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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>User's Manual - TANGUY Web Audio Synthesizer by Luke Teaford</title>
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<h1><a href="index.html">Tanguy</a></h1>
<span class="tagline"><a href="index.html">Web Audio Synthesizer</span>
<ul class="nav">
<li><a href="manual.html">User's Manual</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/luketeaford/TANGUY">TANGUY on GitHub</a></li>
<li><a href="http://luketeaford.com">Luke Teaford - Artist/Writer/Developer</a></li>
</ul>
<article>
<h1>Tanguy – User's Manual</h1>
<span class="subtitle">(A Beginner's Guide to Making Beautiful Sounds in Your Bedroom)</span>
<span class="fake-h2">Table of Contents</span>
<ol class="toc">
<li><a href="#intro">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#req">System Requirements</a></li>
<li><a href="#controls">Controls</a></li>
<li><a href="#panel">Programming Sounds</a></li>
<li><a href="#tips">Patch Tips</a></li>
<li><a href="#trouble">Troubleshooting</a></li>
<li><a href="#updates">Planned Improvements</a></li>
<li><a href="#resources">Resources</a></li>
</ol>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>TANGUY creates sounds in real time from data input through the user interface ("the panel"). Skillful synthesizer programming can yield a wide variety of sounds including percussive metallic banging, electronic beeps, bizarre effects, emulations of acoustic instruments, and warm "analog" tones. This guide will teach you the basics of synthesizer programming and explain TANGUY's peculiarities.</p>
<h2>System Requirements</h2>
<p>TANGUY sounds best in Google Chrome, Opera, or Apple Safari. Firefox has some known issues with frequency modulation that prevent Oscillator Two from making sound at all. Planned MIDI implementations will require Google Chrome (unless other browsers join the fun and work on Web MIDI).</p>
<h2>Controls</h2>
<h3>Choosing a Preset</h3>
<p>The presets included in TANGUY will give you a quick impression of its capabilities. Click on any part of the field that contains the text <i>INITIALIZE</i> to open the list of presets. Select any preset to load it or click outside of the list to cancel. Some presets have <i>VCA Gain</i> greater than 0, and will begin making sound automatically. One way to discover the purpose of each control is to work backwards from any preset to the <i>INITIALIZE</i> state.</p>
<h3>Playing the Keyboard</h3>
<p>TANGUY is a monosynth: only one note can be played from the keyboard at a time. Click the keys with your mouse or play TANGUY using your QWERTY keyboard. The home row represents the white keys, and the black keys are mapped to the corresponding keys in the row above.</p>
<p>The Octave Shift allows a player to quickly shift the range of the keyboard up or down using the buttons <i>-1</i> and <i>+1</i> buttons or the keyboard shortcuts: <i>-</i> and <i>=</i> .</p>
<p>The <i>Pitch</i> slider offers real time performance opportunities for bending the pitch. Move the slider to shift the pitch of all tracked oscillators simultaneously. Release to allow the pitch to snap back to its original value. Pitch bend and snapping do not work in Firefox.</p>
<p>Dynamically change the amount of the LFO's effects by using the <i>Mod.</i> slider. If <i>Mod.</i> is set to 0, the LFO will have no effect. Since the <i>Mod.</i> wheel determines the amount of the LFO, it is considered part of the preset.</p>
<h2>Programming Sounds</h2>
<h3>Oscillators</h3>
<p>Synthesizers use oscillators as primary sound sources. In the same way that acoustic instruments use vibrating strings or membranes to produce pitched sounds, a synthesizer uses an oscillator. The coarse tuning is usually measured in feet (apparently to appease organists). Each doubling of the length of footage lowers the pitch one octave. TANGUY's oscillators can be coarse tuned using the buttons labeled <i>32'</i>, <i>16'</i>, <i>8'</i>, and <i>4'</i>.
