Mixing several wave tables at once with modulated weights lets a wavetable oscillator morph timbre continuously

The multiple-wavetable variant blends two or more wave tables simultaneously rather than looping over one. Each table’s contribution is a weight, and those weights can be driven by a control signal — key velocity, an envelope, an LFO, or a position knob — so the timbre morphs smoothly and continuously while a note sounds. Because the tables are mixed (not concatenated), the loop period and hence the pitch are unchanged; only the spectrum shifts. This is the basis of modern ‘wavetable synths’, which typically expose a large bank of single-cycle frames and a position parameter that sweeps/interpolates through them. It contrasts with single-cycle (fixed timbre) and multi-cycle (period-lengthening concatenation).

Examples

Blend a sine and a sawtooth table with the mix ratio driven by velocity: a soft keypress gives a near-sine tone, a hard press adds the saw’s high partials. Sweeping the ratio with an envelope brightens the note as it is held.

Assessment

Design a pad that starts mellow and grows buzzy while a key is held, at constant pitch. Which variant do you use, which two waveforms, and what modulation source drives the blend weight — and why must pitch stay fixed?