I would like to preface by saying that I am pretty good at making sounds on synths. I make them quite quick too. However, I have been stagnant at making GREAT sounds. They rarely come to me. I think my biggest issue was making them more interesting. I wanna be the guy that people ask “how did he make that sound!!!” Everything else comes to me great! Ideas, arrangement, rhythms, mixing, etc. I can make a complete track, and I feel like they can destroy dancefloors. However, if my sounds were only better…
I was talking to my buddy Rob, and he was explaining to me how he approaches synthesis and sound design. He walked me through everything, and it didn’t hit me, until today, I was watching a video at lunch on youtube. Here is the tip, and hopefully it helps you as much as it helped me.
Obviously, you have your waveforms. There are only two things that can move/modulate a waveform. LFO’s and Envelopes. Period. So, what I got out of it was, you should make your sound. Make it sound good. But then start to move around the knobs on your synth. Move them back and forth or just make them change. Basically, what you are doing is mimicking an LFO or an envelope. So I know that if I turn the filter cutoff up and down and up and down, and it sounds pleasing to my ears, then I should set it in stone, right? Well thats great and all, but how? The LFO! Map the LFO to the filter cutoff. Now, move on to another sound. Keep going till you have something that is either interesting or you are pleased with. You should view it as layers. There are multiple layers to a sound. Movement, no matter how subtle or outrageous would be what make the sound interesting. Even in music hits, even the simplest sound has some kind of movement to it.
If you have tips, please leave them here. Perhaps we can all learn from one another.
Awesome tip man! I am definitely going to start doing that when I get home!
I’m starting a new track to this is the perfect time for me to try this!
Question 4 you howie…
I just recently stumbled upon using the instrument track for synthesis…
Do you or anybody else use this often?
I guess my latest tip goes like this:
Try experimenting with the instrument rack in ableton and dropping different synths into it. Or just copies of the same synth with different sounds that you have created from scratch… By doing this you can come up with some really cool & interesting sounds by layering individual sounds together. You can definitely find some cooler stuff doing that then trying to piece presets together… On top of that you can group all of these things together and apply the same FX automation to these sounds to get some really cool/crazy results.
You can also layer sounds together other ways, but the instrument rack has been good 2 me.
Thanks man, I appreciate it.
On the instrument rack thing, I personally dont use it. I can see how someone would be attracted to it, but I like to come up with my own sounds. Something that I find that I am really good at is shaping my sound with effects, etc. But yeah, this is just another tool that makes Ableton such a great instrument. I am personally switching to Logic, so there is more of a traditional approach to sound design, but I have worked in Live for 2 years or so, so I am pretty good at knowing what everything does.
I will say though, that I will use Live together with Logic. I am gonna probably start making sounds in Live in the session view and then bouncing them to audio and dragging them to Logic. I love the way Logic looks and feels and the options that comes with it.
well I think you have the best tip Howiegroovie, the best way I found to get interesting sounds is modulation and especially with LFO ( even with subtle settings ) you can modulate filter cutoff with it but also pitch, detune…
if you don’t do that, all your sounds will appear to be quite “static”
I really dont think we should let this topic die guys.
Hey Howie,
What is your take on presets and tweaking them? I totally agree Synthesis is table stakes for any producer…
Use macros to control multiple parameters instead of one.
This way you can manipulate sounds even further to your liking and on the fly as well.
Try things you think wouldn’t sound good and try and get them better. Its a good way to learn your synth and chances are you’ll stumble on to something you like or at least an idea of where to go with the patch. Some of my favorite sounds I’ve done were accidents just from taking a sound I hated and “polishing the turd” so to speak.
[quote]addy.hn (27/08/2010)[hr]Hey Howie,
What is your take on presets and tweaking them? I totally agree Synthesis is table stakes for any producer…[/quote]
I believe in it fully. But I also think you should learn synthesis though. Heck, I dont think using a straight preset is bad. If it fits musically, who cares?
[quote]saulable (27/08/2010)[hr]Use macros to control multiple parameters instead of one.
This way you can manipulate sounds even further to your liking and on the fly as well.[/quote]
Sounds like we have a massive user!
[quote]howiegroove (27/08/2010)[hr][quote]saulable (27/08/2010)[hr]Use macros to control multiple parameters instead of one.
This way you can manipulate sounds even further to your liking and on the fly as well.[/quote]
Sounds like we have a massive user![/quote]
That and the built in ableton analog and operator synths.
I just got Massive too - pretty awesome but a hard one to crack - thank goodness for the internet
[quote]slender (27/08/2010)[hr]I just got Massive too - pretty awesome but a hard one to crack - thank goodness for the internet[/quote]
+1 to that. they have a lot of great presets… but a real pain 2 learn at first.
makes me appreciate sylenth all the more. haha
I think I make good music. Im good at synthesis, but I have a ton of room for improvement. Luckily for me, I learned how to use a sampler really well. I found Live’s sampler easy to use and I am quick at it. Thats how I ended up designing all my sounds from found sounds and stuff.
Ermmm my first tip would be to learn envelopes and understand what they can do. À Well placed envelope on say THE filter cutoff can make all the difference. Second im à big fan of layering sounds. But like not in the way of sticking ten different sounds together but more in the way of say à Rolling trance bassline. You have à sub, something in THE low mids à Nice bit of top end etc thats what you want when you layer sounds make zure you cover the full frequency range for à much fuller sound.
A good tip would be also to mix different virtual synths to make different timbres for a sound, each virtual instrument has its own “sonic” character and can give very interesting results
It’s also in my opinion much more effective to go to a synth already knowing which type of sound you’re looking for so that way you don’t have to browse through 250 presets trying to be inspired, that way you’ll be trained to recognize which oscillator can help to achieve the sound you want to make
Automation Automation Automation 
Did you Automate the last two “Automation” 's so that they’d be exactly like the 1st?
yep sure did man !
Slick… Would love 2 see a Tut on QWERTY Mate 