Waveshaping with Phase Plant

Kilohearts’ Phase Plant includes several killer distortion, modulation and waveshaping tools

01

Begin by creating a group with an analogue oscillator set to a single sine wave, followed by a distortion plugin. By using a sine – a single harmonic – you can hear the precise effect of the distortion. From the minimum setting, increase the drive intensity and listen to the sine wave transformation.

02

The distortion offers six options. The first five options – overdrive, saturate, foldback, sine, and hard clip – have specific distortion properties. The last is ‘quantise’, which is digital. Most of these clip the sine, adding more odd harmonics, but Sine mode applies a sinusoidal curve, which is extremely colourful, resembling certain audio-rate modulation effects.

03

Adjusting the drive value for each of the above five types can act to radically transform the sine wave input, but the Bias control allows for even more detailed waveshaping and tonal control. It adds a DC offset before the distortion, which – when modulated – can deliver results that are akin to pulse-width modulation.

04

Add a second sine wave oscillator above the distortion, to have two oscillators feeding the distortion. Next, using the oscs’ Harmonic tuning parameter, change the pitch of the second oscillator to a different harmonic, then adjust the Drive intensity. Different harmonic pairs will yield drastically different tonal results.

05

Keeping the first sine wave oscillator at the original tuning (first harmonic), experiment with fractional harmonic tunings, like 3.693 or 5.172, combined with different distortion types, drive amounts, and bias settings. Here, the results will be distinctly bell-like, as with ring modulation or FM synthesis.

06

Since increasing the drive amount adds brightness, you can modulate the distortion intensity with an envelope to achieve results similar to modulating filter cutoff with an ADSR. Alternatively, you can set the drive amount to a base value, then modulate bias for timbral shifts. Or modulate both with separate tools!