Ableton Live's Wavetable device comes with a plethora of wavetables, providing numerous variations of tone and timbre.
Let's take a closer look on how to use and change the wavetables.
A wavetable is simply a collection of short looping samples that are arranged together.
In this project, I've loaded a Spectrum device so that we can have a look at the harmonic content of the wavetables
and how it changes when we scan through the wavetable position.
If you play a note with the oscillator fixed to one of these samples in the Wavetable,
you're going to produce a steady tone with a consistent timbre.
The real power of Wavetable synthesis comes from moving between the different samples within the Wavetable
as the notes play, this results in a shifting and dramatic timbre.
Wavetable comes with twelve categories of wavetables.
This gives you the option of selecting more than 100 wavetables per oscillator.
These range from classic hardware synths to acoustic instruments, various types of noise, and many more.
Let's start by taking a look at the basic wave table shapes.
Here we can move the wavetable position from a sine wave to a triangle wave, to a saw wave, and finally to a square wave.
So let's now see the Wavetable in action.
I'll use an LFO modulation source to modulate the wavetable position, which is creating the sound that you're hearing now
as we're shifting between the different wave shapes,
Let's now expand Wavetable's interface and introduce the second oscillator.
Here we can see all the movement happening in the two oscillator wavetables.
No filters are being applied to either of the oscillators, this is purely the sound of the wavetable timbres as they're changing.
Now let's take a look at creating an epic pad.
So on track two, using another Wavetable device, I've selected 'Dubstep Organ' from the Complex category of Wavetable.
This is a complex waveform, and as we scroll through the wavetables, we can hear how the timbre changes gradually.
Let's now open up Wavetable's interface and add the second oscillator.
The second wavetable is from the Distortion category and is called Malice.
When we focus on listening to this wavetable,
you can hear how the harsh sound of this particular wavetable is reflected in its angular wavetable shape.
Together, these two wavetables create a very lush sound.
As mentioned earlier, the true power of Wavetable's synthesis comes from modulation,
so I'm going to add some global modulation, which will increase the movement of both Wavetable positions as well as the filter frequencies.
In track 3, I'm running an arpeggio with a wavetable from the Formant category.
This particular wavetable is named after all the vowel sounds,
and as you can hear, it has a very strong vocal sounding characteristic.
To create some movement, I'm using LFO 2 in Retrigger mode.
This means that when a key is pressed, the LFO restarts.
Let's now add a second oscillator to beef up this particular sound,
I've chosen a wavetable from the Instrument category called Marimba.
For this particular sound I've set up some modulation in the Modulation Matrix.
In this case the Pitch value affects the position of the wavetable.
With a negative value, a higher pitch will result in a lower position in the wavetable.
As a last step I'm going to add the sub oscillator to this sound.
You also have the possibility of adding your own wavetables to the Wavetable device.
This can be done in the User section.
Have fun exploring the sonic capabilities of the Wavetable device.