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Appendix B Synthesizer Basics 496
Phase distortion synthesis
Phase distortion synthesis creates dierent waveforms by modifying the phase angle of a
sine wave.
In essence, you can bend a sine wave until it becomes a sawtooth wave, a triangle wave, a square
wave, and so on. The synthesizer engine beyond the waveform generators typically follows a
subtractive synthesizer design.
Phase distortion synthesis was commercially introduced in the 1984 Casio CZ series synthesizers.
Granular synthesis
The basic premise behind granular synthesis is that a sound can be broken down into tiny
particles, or grains. These sampled grains—usually no more than 10 to 50 milliseconds long—can
then be reorganized, or combined with grains from other sounds, to create new timbres.
In many respects, granular synthesis is similar to wavetable synthesis, but it works on a much
ner scale. As you might expect, this method is ideal for creating constantly evolving sounds and
truly unique tones.
The downside is that granular synthesis is extremely processor-intensive, and it wasn’t possible
to do in real time until relatively recently. For this reason, it has remained largely ignored by all
but a few in academic institutions. Today’s computers, however, have sucient processing power
to make this synthesis method a practicality, so there are a number of commercial products
now available.