'81: How to Play the Synthesizer - The Magnetic Fields

Take a single oscillator

Producing a drone

Send it to the wave shaper

Altering the tone

This can be a triangle

Sawtooth or a square

Modulate the pulse width

Nobody will care

This is how to play the synthesizer

This is how to play the synthesizer

Now go to the filter bank

Low, high, band or notch

Fiddle with the cutoff point

Pour yourself a Scotch

Modern filters oscillate

All by themselves

It sounds like you’re torturing

Little metal elves

This is how to play the synthesizer

This is how to play the synthesizer

Nextly, shape the envelope

AKA ADSR

Attack, delay, sustain, release

Which means how loud you are

One millisecond to the next

Whether you pluck or lurch

Or ooze like an organist

In a Venusian church

This is how to play the synthesizer

This is how to play the synthesizer

Now you play the synthesizer

Don’t be lazy now

Make it hiss like rattlesnakes

Or moo like a cow

Crash like a hundred marbles

Smashing on the floor

You can make a thousand sounds

Never heard before

This is how to play the synthesizer

This is how to play the synthesizer