Envelopes are an additional type of modulator that can really breathe some life into your patches. Here we’ll go over the basics, identify all the envelopes available within analog, and then hear some examples using Analog’s amplitude envelope.

You’re going to want to get to know the ADSR acronym very well. This stands for Attack Decay Sustain and Release and is actually a quite simple and easy concept to grasp. Envelopes are triggered by incoming midi notes.

The first portion of the envelope, attack, determines how long it takes for the note to reach full amplitude. A fast attack will immediately sound a note at it’s highest volume At increased attack settings the note will start soft and crescendo to its maximum volume. Next Decay is how long it takes for the volume to drop from Full amplitude to the sustain level. Sustain level is where the amplitude will remain as long as the incoming midi note is held out. Finally release is how long it will take the sound to return back to zero amplitude once the note is let go. A quick release will very abruptly cut the sound as the key is let go while increasing release times will cause the note to fade out slowly.

Some Synthesizers such as Spectrsonic’s omnisphere have very complex envelopes with additional stages, patterns, and looping modes but the ADSR is what you should strive to understand first as this will get you through most introductory sound design out there.

Analog has three envelopes available. The amplitude envelope and filter envelope are both located within their respective shells. There are two ways to adjust the ADSR parameters, by clicking and dragging points on the visual representation or by setting the numbers within the corresponding section.

THERE IS ONE OTHER ENVELOPE within analogs oscillator setup – a pitch envelope. This envelope is a little bit simpler as it just has two parameters which CAUSE PITCH BENDING.