phasor~

Trapezoidal control signals

The trapezoid~ object outputs a trapezoidal shape, rising linearly from 0 to 1 in a certain fraction of its time, then staying at 1, then falling linearly back to 0 in a fraction of its time. Its timing is driven by a control signal at its input, one that goes in a straight line from 0 to 1; so a phasor~ or a line~ is the obvious choice for input to trapezoid~. As the input goes from 0 to 1, the output draws the designated trapezoidal shape.

Linear control signal

The phasor~ object produces a linear control signal that goes repeatedly from 0 to 1. That's demonstrated in the upper left part of this patch. In general, a control signal that goes gradually in a straight line from one value to another is quite useful, but you don't always want it to repeat over and over the way that phasor~ does.

Rhythmically out-of-sync phasors

Two low-frequency phasor~ objects with slightly different frequencies can create a rhythmic pattern determined by the ratio of the periodicities of the two LFOs. As an example, this patch uses two phasor~ objects with a frequency ratio of 4.5:4, which, when added together, create a 9:8 rhythmic ratio that repeats every two seconds. That pattern is scaled and offset and used to provide frequency information to a cycle~ object, which is being used as the carrier oscillator.

Phasor lookup in cosine

One common usage of the phasor~ object is to readrepeatedly through a stored table of numbers. In that way, instead of just producing a simple linear ramp shape, phasor~ can actually be used to produce any shape. In this example, we're using it to read repeatedly through one half of a sinusoid, so that we repeatedly get just the positive half of a sine wave.

Phasor as control signal

The phasor~ object is an oscillator that makes a "sawtooth" waveform, repeatedly ramping from 0 to 1. (Technically, it goes from 0 to almost 1, because whenever it would arrive at exactly 1, it wraps around and begins again from 0.) You can listen to this sawtooth waveform, but phasor~ is perhaps even more useful as a control signal, to provide a repeated linearly-changing value in your program.

Many Unrelated LFOs

By combining numerous low-frequency oscillators with unrelated repetition rates, you can create irregular shapes of modulation and patterns that never exactly repeat, creating a sound that changes in ways that seem constantly varying in somewhat unpredictable ways.

Irrationally out-of-sync phasors

Two oscillators with a ratio of frequencies that's an irrational number will never have exactly the same phase relationship. So, phasor~ objects that have an irrational frequency relationship, when combined, will create a rhythm that never exactly repeats. In this example, you can hear that the sum of the two phasor~ objects with a constantly changing relationship will create a constantly changing rhythm.

Expanding vibrato on an ascending glissando

A single phasor~ object can serve to synchronize several different modulations. In this example, the phasor~ is scaled and applied in three different ways. On the left side of the patch, the output of the phasor~ is cubed (multiplied by itself, then multiplied by itself again) so that it's a gentle curve instead of a straight line; that curve is then scaled by a factor of 1760, offset by 220, and used as the central frequency of the cycle~ object.

Generate classic waveforms

There are certain wave types that are historically used in electronic music, known as "classic" waveforms: sine, sawtooth, square, and triangle. These are the four waveforms generated by the classic Moog synthesizer oscillators, and are still quite useful in computer music.