<p>Oscillator Two has additional controls for <i>Detune</i> and <i>Fine</i>. Use <i>Detune</i> to raise or lower Oscillator Two's pitch in steps (up or down an entire octave). <i>Fine</i> tuning allows you to tune Oscillator Two up and down in subtle ways that will affect the beating of TANGUY's oscillators against each other. This can range from a slow phasing effect to a dissonant warbling.</p>
<p>It is also possible to disable keyboard tracking for each oscillator independently. This is useful for creating unpitched sound effects, setting a static rate of modulation, or using one oscillator to drone on the root note while you play notes in that key on the tracked oscillator.</p>
<p>Oscillators also contribute to the timbre of the sound. Most synthesizers offer a few basic waveforms: sawtooth, square, triangle, and sine. Sawtooth and square waves are rich in harmonics. Triangles are slightly more harmonically interesting than sine waves (which are pure tones mostly suitable as a modulation source or for 1950s laboratory sounds).</p>
<p>TANGUY's oscillators are capable of complex timbres. Oscillator one can blend all the waveforms together. The sine wave is present within each wave form, so its inclusion here allows the user to emphasize the fundamental frequency as desired. Oscillator Two has waveshaping provided by the <i>Shaping</i> slider. Add a subtle edge or gritty distortion to its waveform.</p>
<p><i>FM AMT.</i> controls the amount of Frequency Modulation each oscillator receives from the other. Oscillator One is frequency modulated by Oscillator Two's currently selected waveform. Oscillator Two is frequency modulated only by the <i>Sine</i> wave output. This allows fine grained control of cross-modulation (when both oscillators are modulating each other's frequency).</p>
<h3>Noise</h3>
<p>Noise is useful for adding a slightly imperfect tone to the sound in subtle amounts, for wind/ocean sounds, and for percussive effects. TANGUY's <i>White</i> noise is an even "static" sound. All other Noise types are approximated with bad mathematical guess work. Unfortunately, these types of noise do not reflect the character of their color naming, but are useful as varieties of digital noise. I consider these unconvincing approximations to be the weakest aspect of TANGUY.</p>
<h3>Mixer</h3>
<p>The mixer allows the user to control the relative volume of the possible sound sources. These are exponential so that nice smooth blending can be achieved by playing the mixer controls in real time (if desired).</p>
<h3>Filter</h3>
<p>The output from the mixer goes into the filter where it is modified further. A filter controls the brightness or darkness of a sound by subtracting frequencies (and optionally emphasizing frequencies at the cutoff point). Filters are interesting to play with in real time for their characteristic whirling, gurgling sound and a variety of other effects. <i>Cutoff</i> determines where in the frequency spectrum to attenuate frequencies. <i>Res.</i> (for resonance, but sometimes called Q, Peak, or Emphasis) determines the amount of emphasis to give to frequencies at the cutoff point.</p>
<p><i>Env. Amt.</i> can be adjusted positively or negatively from its initial point (0 in the INITIALIZE patch) to determine the depth and direction of the filter envelope's shape. This will be explained in greater detail further on.</p>
<p><i>KBD.</i> is the amount of keyboard tracking. This increases the cutoff more as higher notes are played on the keyboard. It's most useful and noticeable when the filter is in Low Pass mode.</p>
<p>TANGUY has a multimode filter that functions as four different filter types and bypass. <i>LP</i> sets TANGUY to Low Pass mode. Frequencies below the cutoff point will be removed. <i>BP</i> means Band Pass mode. A band of frequencies is allowed to pass through unattenuated. <i>HP</i> is High Pass mode. Frequencies below the cutoff point will be attenuated. <i>Notch</i> is kind of an opposite of Band Pass mode: frequencies within the band will be scooped out. Turning the filter mode to <i>Off</i> will bypass the filter entirely. It is useful for quickly testing if the filter settings are removing all the sound or creating the brightest possible sound. Notice the effect of turning off the filter on the INITIALIZE preset.</p>
<h3>Envelope Generators</h3>
<p>TANGUY has a fairly traditional envelope generator configuration: one envelope generator for the filter and one for the amplifier. Envelope generators determine the rate of change over time. For the purposes of understanding, it is probably simplest to demonstrate this with the VCA Envelope Generator.</p>
<p>On a typical synthesizer, a key pressed down sends a signal to the envelopes that begins the process of shaping a sound parameter over time. For this example, I will use the VCA (Voltage Controlled Amplifier—or simply volume).</p>
<p>The first stage of an envelope generator is the <i>Attack</i>. If this is set to 0, the parameter controlled by the envelope will begin at its maximum amount. A long <i>Attack</i> setting in the VCA will slowly fade in until the maximum point is reached.</p>
<p>Once the maximum point is reached, the envelope reduces the parameter to the <i>Sustain</i> level at a rate determined by <i>Decay</i>. If <i>Sustain</i> is set to maximum, <i>Decay</i> will have no effect.When the <i>Sustain</i> level is reached, it will remain constant until the key is released.</p>
<p>The final stage is the <i>Release</i>. This is the rate that determines how slowly the parameter controlled by the envelope generator returns to its starting point. For the VCA, this is <i>VCA Gain</i>. For the Filter Envelope, it's the level determined by <i>Cutoff</i>.
