The Farfisa transistor organ is one of my favorite sounds. My Reface DX has a couple of different Farfisa presets I’ve grabbed.
You get 90% of the sound just by adding octave-separated overtones. This implementation uses three <carrier-blam>s:
<synth-blam id="nearfisa">
<carrier-blam curve="0 0, 1 0.01" release="0.1" type="triangle">
</carrier-blam>
<carrier-blam gain="0.75" curve="0 0, 1 0.01" release="0.1" type="triangle" offset="11.9">
</carrier-blam>
<carrier-blam gain="1" curve="0 0, 1 0.01" release="0.1" type="triangle" offset="24">
</carrier-blam>
</synth-blam>
Some things to note:
- Amplitude envelopes (
curve) match, using a very sharp attack. In more complex synthesis, different carriers and modulators might have diverging envelopes.
- The
type, in each case, is triangle. A pure sine wave isn’t shrill enough for a Farfisa and wouldn’t cut through a mix.
- The
offset determines how many semitones to diverge from the fundamental. The second <carrier-blam> isn’t quite offset by the full octave. This is to emulate a worn out Farfisa’s transistor being slightly under voltage. Slight detuning like this subtly adds analog-like character.
The Farfisa’s vibrato is almost as iconic as the instrument itself. Where a single <lfo-blam> is placed as a child of the <synth-blam>, it modulates all operators (the three <carrier-blam>s here) simultaneously. Individual operators can have their own detune setting and this vibrato effect will be relative to that value.
<synth-blam id="nearfisa">
<carrier-blam curve="0 0, 1 0.01" release="0.1" type="triangle">
</carrier-blam>
<carrier-blam gain="0.75" curve="0 0, 1 0.01" release="0.1" type="triangle" offset="11.9">
</carrier-blam>
<carrier-blam gain="1" curve="0 0, 1 0.01" release="0.1" type="triangle" offset="24">
</carrier-blam>
<lfo-blam class="vibrato" prop="detune" gain="30" beats="0.25" type="triangle" bypass></lfo-blam>
</synth-blam>
The primitive electronic drum sounds are all created with the same handful of synthesizer elements. These use short decays and feedback loops to disrupt the signals into harsher, percussive sounds.
<synth-blam id="snare" notes="D5" gain="5" out="room">
<carrier-blam gain="0.5" curve="0 0, 1 0.01, 0 0.3" type="square" feedback="600">
<chain-blam>
<filter-blam type="highpass" freq="500"></filter-blam>
<pan-blam pan="0.1"></pan-blam>
</chain-blam>
</carrier-blam>
</synth-blam>
For more information, read the Synthesis guide.