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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / jemmons's music / Asphalt Shriek

Asphalt Shriek

By jemmons on April 5, 2026 11:19 pm

I’ve never really understood wavetable synthesis. I mean, I get the concept. I just don’t know how to use it to great (or even good) effect.

When wavetables came to the Tonverk, I thought “Now’s the time to dive in.” Predictable results.

I must have remade the lead in this 20 times. With all their harmonics, I just don’t have an intuition for designing wavetables to fit in a mix like I do with regular subtractive, FM, or even additive. And as a result this is kind of a mess. I spend so much time just wrestling with sound that I didn’t have time to take another few passes on the temp melody I wrote in back on monday.

To be clear, I’m not complaining. *I* learned a bunch about wavetables. *And* about the Tonverk. And had a great time doing it. It’s y’all that are stuck listening to a kind of shrieky song. And for that I apologize :-)

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC)

It's like some kind of dystopian future cop movie from the 80's 

Sounds all seem to be sitting in the mix pretty nicely for me. I think when you are used to subtractive synthesis you aren't used to the harsher sounds of wave table, but that's part of the vibe so I think you just have to lean into it.

I don't really understand it either other than a few goes playing with Hive and Dune.

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