request for a synth tutorial

[Machinated]

is there any really competent synth guys here?

whenever im messing around with synths, im just looking through presets, and sometimes aimlessly changing parameters.

is there anyone that could give a bit more insight into synthesizers and how to achieve certain sounds with examples?

 

[James-Doolan]

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm a lot of reading for you my friend

 

[updog]

I think you're better off reading mags like Future Music or Computer Music. They have tutorials like this all the time, in like every issue.



edit. Or that ^

 

[beyond dead]

a buddy of mine told me that you are better off playing with presets, and tweaking thm bit. I guess the big time hip hop producers leave the synth making to professional geek types who understand that shit. Its important to have an understanding of how to engineer a synth sound, but its hard to be creative when your brain is bogged down with so much technical tasks.

 

[vespiz]

I'd be happy to help however I can.

Learn about subtractive synthesis first. Unless we're talking about more "rare" synthesis', like FM, additive, granular etc, subtractive is pretty much the basis of most synths these days. Be it analog* synths, workstations, romplers, whatever. The names might change per model / make used (VCF - TVF, filter - traveller, etc..) but the core idea behind these are pretty much the same.

That being said, the best way to learn is to just muck about these things!
Find a preset you like? Tweak it! Find out what makes the core sound (the "oscillator") of the patch and how does changing that affect things?

I love twirling knobs and sliding.. er.. slides on analog synths, but with modern workstation/romplers, I've found that people more skilled than me have created some pretty damn good presets that, when tweaked properly, should just about work (in whatever it is I'm doing). Maybe I am getting lazy??

* analogue, if you like..

 

[Jind]

One of the best books I've come across - it helped me understand what I'm looking at when dealing with synthesis. While it is about Cakewalk synths in particular - it also has a great amount of general detail on the whole synthesis mechanism.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Cakewalk-Synthesizers-Presets-Power-Second/dp/1435455649[/ame]

 

[submersed]

One thing in particular I'm confused about when it comes to synthesizers, is the use of automation to change the particular synth sound on a track. An example of this can be heard in video 1 below at the beginning of the song, as the synth sort of goes from a very strong saw, to a more mellow saw.



As well as here, at 1:53, when the synth fades from again, a relatively strong saw, to an almost 'under-water' sounding spacey tone. and again, at 3:10.



How would you do something like this, using Cubase as a DAW, with a plug-in such as Nexus for your synth effects?

 

[theRev]

What are you looking for in this particular case it's some sort of resonance control that change in a sine way along time... Ehm...

If you look at most of today software synths, they have resonance controls and a way to apply a sine modifier to it and synchronize it with you host application also...

My tip is to start fiddling around with a powerfull but not so complex software synth. If you do not have any basics at all, and someone puts you in front of "beasts" like Sytrus (the stellar synth you find in Fruity loops) probably your head will start to hurt much more sooner than you actually start to learn how things works...

Try for example Toxic (I think it's still produced by ImageLine ) it's a very powerfull synth to create stuff from scratch, with the ability to control lots of parameters, BUT it mantain a preatty much polished and "simple" interface that won't scare you as soon as you launch it...

My day job is 3D artist, so I use very complex programs like Maya and stuff, and still today a lot of synths interfaces just makes me feel like a stupid idiot

 

[vespiz]

For automating synth parameters in a DAW, you have to (usually) assign a (MIDI)parameter to a control, like filter cutoff, and then draw automation curves in the DAW (MIDI or instrument tracks).
This sounds a bit too broad an answer, but the specifics change from DAW to instrument on how to actually achieve this.

Or do it the old school way of twisting a knob and record the result! That is if you have a hardware synth, if not, well.. connect a MIDI controller with knobs and then assign a controller to a parameter and off you go.

(Note: I'm at work right now, so I can't listen to these examples.. might try later when I'm at home)

 

[The Unavoidable]

Whenever I'm doing synths I just push buttons until it sound cool, so +1 to this.

 

[JonWormwood]

It helps to have an idea of what sort of sound you're aiming for.

 

[vespiz]

Submersed: Had a quick listen and it seems that they're messing with the filter cutoff, with the resonance up pretty high.

As to the sound itself, in the first vid it sounds to me (heh) that it's an osc sync sound - one oscillator ("slave") synchronized with the other osc ("master"). The master runs as normal, and the synced osc re-starts it's waveform at the beginning of the master-osc's cycle. The pitch of the slave osc determines the "edge" of the sound.

The second sound is bit more "average" super-saw - as made popular by the Roland JP-8000, essentially several saw waves stacked in unison.

With some tasty and clever fx use, they do the job!

 

[mick thompson]

what i'd like to learn more then actually programming fm's etc is how to actually write out midi correctly to create accents in my music. all i can seem to do when fucking with a midi keyboard or with the pencil tool is make standard hits. very dull. example i have some guitar midi packs but they're practically useless to me because i find it very hard to get them sounding natural.

