1: is the low frequency oscillator low frequency office oscillators also
Speaker 1: known as lfos UH. They control other modules by sending
Speaker 1: a low frequency. It's so low that sub audio you
Speaker 1: can't you can't hear it. It's beneath it's below twenty
Speaker 1: hurts um and they send a signal to other modules
Speaker 1: to alter a sound. So this is one of the
Speaker 1: ways you can make that uh, that sort of vibrato
Speaker 1: sound in a in a sustained note is altering this
Speaker 1: by using a low frequency oscillator gives it that wave
Speaker 1: equality maybe noel can demonstrate. And then you can always
Speaker 1: use a control signal to change the frequency of another module.
Speaker 1: That's called frequency modulation or FM. By the way, all
Speaker 1: these things I'm talking about about changing frequencies of electronic signals.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just apply to synthesizers like frequency modulation oscillators,
Speaker 1: changing these things. This is all basic electronics, whether you're
Speaker 1: making a sound or doing something else. It's not just
Speaker 1: in in creating music. But where of course specifically framing
Speaker 1: it in that because the topic is the mog. Uh
Speaker 1: So these are all super cool elements that give the
Speaker 1: mogue that that quality it possesses, that really unusual sound,
Speaker 1: that that unique sound. Maybe instead of unusual, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to say something that would have offended mog himself.
Speaker 1: By unusual, I mean unique, not bad um And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can these things can get monstrously huge, like I've
Speaker 1: seen synthesizers that didn't have any keyboard attached them at all.
Speaker 1: It was just the various modules to demonstrate what the
Speaker 1: modules do. So all you had were the various modules,
Speaker 1: cables to hook physically hook the modules together and unplugging
Speaker 1: cables and turning dials. And you would have have maybe
Speaker 1: in a scilloscope to see the wave form, so you
Speaker 1: had something visual there too, but it was all just
Speaker 1: plugging and unplugging cables, patching and filters, taking filters out
Speaker 1: by directly connecting modules. You know, that's interesting because when
Speaker 1: when mog and Deutsch were originally designing the mode, the
Speaker 1: you know, the synthesizer that would maybe it was the
Speaker 1: Abomba Atron, I don't know their original model. They were
Speaker 1: talking about the idea and they were discussing whether or
Speaker 1: not it should have a keyboard. The keyboard is sort
Speaker 1: of the obvious way to control the variable of pitch.
Speaker 1: But the question is should we have gone with something else,
Speaker 1: because does the keyboard inherently suggest this is really just
Speaker 1: a different kind of piano, which modified piano. You should
Speaker 1: approach it like a piano, use it like a piano.
Speaker 1: You bring your piano playing behaviors to the machine, and
Speaker 1: they were they were torn on that because they were thinking, well,
Speaker 1: what if we didn't include the keyboard, might that help
Speaker 1: encourage people to use this to generate sounds in a
Speaker 1: way that's truly new and doesn't mimic the way we've
Speaker 1: used other instruments before. Of course, we know they did
Speaker 1: end up going with the keyboard, and that kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense because the keyboard is a very useful and
Speaker 1: intuitive way to control pitch, but especially when you get
Speaker 1: to a point where you're capable of producing more than
Speaker 1: one one tone by pressing more than one key at once, right,
Speaker 1: some early synthesizers were only capable of performing like you
Speaker 1: press one key and that's the sound you would get,
Speaker 1: but you would not be able to create harmonies with
Speaker 1: some early synthesizers where you know you were if you
Speaker 1: change from key to key, you change the pitch, but
Speaker 1: you couldn't hold down a chord and have all three
Speaker 1: notes play, and some early early synthesizers. I think that's
Speaker 1: the case with the mogudn't it. I believe so, and
Speaker 1: that that would mean that you could change out the
Speaker 1: keyboard for something like a lever. Then you pull the
Speaker 1: lever and maybe when you pull the lever in one direction,
Speaker 1: the pitch increases, and when you put push the lever
Speaker 1: the other direction, the pitch lowers. That could have been
Speaker 1: the control device or anything else. Really it didn't have
Speaker 1: to be the keyboard, but they decided ultimately to have
Speaker 1: the keyboard because again it I think you're right. I
Speaker 1: think it makes it easier to understand how to produce
Speaker 1: the sound you want to produce. It becomes less It
Speaker 1: slightly steps away from the element of performance art the
Speaker 1: way a theoreman kind of is like, you can get
Speaker 1: a really skilled thereman player to create particular sounds and
Speaker 1: even play particular pieces of music, but it is hard.
