Yamaha EL-500 Owner's Manual - Page 116

AWM Operators Sampling 6 Voice Editing Basics The EL-700/500 Electone uses a versatile tone generation system developed by Yamaha that is capable of producing an exceptionally wide range of voices. To be more specific, the system uses individual sound sources that "modulate" each other's frequencies and thus create complex sounds not possible by the ordinary mixing of those sound sources. 1) Operators There are two types of Operators: the one is the sophisticated AWM Operators that are the backbone of the Electone's authentic voices, the other is called FM Operators. An FM Operator is a sound generator that produces one very simple type of sound: a pure sine wave. A sine wave by itself is not very interesting to listen to; however, when one sine wave is used to modulate a second sine wave, together they result in a new, complex waveform. FM Operator Modulator Carrier Structure of the Operators AWM FM Operators 1~4 FM Operators 5~8 Voice Edit 8 Voice Algorithm Examples Modulators 2) Modulators, Carriers and Algorithms The top Operator, which sends the modulation signal is, not surprisingly, called the modulator. The bottom Operator, which receives or "carries" the modulated sine wave and outputs the resulting sound, is called the carrier. The complexity or brightness of the sound depends on the output level of the modulator. This kind of arrangement in which Operators are "stacked" together is called an algorithm. With eight sine wave Operators available for stacking, the various algorithms can produce a wide variety of sounds. Modulators Modulators Carriers Carriers Carriers 116