An Introduction to the Seaboard RISE 3.2 - Envelopes Video Lecture - Introduction

envelopes are one of the most musical
and powerful tools and designing sounds
they control the articulation of how our
patches play and without them our sounds
would start off at full blast the moment
we hit a key wave and immediately return
to silence at the moment we took our
finger off although that might be
exactly what we want for certain sounds
more often than not we're gonna want to
have a sound sort of swoop in or decay
slowly after we release the note it
really just depends on what the music is
calling for and what our ears tell us
the key to creating those effects and
many other things is to use an envelope
the word envelope is one that pops up a
whole lot when we're talking about music
synthesis or working inside of a digital
audio workstation it's one of those
words like low-pass filter which I would
rename if I could except in this
instance I would change it from its noun
form of envelope to its verb form of to
envelop the definition of envelop is to
completely enclose or surround which is
exactly what an envelope does paper
envelope encloses a letter and in the
very same way the envelopes on a
synthesizer takes an audio signal and
wrapped themselves around it shaping and
carving the sound now this is an
oversimplification of how an envelope
works but it's a very useful visual
metaphor for people who have a hard time
wrapping their heads around the idea pun
intended an envelope shapes the sound
similar to how a filter does but instead
of just shaping the frequency spectrum
an envelope shapes the way a sound
evolves over time there are four main
stages of an envelope you need to
understand and they are attack decay
sustain and release let's go to patch
number 67 named harp and voice and take
a look once you hit a key wave the
signal will first encounter the attack
stage which equates to the amount of
time it will take a note to go from
silence to full volume the higher the
attack time the longer it will take for
a sound to come in all of the time based
stages and equators and the lopes have a
range of 0 to 5 seconds click on the
first envelope to select it and then you
can see that similar to the 5 dimensions
of touch envelopes can be mapped to
control or shape different parameters on
equator you can see here that the first
envelope is mapped to control the level
the two samples and oscillator three
which only make up a portion of this
patches overall signal right now the
attack time is at zero so the sound
should come in right away and we can
hear that it does when I press a key
wave so if I raise the value all the way
to five seconds when I hit a note and
hold it down it should take that long
for the samples and one of the
oscillators to reach full volume the
next stage we reach is the decay time
and this equates to the amount of time
it takes for the note to go from full
volume to a sustained level if we go to
the next patch number 68 electro bass we
can hear this pretty clearly when I hit
a note it reaches full volume
instantaneously and then decays down
relatively quickly you can see this
happening on all the respective levels
of the three oscillators that this
envelope is mapped to and make up this
particular patch
next comes the sustain level which isn't
actually associated to a time value it's
the level that the sound will sustain at
after the decay and before the final
release stage on the same patch
currently there is no sustain level so
the sound will descend to silence
without sustaining at all but if I turn
up the sustain level it will decay to a
certain point and then stay there until
I say otherwise if I click on this tiny
arrow in the right hand corner of the
envelope we can switch the way we're
viewing it and here we have a graphical
representation of how this envelope
unfolds each dot represents the value of
each stage so you can see here I can
adjust the attack time the decay time
and the sustain level some of us are
more visual so seeing this literal shape
of the envelope may be easier to work
with and adjust
lastly we hit the release stage which is
the amount of time it takes for a note
to go from a sustain level to silence
after you remove your finger from the
key wave right now we have a 28
millisecond release time which is very
short and almost immediate but if we
raise that
amount now when I release the key wave
the sound will reach silence much slower
[Music]
you can imagine how integral volume
envelopes can be when designing patches
like pads or string sounds which need to
swell in in a lot of ways these
envelopes create the defining
characteristics of the many sounds as
you may have guessed equators envelopes
can be mapped to multiple parameters and
wants and control so much more than just
volume if we click over to the next
envelope you can see that it's mapped to
the cutoff of filter 1 which is a very
common control parameter for an envelope
this way the brightness of the sound
will evolve over time in the very same
way the volume did in the first envelope
if I adjust the attack time of the
envelope I'm delaying the full
brightness of the sound and we can hear
that in action equator has 5 envelopes
so the level of depth you can reach is
relatively significant you can turn on
the subsequent envelopes by clicking on
their top left hand corner and then map
them just as you would any of the other
5 dimensions of touch
additionally there are four types of
envelopes for you to choose from and
each one works a different way one of
the most fun is the loop envelope
navigates a preset number 51 classic
acid base this envelope will repeat the
attack and the decay stages over and
over again until I release the note
which will then trigger the release
stage
[Music]
for those of you who are interested in
knowing even more detailed information
about these envelopes I suggest you read
chapter 7 of the Equator manual which
you can find at the link in the
description of this video
envelopes are things which make more
sense the more you use them so if you're
new to sound design try not to let it
overwhelm you and focus on just a single
envelope and a single parameter like
volume a good way to begin would be by
pulling up an empty patch by clicking on
the menu icon on the right hand side and
selecting new from the drop down menu
that appears
the initial patch is a single simple
sine wave try adjusting the amp envelope
to see if you can get this to swell in
and out from there I would browse
through the other presets in equator and
try adjusting their envelopes as always
less is more and follow your ears as
long as it's the right note a single
evolving parameter can be the difference
between an interesting sound and an
emotional impact