Speaker 1: It is is It is an art to learn how
Speaker 1: to do that, and even then it's very imprecise. I
Speaker 1: think they probably should have replaced the keyboard with a big,
Speaker 1: big row of holes filled with a putty like a
Speaker 1: google that you have to insert your fingers into to
Speaker 1: play the note. Starting to make me think of like
Speaker 1: some sort of comedy aation of a musical instrument, and
Speaker 1: that the tree of Death and Flash Cordon reach inside
Speaker 1: and discover the true tones of the future. Right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: let's talk about wave forms. Because we mentioned them a
Speaker 1: little bit with sign waves, square waves, triangle waves, sawtooth waves.
Speaker 1: What what the heck do all of these mean? Um?
Speaker 1: And we've already talked about what a waves period is,
Speaker 1: We've talked about frequency and amplitude and uh. For for
Speaker 1: a lot of this, I'm going to be looking at
Speaker 1: using the example of a one hundred hurts um wave
Speaker 1: or frequency rather one hundred hurts frequency, so that it
Speaker 1: makes it easy for me to use the math to
Speaker 1: describe the different wave forms, because if I go with
Speaker 1: something that's not easy, then I would have to do
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different calculations. Of so I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier sign waves are that pure wave? Is that fundamental frequency? Uh?
Speaker 1: This would be the same as if you were to
Speaker 1: take a tuning fork and ring it. It's going to
Speaker 1: create a true to own with no harmonics. It's a
Speaker 1: single sound. Uh. And so at one hundred hurts, you
Speaker 1: would have a wave where it's period is being repeated
Speaker 1: one hundred times every second, and that's all you would get,
Speaker 1: just that, and it would be at a steady amplitude
Speaker 1: unless you were adjusting the volume. So again, amplitude refers
Speaker 1: to how loud it is in this case for for sound. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also what's really neat is that you know, you
Speaker 1: we depict this with the the peaks and valleys on
Speaker 1: a on an X Y axis, whereas the like the
Speaker 1: x axis the horizontal axis that represents time, and the
Speaker 1: vertical axis represents the the amplitude the volume. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you were to match up two sound waves that are identical,
Speaker 1: but the peaks of one sound wave are matched with
Speaker 1: the troughs of the other sound wave perfectly, they cancel
Speaker 1: each other out. So you play these two sounds simultaneously,
Speaker 1: if they line up in that way, they cancel one
Speaker 1: another out. It's like it's like all the atoms can't
Speaker 1: move because they're pushing against each other and not actually
Speaker 1: creating the vibration required for you to hear a noise.
Speaker 1: Noise canceling headphones work on a pretty similar principle to
Speaker 1: this to some degree. So that's kind of interesting. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about saw tooth waves. If you look
Speaker 1: at these, it looks like a ramp and then it's
Speaker 1: like the ramp goes up into the right and then
Speaker 1: immediately drops off like has a vertical drop, and then
Speaker 1: moves up into the right again, and that's why it's
Speaker 1: called saw tooth. It looks like the teeth of a
Speaker 1: saw blade. Um These when you play them, have a
Speaker 1: buzzing sound that's really strong and clear. So this is
Speaker 1: what a saw tooth wave sounds like. Now, those are
Speaker 1: made by combining a series of sign waves at different
Speaker 1: frequencies and volume levels. The loudest sign wave defines the
Speaker 1: frequency of the overall saw tooth wave, and that is
Speaker 1: the fundamental frequency, and the other side waves represent the harmonics,
Speaker 1: which are deally at a frequency that complements the fundamental one.
