The soft oscilloscope simulates a real XY oscilloscope in producing Lissajous
curves.
The Oscilloscope has three modes of operation, which can be selected by clicking
on the down arrow at the top left corner of the Oscilloscope screen.
When you play your MIDI keyboard, the frequencies of the notes you play will
be displayed on the scope in real time. Play a few chords at first to warm it
up. The first frequency is sent to the X -axis, the second and third frequencies
are sent to the Y-axis. Any subsequent frequencies replace the third note. The
frequencies are displayed in Hertz in the 3 boxes on the left hand side of the
screen, with the name of the chord, if any, in the box below. The oscilloscope
gets the same frequency data that the Pitch Palette uses to calculate the tuning
message that is being sent to your synth.
For example, select the Harmonic Classic scale, set the Key and Root to C, and
play a C and a G notes on your keyboard. Now click the Tempered Toggle to Tempered.
The movement on the scope represents the amount by which the beats are out of
phase, or out of tune. Notice how the scope produces different patterns with
the same notes, depending on which note is played first.
Experiment! See what happens if you change the Root from C to D!
You can input frequencies of your own and experiment further with Lissajous curves.
This mode does not provide any audio.
Selecting this mode displays more options on the left hand side of the oscilloscope. This mode can be used to visually compare the tuning resolution factor of various synthesizers (see The MicroTuner). The default Interval is a major triad chord. You can select other intervals by clicking on the down arrow in that section of the screen.
This mode does not provide any audio.
You can choose to display the oscilloscope in one of five different sizes by
clicking the spin button.