Sawtooth Wave

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The sawtooth wave is a kind of non-sinusoidal waveform. It is named a sawtooth based on its resemblance to the teeth on the blade of a saw. The convention is that a sawtooth wave ramps upward and then sharply drops. However, there are also sawtooth waves in which the wave ramps downward and then sharply rises. The latter type of sawtooth wave is called a 'reverse sawtooth wave' or 'inverse sawtooth wave'. As audio signals, the two orientations of sawtooth wave sound identical. A sawtooth wave's sound is harsh and clear and its spectrum contains both even and odd harmonics of the fundamental frequency. Because it contains all the integer harmonics, it is one of the best waveforms to use for synthesizing musical sounds, particularly bowed string instruments like violins and cellos, using subtractive synthesis.