Episode 5 – Ring Modulation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWd498v-qOo

Ring modulation is a variant of amplitude modulation. It’s a modulation where you take an
original wave and multiply that wave with a modulator (which is a wave as well).

By multiplying the waves you create a sum-and-difference effect. You throw away the
original wave and end up with two brand new waves for every harmonic. They are called
sidebands.

If the depth is all the way at zero you just hear the original wave. As you increase the depth,
you’ll start hearing the effect of the ring modulation. In addition to the original wave, you’ll
start seeing two sidebands appear (i.e. the sum-and-difference effect: as the depth goes to
maximum, the original wave will disappear completely).

The reason ring modulation sounds “nasty” (brash, harsh, atonal) is because you have no
fundamentals. You’re left with a much more anharmonic sound. This is a natural
characteristic of metallic sound, and ring modulators are very often used to generate bell
sounds, metal chimes sounds… but can also be used for Dr. Who’s Daleks, R2D2, or any
other effect where you want that very brutal, metallic sound.

Now you have your sidebands, you can start increasing the frequency. As you increase the
frequency of the modulator, the sum and difference changes – the numbers get bigger as we
add and subtract away from the harmonic by an ever increasingly large amount.

Eventually, those two waves kind of cross over each other and you get these natural
sympathies. When you hit a natural multiple of the original wave (0.25, 0.5, 1.5,
1.75…) you will notice that it becomes synchronized. f

If you apply boost, the amount of modulation is increased.

We can also alter the shape of the modulator with the wavetable. You can apply different
types of waves. You’ll tend to find ring modulators generally work best with simple waves.
It’s kind of unusual seeing a synthesizer giving you this level of flexibility for the modulator.

You can also manipulate the ring shape, ring symmetry and ring sync.

Amplitude/Ring Modulation in Audio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdO7r0RVPEo

Use the ARP 2600 to demonstrate.

Triangle wave coming out of VCO2.

Principle of the triangle wave is that every odd harmonic is repeated (cf. peak at 60
fundamental, then 180, 300, 420…).

This triangle wave is the carrier. We’re going to modulate the carrier, change the amplitude
of the carrier wave. If you modulate something you change it. If you do that periodically and
very slowly, you’re going to generate a tremolo effect. The periodic raising and lowering of
the volume of a sound. We’re going to use VCO3 as the modulator. VCO3 is generating a
sine wave.

You can see the sine wave going up and down. It’s going way too slow for us to hear. Human
hearing is nowhere near sensitive to pick up waves oscillate so slowly.

If you let the wave oscillate faster. It’s now 44 Hz. That’s our modulator. But we’re not going
to operate at audible pitches. Drop it back down in low frequency mode. Instead of listening
to it directly, we’re going to put it through the voltage processor. VCO2 is the input, the
carrier and it’s being modulated by VCO3, the modulator. The LFO is operating as a
modulator.

As I start to turn the modulation on you’ll see the carrier wave start to get louder and quieter.
Let’s set the amount of the modulation to max: VCO3 is now modulating the amplitude of
VCO2 as much as it possibly can. This is amplitude modulation “mode 1”: a tremolo effect.
The carrier wave is modulated by a modulator that oscillates at a low (non-audible) frequency.

If we speed the modulating wave up, it’s not going to be long before we can’t actually track
each individual wave’s oscillation. Both visually and audibly the waves start blurring
together. We’ve lost the ability to perceive the deep amplitude variants. It’s now dancing
instead and then suddenly, as the modulator approaches audible frequencies, we start seeing
this “triple crown effect” on each wave: instead of it being a simple wave dancing up and
down, it’s becoming three. As the modulator gets faster and faster, that division becomes
more and more intense.

This is called the sum and difference effect. What’s happening here is that the modulating
wave is now oscillating so fast (30Hz is clearly audible) – is that we have a second audible
wave as a part of our sound, and it manifests, as we can see in the spectral analyzer, in these
sidebands. Each one of those two “towers” on either side of the primary harmonic. They are
generated by the sum and difference of the combination of the two waves. Original wave at 60
Hz and modulating wave at 30 then the sidebands should be at 30 and 90. Each sideband is 30
Hz above, 30 Hz below whatever the frequency of the primary harmonic was.

 Amplitude modulation in audible frequency terms: a completely different sound.

Let’s see what it sounds like as we go through the audio frequency of the modulator.

So amplitude modulation has two very distinct roles to play in music. It’s an excellent way
to introduce extra harmonic content into a sound.

Now let’s move on to ring modulation.

The two waves are multiplied together. Firstly we have the carrier wave. Again a triangle
wave. We’re now at 65 Hz. Again with the odd harmonics. On oscillator two we’ll have the
modulator which is now at 40 Hz.

We get a pretty nasty sound.

You see all these throughs: they correspond with the fundamental and the harmonics of the
original wave. They are left out. Ring modulation is also a sum-and-difference effect, but
it removes the original carrier wave from the output.

All these towers are the sidebands of the now absent harmonics. Ring modulation has a very
different sound. It’s quite bell-like, quite metallic, atonal… quite nasty. Most famous
implementation are the Daleks from Dr. Who. Really harmonically rich – great sources if you
want a wave with lots of harmonics. You’re no longer tied to that tonal component. The
reason it sounds to anharmonic, so metallic, is that you throw away the fundamental and
primary harmonics and rely on overtones. You completely throw the original wave away.

Uses:
- Add moment to a pad
- Create a bell or chime sound
- Metallic sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGhB2K78Ejs

For uses of Ring Mod, see:

- https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/a-simple-guide-to-modulation-ring-mod/
- https://www.perfectcircuit.com/signal/ring-modulators