Speaker 1: So generally what we talk about are multiples of the
Speaker 1: fundamental frequency. That's why I'm going to start with a
Speaker 1: one hurts. So at a hundred hurts, your next multiple
Speaker 1: like harmonic harmonic. The first harmonic would be number two
Speaker 1: because number one is your fundamental that's one hurts. Number
Speaker 1: two would be two hundred hurts because it's the multiple
Speaker 1: that's the harmonic. Number three is three h hurts, four
Speaker 1: is four hundred hurts, so on and so forth. Multiple
Speaker 1: and harmonic number are the same thing as what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get across. All of those are playing at
Speaker 1: the same time, but the amplitude of the harmonics is
Speaker 1: lower than the amplitude of the fundamental frequency, meaning they're quieter, right,
Speaker 1: They're not overwhelming, Otherwise you would just have noise. So uh,
Speaker 1: it drops with each step further away from the fundamental frequency,
Speaker 1: and it stretches on effectively into infinity. I Eventually it
Speaker 1: gets to a point where it's so low that it's
Speaker 1: impossible for us to understand. So yeah, while the wave
Speaker 1: effectively or the the harmonics effectively go on into infinity,
Speaker 1: eventually one you hit a frequency that humans cannot perceive
Speaker 1: and to its well, in general, humans have trouble perceiving,
Speaker 1: and it's at an amplitude that's so low that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to hear it anyway. The volume is
Speaker 1: too low for you to be able to detect it.
Speaker 1: But that's the that's what gives the saw tooth wave
Speaker 1: that tonal character. Then you've got square waves, which look
Speaker 1: very square. I mean, if you were to look at
Speaker 1: they almost looked like like the the battlements you might
Speaker 1: see on the top of a castle wall or something.
Speaker 1: And uh, square waves contain harmonics like a saw tooth wave,
Speaker 1: but it only contains the odd numbered harmonics so you
Speaker 1: don't have harmonic number two. If you start with one
Speaker 1: hundred hurts, you wouldn't have two hundred hurts as a harmonic.
Speaker 1: It would be skipped. But you would have three huh
Speaker 1: and five hundred and seven hundred and nine hundred. But
Speaker 1: you skip all the even numbered harmonics. You only include
Speaker 1: the odd ones. And there's an actual formula for how
Speaker 1: quiet those harmonics are. What you do is you take
Speaker 1: the harmonic number and then you do the inversion of that.
Speaker 1: You invert it. So harmonic three you would invert to
Speaker 1: one over three or point three three three three, It
Speaker 1: would have that that would be its amplitude compared to
Speaker 1: the fundamental frequency. Five would be one five of the
Speaker 1: amplitude of the fundamental frequency. Seven would be one seven, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: All the way down the line. We'll be concluding the
Speaker 1: Mogue story after this quick break. So a square wave
Speaker 1: is going to have a a tone that a lot
Speaker 1: of our listeners are going to recognize because it's the
Speaker 1: type of wave generated by classic video game console systems
Speaker 1: like the Nintendo Entertainment System would be a great example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you gotta stop, you gotta stop and tell me
Speaker 1: what's your favorite NES eight bit video game music? I
Speaker 1: know it's kind of lame to go with such a
Speaker 1: popular answer, but I really like the Legend of Zelda.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. Yeah, you know. I also really
Speaker 1: I really like Super Mario Brothers and it's great. I
Speaker 1: really remember liking the music that went with the old
Speaker 1: ne NES Batman game, which the only movie based games
Speaker 1: for the NES that wasn't horrible. Yeah, that wasn't wasn't
Speaker 1: like a just a complete travesty of the franchise rights.
Speaker 1: It was pretty good game, you know. That's what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: is that great music. You remember, Do Do Do Do Do?
Speaker 1: And I never owned it an e s, but I
Speaker 1: have a friend who did, and he had that game,
Speaker 1: so I do remember that. But anyway, this is what
Speaker 1: those square wave forms sound like, in case you want
Speaker 1: to to know. So, yeah, you could tell. They're a
Speaker 1: little a little less buzzy than the saw tooth waves.
Speaker 1: The square ones are slightly less buzzy, but they still
Speaker 1: have some character to them. And then we have triangle waves.
