Voice Editing Basics - Yamaha Electone EL-900 Owner's Manual

6 Voice Editing Basics

The EL-900 Electone uses a versatile tone generation system developed
by Yamaha that is capable of producing an exceptionally wide range of
voices. To be more specific, the system uses individual sound sources
that ﾒmodulateﾓ each otherﾕs frequencies and thus create complex sounds
not possible by the ordinary mixing of those sound sources.
1) Operators
There are two types of Operators: the one is the sophisticated AWM Operators
that are the backbone of the Electoneﾕs authentic voices, the other is called
FM Operators. An FM Operator is a sound generator that produces one very
simple type of sound: a pure sine wave. A sine wave by itself is not very
interesting to listen to; however, when one sine wave is used to modulate a
second sine wave, together they result in a new, complex waveform.
AWM Operators
Sampling
2) Modulators, Carriers and Algorithms
The top Operator, which sends the modulation signal is, not surprisingly,
called the modulator. The bottom Operator, which receives or ﾒcarriesﾓ the
modulated sine wave and outputs the resulting sound, is called the carrier.
The complexity or brightness of the sound depends on the output level of the
modulator.
This kind of arrangement in which Operators are ﾒstackedﾓ together is called
an algorithm. With eight sine wave Operators available for stacking, the various
algorithms can produce a wide variety of sounds.
Voice Algorithm Examples
Modulators
FM Operator
Modulator Carrier
Modulators
Carrier
Structure of the Operators
AWM
Modulator
Carriers
FM Operators FM Operators
1~4 5~8
Carriers
119
8