Audio Damage Phosphor - Manual (Page 8)

The groups of vertical sliders near the top of Phosphor’s windows are called the partial sliders. The partial
sliders control the level of the partials used to calculate Phosphor’s wave tables, and hence control the tone of
the oscillators. Each oscillator has its own set of sixteen partial sliders which set the relative amplitudes of
each of the sixteen partials. The left-most slider sets the level of the fundamental, that is, the lowest-
frequency partial, which has the frequency of the note you’re playing. The next slider controls a partial whose
frequency is twice that of the fundamental (i.e., one octave above the root pitch). The next slider’s partial has
a frequency of three times that of the fundamental, and so on. A drawing of the resulting wave shape is
superimposed over the sliders. As you move a slider, you’ll see the wave shape change and hear the tone
change.
If you raise only the left-most partial slider, you’ll get a single sine wave with a pure tone:
If you raise a couple more sliders to the right, you’ll see some wiggle added to that wave, and hear higher
harmonics in the sound:
The CLEAR and RAND buttons above the partials sliders provide a couple of editing shortcuts. Clicking the
CLEAR button sets all of the sliders to zero. Clicking the RAND button sets all of the sliders to zero and then
sets about a third of them, chosen at random, to random levels.