Speaker 1: Triangle waves hate person waves. They have a fight triangle wins. Also,
Speaker 1: they have a really more mellow sound than your square
Speaker 1: waves or sawtooth waves do, so they kind of sit
Speaker 1: between square waves and sign waves. They also have harmonics,
Speaker 1: and they also have only odd numbered harmonics like the
Speaker 1: square waves do, so just three, five, seven, nine, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You don't have any even numbered harmonics in the triangle waves.
Speaker 1: And in this case, the amplitude of the harmonics is
Speaker 1: the drops off faster than it does with the square waves.
Speaker 1: So in square remember it's the inversion of the harmonic number,
Speaker 1: so three is one third, five is one. Five with
Speaker 1: triangle waves is the inversion of the square of the
Speaker 1: harmonic So it's one over three squared or one over
Speaker 1: nine or point one repeating. So that's it's that amplitude
Speaker 1: compared to the fundamental frequency. And then etcetera down the road,
Speaker 1: so it would be one over five squared, one over
Speaker 1: seven squared, one over nine squared, etcetera. And that would
Speaker 1: be your amplitude of your harmonics to the fundamental frequency. Ah,
Speaker 1: so that that's your basic ones. Oh, in a triangle wave,
Speaker 1: we should definitely hear what that sounds like. It sounds
Speaker 1: like this, So those are your basics, like that's you know,
Speaker 1: those are your base the basic qualities of sound you
Speaker 1: could use. You could you could choose which type of
Speaker 1: wave you wanted the oscillator to generate with your moge synthesizer,
Speaker 1: and then put that through the various filters and other
Speaker 1: modules that we talked about to create all sorts of
Speaker 1: interesting sounds and and really give your music a very
Speaker 1: interesting character before you even start playing a melody. So
Speaker 1: with all of the richness of a variety of electronic
Speaker 1: music that you can create with synthesizers, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: focusing on analog synthesizers today, but really with any kind
Speaker 1: of electronically generated music, there's a lot you can do.
Speaker 1: Why DoD Why does some people still regard it as
Speaker 1: fake music? Because some people just I think, are narrow
Speaker 1: minded jerk faces. No, I don't want to, I don't
Speaker 1: want to really suggest that I think. I think though,
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that historically we've seen repeated,
Speaker 1: you know, many times, even before the age of electronic
Speaker 1: music at all, we saw this, like just with composers,
Speaker 1: styles and you you've heard stories of how after the
Speaker 1: performance of a particular symphony and audience might riot in
Speaker 1: reaction because it was so different from what came before it,
Speaker 1: and I think that's part of it. I think there's
Speaker 1: some people who just have trouble accepting the idea that
Speaker 1: something different from what has come before has any can
Speaker 1: add any value, and if it doesn't fit their definition
Speaker 1: of what is music, it therefore cannot be music. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in that. I mean, I will go
Speaker 1: so far as to say, like, there there's definitely some
Speaker 1: experimental music out there that to me sounds indistinguishable from
Speaker 1: random noise. Like there are some performance art pieces, and
Speaker 1: some of them are meant to be like that, like
Speaker 1: dropping objects onto piano wires from like twenty feet up
Speaker 1: so that you can create these these loud noises. It's
Speaker 1: not like that's done with surgical precision to create a
Speaker 1: very specific sound, and that's not what the intent of
Speaker 1: the piece is. Uh, and it it's it gets tricky
Speaker 1: for me to refer to that as music because it
Speaker 1: doesn't fit my definition, my personal definition of what music is.
Speaker 1: So I'm even guilty too of that to some extent.