<p>The filter envelope can be inverted. Everything is opposite in that case and it becomes difficult to explain how it works. For the best chance at figuring it out, try setting the filter mode to <i>HP</i> and a high (or even maximum) <i>Cutoff</i>.
<p><i>VCA Gain</i> is useful for playing the synthesizer constantly at a low volume (good for droning sounds) or creating sustained special effects.</p>
<h3>LFO</h3>
<p>An LFO is a Low Frequency Oscillator. Instead of following the pitch of the keys, LFOs are typically too slow to be perceived as pitch. LFO frequency ranges are often less than 1Hz to ~20Hz. Any modulation faster than 20Hz is considered audio rate, but the effect is more pronounced at higher frequencies. Since LFOs are mostly too low to hear, they are routed to other parameters of the sound to modulate them over time. TANGUY's LFO can individually affect the <i>Pitch</i>, <i>Filter</i>, and <i>Amplifier</i> simultaneously. In the INITIALIZE preset, no modulation is provided by default.</p>
<p>The shape of the LFO determines the effect of the modulation. For example, <i>Sine</i> waves will make smooth changes and <i>Square</i> waves will instantly flip between two values. The <i>Ramp</i> wave is an inversion of the <i>Saw</i> wave, so it will have opposite effects.</p>
<p><i>Rate</i> is the frequency of modulation. TANGUY provides a very wide range of LFO operation, so sticking to the lower third might be ideal for getting used to the effects of an LFO.</p>
<p>The overall amount of modulation is determined by the <i>Mod.</i> slider to the left of the keyboard. If this is set to 0, the LFO will have no effect. Synth players often use mod wheels for real time control over the depth of the LFO, so TANGUY provides this possibility.</p>
<h3>Delay</h3>
<p>TANGUY has a cascading delay effect controlled by two parameters. Echoes can be created up to two seconds long with <i>Rate</i> at its maximum value. Reverb effects can be achieved by setting <i>Rate</i> to a minimum amount and <i>Amount</i> to approximately halfway. With <i>Rate</i> at its minimum value, <i>Amount</i> creates a sort of overdriving distortion effect.</p>
<h3>Portamento</h3>
<p>Poramento is the slurring of one note into another. TANGUY comes with two types: <i>Exp.</i> for exponential (classic glide) and <i>Lin.</i> for linear (a Roland TB-303-esque constant rate slide). The effect of the <i>Amount</i> slider is set appropriately for the chosen type of portamento: exponential has a greater maximum amount.</p>
<h2>Patch Tips</h2>
<p>Explain how to play some of the more unusual patches and what the patch in question is intended to demonstrate.</p>
<h2>Troubleshooting</h2>
<p>If TANGUY is not producing sound, check filter cutoff, filter mode, mixer levels, and amp envelope settings.</p>
<h2>Planned Improvements</h2>
<p>I'd like to add user input before the filter so live instruments and voices can be processed in real time. This is part of the reason TANGUY has <i>VCA Gain</i> after all. MIDI support would make TANGUY much more playable as an instrument.</p>
<h2>Resources</h2>
<p>Some links to GitHub and synthesizer websites and things of that nature.</p>
</article>
<span class="copyright">Copyright © 2014 Luke Teaford.</span>
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