Some of the hardest part when it comes to any new tools, is understanding the terminology and concepts. Sometimes some instruments may strike people as being built by engineers, so you’d have to be an engineer to understand it. I still struggle with this same issue when I’m trying to understand electronics, computer programming, music theory, and modular synthesis. What’s pushing me forward is knowing that all these concepts are pretty straight forward if you’re looking at it thru the right lens.

One of my good friends will chat with me for hours about synth design, structure, and sound generation (I’m not sure if it’s against his will or not!?!?!) He’s more of a classical guitarist and purist in physical form but I’ve been slowly trying to make him realize that it’s not all about creating the biggest SUPER SAW wave synth or making the deepest sub bass for a BOMB ASS hip hop beat. I’m slowly turning him onto the dark side as I would put it him.

So anyways back to the basics.

Using my previous knowledge of playing guitar, and since my friend is a guitar player as well I was able better describe these foreign concepts to him. I set up my guitar rig, my guitar straight into an amplifier. I told him while I played this little riff that I wanted the reverb knob to move back and forth between a lot of reverb and very little reverb. While I’m playing the part I notice he’s moving the knob between 6 – 7. Just back and forth between those two until I was done playing my part.

I guess to him what’s a lot and a little reverb differs from me. So I instruct him “The next time I play my part, try moving between 3 to 9. That way it’s like HELLA reverb then almost none” My guitar part sounded so much better that time around and he agreed. He later wanted to try doing it again but moving more on time with the song so it was in sync with the beat.

I would later use that example to describe that he was performing the EXACT task of an LFO. There’s nothing more to the idea. The break down is sort of simple if you can break it down in your head piece by piece.

Structure.

Him moving between 6 – 7 or me asking him to move it between 3 – 9 would be and idea of Intensity or Depth (some manufactures use different terms but really that’s all it is.)

or (some manufactures use different terms but really that’s all it is.) His idea to move it between those two setting at the speed of the song is an example of Rate.

One of the things that really throws people off about what an LFO does is because of how much a parameter (Reverb knob or synth knob or …..Heat Setting knob on the Stove if you could figure out some awesome way of hooking that up.) They think the LFO is making all the audio change happen. Instead that it’s causing something to move back and forth that is creating all of these sounds. If you were to turn the intensity of an LFO to Maximum and it wasn’t assign to move any knob then it would make no noise. It would be like my friend making the moments of turning one of my amp knobs but not actually touching one.

So I use the same method to explain what using and LFO on the oscillator pitch. I played a single note on my guitar and had him move my tuning knob back and forth. It sounded like crap but I’m sure thru a Moog RingMod it probably would have sounded awesome….(hmmmm sh*t…. ebay…BRB!!!!)

It’s coined an LFO because it moves slow, below the human audio range (20hz – 20khz … not important and I’m probably wrong on my values…ahh well) If i ever designed a synth, to make it less confusing I would call it a “SLOW ASS WAVE” or SAW…wait that would be more confusing…. Anyways, it moves that slow because you would want to hear the subtle changes between cycles. Like with the guitar example I would want to hear the 3 setting then the 4 then the 5 so on so forth so I wouldn’t want my friend to move it too fast.

Ideas with LFO’s

There are some “extra features” that an LFO could poses but it’s really just little tricks that people have learned exploring them. Like for example you could use the LFO as an additional voice. If you move a parameter enough and really really fast you could possibly create another tone with it’s affect on whatever parameter you are moving around (This is known as an LFO going into the audio range…. past 20hz <—- remember the human hearing numbers from earlier)

Some synth patches or presets will have all these crazy LFO mappings so if you try to study their presets and try to understand what they did to make that sound, it’s really easy to get lost. I would suggest starting a synth with a blank patch (“initialize” … or whatever you want to call it) and maybe turn on a filter and assign an LFO to move it back and forth. Then see it’s effects. Or you could be a SUPER BadA$$ and move it back and forth with your mouse hahaha. However you want to do it. Assign an LFO and let your Classical Guitarist friend take a break and go smoke a cigarette.

Options

So after you read this article you looked at your favorite synth and thought to yourself, “Drake you’re a liar. My synth has a Delay knob under my LFO settings and you didn’t say anything about delay.” While yes some synths come with this feature, what you know still applies.

Using the same guitar example as I used before I would recreate this setting like this.

If i would tell my friend “Bro…bro bro.. I Love what you’re doing but at the beginning wait like 5 seconds before you starting moving the knob.” and he would be like “Bro” and I would be like “Bro” …..so on and so forth

This extra knob or feature really is just to expand the synths pallet.

Conclusion

Hope this helps and if you have any questions ask me, search the internet, watch videos, etc…

There is a huge amount of information out there than you can really learn anything if you keep looking up more and more knowledge. For example I’m pretty sure I could be an awesome car salesman if i just keep looking car models and what color they all come in and this and that and this and that. As you can tell I like to obsessively take in as much knowledge as I can about something until I accidentally learn things from it.

I remember the first time I tried to modify a synth patch on my friend’s Lead 2, I thought “There is NOOOO WAYYY I will ever understand what the hell is going on.” But it’s something you get better at the more and more you use it. So play around… make sounds that aren’t in key or would never be used in a song. Play and play and play.

Use your knowledge of LFO’s to maybe expand a sound you have programmed or working with right now.