What is a synth?

A piano makes sound with strings and hammers. A synthesizer makes it with electricity, or with code: it starts from a simple tone and shapes it with a few controls. Because every part is adjustable, one synth can sound like a bass, a bell, a pad or a laser. Press Play to hear a short riff on Drift, TuttiDAW’s synth.

Move Cutoff down and the sound gets darker and softer; move it up and it gets brighter. Attack sets how slowly each note fades in, Release how long it rings after it ends. Changes are heard on the next note.

Every lesson in this series shows only a few of the synth’s controls, always with the names they have on the device, so you can find them later in TuttiDAW. By the end you will know what every one of them does.