Low Frequency Oscillators

These functions are implementing low-frequency oscillators whose period is based on a selectable number of clock beats. They offer another better flavor to the basic technique that works by manually calculating stuff using sin() or cos() functions.

lsin

This is a bipolar (-1 to 1) sinusoïdal low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern.

Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.

Example:

(lsin 4)

ltri

This is a bipolar (-1 to 1) triangular low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern. Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.

Example:

(ltri 4)

lsaw

This is a bipolar (-1 to 1) sawtooth low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern.

Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.

Example:

(lsaw 4)

lrect

This is a bipolar (-1 to 1) rectangular low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern.

Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.
  • pwm: pulse width modulation (number between 0 and 1).

Example:

(lrect 4 0.2)

ulsin

This is an unipolar (0 to 1) sinusoïdal low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern.

Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.

Example:

(ulsin 3)

ultri

This is an unipolar (0 to 1) triangular low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern.

Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.

Example:

(ultri 3)

ulsaw

This is an unipolar (0 to 1) sawtooth low frequency oscillator that you can use for modulations in any pattern.

Arguments:

  • period: frequency expressed in clock beats.

Example:

(ulsaw 3)

What to do with Low Frequency Oscillators?

Remember that you can do math operations on these oscillators such as clamping (clamp), scaling (scale), etc. You can also pattern the period or pwm for extra weirdness or for doing custom shapes. Folding and wrapping operations can be very useful to generate interesting shapes on a large time scale.

Modulations are extremely important to get dynamic sounding patterns.