Stack & detune
Pad · Lesson 1 of 4 · PD1
The 1st step of the pad track in PatchPond's subtractive synthesis curriculum. Width, motion, space — and this lesson is where you meet multi-osc, detune, unison for the first time.
▸What you'll learn
A choir of one person versus a choir of twenty — same melody, very different sound.
Stacking two or more oscillators on the same note and shifting them slightly out of tune creates a thicker, wider sound than any single oscillator can produce. Tiny pitch differences between oscillators cause slow beating between their waveforms — the chorus-like motion that turns a thin saw into a supersaw or a hollow square into a wide pad. Read more →
▸Built on
Think of waveforms as raw lumber — different grain, different density, before any cuts are made.
An oscillator is the source of the sound. Full definition →
First taught in BS1 Pick a wave
Build this lesson live in the PatchPond studio. Web MIDI in, on-screen keyboard otherwise. The patch you make here loads back into iOS later on — same patch format.
Open in studio →▸In this track
Next PD2 Breathe →