Novation Bass Station Rack Owner's Manual

Also see for Bass Station Rack: Owner's manual

Contents

11The BassStation features all the classic elements ofanalogue or ‘subtractive’ synthesis; two oscillatorswith standard waveshapes, a voltage-controlled filterwith resonance and an LFO and two envelopes foramplitude and filter/pitch/pulse width modulation. Theterm subtractive gives a clue to the way analogue syn-thesis works. You start with sound which containsmore than you need and remove parts of it until youare left with the required timbre and shape. The oscilla-tors provide the starting sound, each waveshape pro-viding a complex set of harmonics which can be furtherenriched with de-tuning and pulse width modulation.The filter allows you to remove those harmonics whichyou don’t need and the envelopes allow you to changeboth this harmonic contentand the volume in real time to give the sound a ‘shape’.The LFO allows you to control the speed of vibrato andother regular timbral changes.If you are already familiar with the basics of analoguesynthesis you can use this section as a reference guideto exactly how any element is programmed and routed,but if you are new to this analogue business ( havinggrown up on sample replay instruments - welcome backto the real synthesiser ), you should get a goodgrounding in the basics of synthesis by working yourway through each section.ANALOGUE VOICE ARCHITECTURE HOW THE CONTROLS WORK