Speaker 1: You know, one example I think of that that comes
Speaker 1: up is, for example, drum machines. Yeah, you hear that
Speaker 1: criticized all the time. People are like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: the music these days, any idiot with the drum machine
Speaker 1: can just make some loops and then and then they
Speaker 1: were a musician. That's not real music, or or people
Speaker 1: who program music into like it's possible to program music
Speaker 1: into a computer file without ever touching any kind of
Speaker 1: musical instrument. Right, you could, in theory, create music just
Speaker 1: by manipulating numbers if you have a great enough affinity
Speaker 1: for that. I don't think that makes the music any
Speaker 1: less valid than anything else. I don't think that there
Speaker 1: should be a In fact, how different is that from
Speaker 1: being a composer who creates, who composes music for a
Speaker 1: symphony and doesn't play it him or herself. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would argue that is very similar. And and I
Speaker 1: also just think that that the creation of music goes
Speaker 1: beyond how skillful you are at tickling the ivories or
Speaker 1: being able to plug strings. Sorry, what did you just
Speaker 1: say to tickle the ivories? Tickle the ivories? That's playing piano?
Speaker 1: Where on earth did you learn that expression? What are you?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me to look tickle them tickle the ivories?
Speaker 1: You've never heard this phrase? Are you telling me that?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, well I am older than you are. Uh?
Speaker 1: Tickle the ivories is a phrase that means play the piano. Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess I'll just have to go home
Speaker 1: and beat up my guitar. Well, I'm just saying a
Speaker 1: phrase that doesn't matter at any rate. Like I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't think that musical ability. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go roughly chop my drums. I don't think that. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm about tickling the ivories, and you're going into abuse
Speaker 1: all the bizarre things you can do with your hands
Speaker 1: that are not playing a musical instrument. Okay, well that's
Speaker 1: that's fair. So I'm sorry. Now I'm the one being judgmental.
Speaker 1: I apologize, Jonathan. I think you should feel free to
Speaker 1: tickle the ivories however you like, and and I won't
Speaker 1: judge you for it. I just can't believe you've never
Speaker 1: heard that phrase before. Okay, well, it's it's pretty common
Speaker 1: down my way. Um But at any rate, we had
Speaker 1: a lot of ivory ticklers when I was growing up. Um.
Speaker 1: So at the point being that, I don't think that
Speaker 1: there's any particular skill that you have to possess in
Speaker 1: order to be someone who makes music other than the
Speaker 1: ability to create a melody or or you know, to
Speaker 1: actually create the music in whatever whatever mode you use
Speaker 1: to do it doesn't matter, well, I mean regardless, Like
Speaker 1: why would we even consider ourselves in the business of
Speaker 1: certifying what counts as being a musician or not? This? Like,
Speaker 1: why is that our job to tell people know that's
Speaker 1: not real music? This honestly reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: the debate of whether or not video games or art
Speaker 1: or video games just contain art. So in other words, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the graphics in a video game can be considered art,
Speaker 1: the music accompanying a video game can be considered art,
Speaker 1: but as a video game itself art And there's people
Speaker 1: who very violently say absolutely not, there is no way
Speaker 1: a video game itself could be art. Do they have
Speaker 1: some kind of like philosophical principle in forming this opinion?
Speaker 1: I think they just have some sort of ridiculous narrow
Speaker 1: definition of what they think art has to fall in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I would say that this that the electronic music
Speaker 1: has fallen into that same thing that some people. For them,
Speaker 1: they have a very narrow definition of what music is.
Speaker 1: An electronic music falls outside of that definition, so therefore
Speaker 1: it cannot be music. By by definition. Problem is that's
Speaker 1: not everyone's definition, and I have a much broader opinion
Speaker 1: of what is music, maybe not as broad as other people.
Speaker 1: In fact, certainly not as broad as other people. I
Speaker 1: know there are folks who like music that I just
Speaker 1: find uh, baffling, like there's no appeal to me. So
Speaker 1: I know that I'm also guilty of that, but I'm
Speaker 1: at least aware of it. I hope you enjoyed that
Speaker 1: classic episode that two part are on the Moge story
Speaker 1: the mog synthesizer or the Moog synthesizer. It's one of
Speaker 1: those really distinctive instruments that was incredibly influential and remains
Speaker 1: incredibly influential. It's still used in lots of modern compositions
Speaker 1: and songs and stuff, and it just is one of
Speaker 1: those super cool sounds that, uh, that's really appealing to me.
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoyed this two part episode series.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, you can get in touch
Speaker 1: with me a couple of different ways. One to use
Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app. You can navigate to the
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Speaker 1: or you can head on over to Twitter. Send me
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