Wave Splicing and Beyond

Learning Modular

"Wave splicing - taking two waveforms and splicing them together at an audio rate - is a synthesis technique that has been gaining attention over the past few years. There are a few oscillators dedicated to this technique; I wanted to share with you how to patch it yourself using your own oscillators and a module that will let you switch between inputs at an audio rate (I prefer an analog crossfading module like the Happy Nerding Dual Xfade).

I start with using three waveforms from a single oscillator - segment A, segment B, and the splice controller - and then expand on it by introducing a second and then third oscillator to explore detuning between the contributors to the final wave. I end by going beyond the typical splicing technique and using a crossfade rather than a hard switch to merge the donor waveforms together.

Here is the index of topics:

00:00 demo
00:49 basic explanation
01:41 one VCO technique
03:57 modulating the splice point
05:12 trying some other donor waveforms
05:28 splicing two independently tuned VCOs
06:58 using a third independent VCO to control the splice
08:02 extending the technique: crossfading
09:20 comparing switching with crossfading
10:38 summary"