$Page Mono Synth
$TargetName Mono Synth

*Making a monophonic synth*
Max includes multiple waveform generators, envelope generators and filter modules. This example shows the basic elements needed to build an audio instrument. In this case they are combined into a subtractive synth.

As you can see in the patch, the selected oscillator will always be set to the pitch of the latest note, even if the previous one hasn't finished playing yet. That makes this a monophonic synthesizer, playing only one note at a time. To make this synthesizer polyphonic, have a look at $Link Poly Synth <Set:../../Poly Synth/Poly Synth.als>.

Mono-Synth.png

Some notes about the objects that you will find:
-> The [mtof] object converts MIDI note pitches to the oscillator frequency assuming a standard western tuning. For other tunings, you need a different mapping of notes to frequencies.
-> [line~] takes two values: the first is the value you want to output, the second is the time in ms it takes to reach that value. Here this is used to create a glide effect.
-> [live.tab] has a Live Mode property. Enabling it prevents visual anti-aliasing to slightly blur the lines of the object in the interface. 
-> The scales of icons in [live.tab] depends on their tab sizes. To prevent blurry icons, the tab sizes should match the size of the icons.
-> As a sound source, a saw waveform needs to be generated by [saw~] instead of the very similar [phasor~]. This is because [saw~] makes sure that no high frequencies fold over to the low end of the spectrum due to aliasing.

$Link Learn more about aliasing <Set:../../Aliasing/Aliasing.als>