 

[vespiz]

Velocity controlling amplitude (volume) and filters (brightness) come to my mind.
Also, avoid the grid to make it more human. We're sloppy creatures.

 

[submersed]

Submersed: Had a quick listen and it seems that they're messing with the filter cutoff, with the resonance up pretty high.

As to the sound itself, in the first vid it sounds to me (heh) that it's an osc sync sound - one oscillator ("slave") synchronized with the other osc ("master"). The master runs as normal, and the synced osc re-starts it's waveform at the beginning of the master-osc's cycle. The pitch of the slave osc determines the "edge" of the sound.

The second sound is bit more "average" super-saw - as made popular by the Roland JP-8000, essentially several saw waves stacked in unison.

With some tasty and clever fx use, they do the job!

Thanks for the tips, I'm kind of confused as to how to go about synchronizing the two together in order to make the 'slave' re-start it's waveform at the beginning of the first oscillators cycle. I've put a screenshot of some controls I'm working with below, if you have any suggestions related directly to those, maybe I can get a better understanding.

For automating synth parameters in a DAW, you have to (usually) assign a (MIDI)parameter to a control, like filter cutoff, and then draw automation curves in the DAW (MIDI or instrument tracks).
This sounds a bit too broad an answer, but the specifics change from DAW to instrument on how to actually achieve this.

Or do it the old school way of twisting a knob and record the result! That is if you have a hardware synth, if not, well.. connect a MIDI controller with knobs and then assign a controller to a parameter and off you go.

(Note: I'm at work right now, so I can't listen to these examples.. might try later when I'm at home)

So I guess the best thing for me to do here would be to find a tutorial specifically for Cubase for creating these MIDI parameter controls? I really have no idea how to do that. I have the controls on my plug-in, I'm just not sure with Cubase how to manipulate them with automation.

These are the controls present on the synth.

These are my options for automation in the drop down box. As you can see, in the quick controls panel, there are 'nexus' related controls, which effect the controls on the plug-in, however I cannot find those in the automation portion. Is there a way to control the 'quick-controls' with automation maybe?

 

[mick thompson]

Velocity controlling amplitude (volume) and filters (brightness) come to my mind.
Also, avoid the grid to make it more human. We're sloppy creatures.

true but its hard as fuck to make a midi keyboard sound like a guitar when i've been playing guitar for 10 years and i know how to create dynamic accents whilst playing naturally

 

[vespiz]

Thanks for the tips, I'm kind of confused as to how to go about synchronizing the two together in order to make the 'slave' re-start it's waveform at the beginning of the first oscillators cycle. I've put a screenshot of some controls I'm working with below, if you have any suggestions related directly to those, maybe I can get a better understanding.

I'm not familiar with that plug-in synth. You'd have to find "Sync" or "Osc Sync" or the like somewhere, which does that er.. sync-ing for you automatically, you can't really do it otherwise. It might also be something like "modulate osc 1 with osc 2" or something like that (tho' that would probably be more like frequency modulation..). Maybe that one doesn't have it implemented? Not every synth does.

Note that the BPM Sync is not what I'm talking about (that seems to refer to the Morphmode(?) being synced to the incoming MIDI clock).

As for the controllers, I'm afraid you'll have to look them up, I haven't used Cubase or Logic since.. eh.. never?

There seems to be a "More..." on the drop-down menu, maybe there's, you know, more controllers? Also, if possible, there might be a way to assign MIDI CC controllers (0-127) to the parameters if there are no set assignments. Maybe not, again this is plug-in dependent.

I know that in Pro Tools, the plug-ins have an "Auto" menu, which contain all the available parameters that you can automate, usually everything the plug-in contains. Don't the plug-ins in Cubase have something similar?

 

[vespiz]

true but its hard as fuck to make a midi keyboard sound like a guitar when i've been playing guitar for 10 years and i know how to create dynamic accents whilst playing naturally

This is my experience as well. But you'd have to have a very good sound to begin with, one that let's you do all the little nuances and playing idiosyncracies that you get from playing a guitar. A keyboard with aftertouch, velocity and of course pitch/modulation bender/wheels are almost essential for getting anything out from these sounds.

It seems so simple to get sounds out of a guitar, but when you start to think what really goes into it.. I mean, with just a pick striking a string and a finger, you get (at least) amplitude and timbre, pitch and modulation (vibrato/bend). Now, that times 2-6 and what with all the little slides and pull-offs etc.. And then how the amp reacts to the playing..

Ye gods! It's easier just to play the guitar parts down with a real guitar!

 

[ahjteam]

Here is a minitutorial that sucks balls (I used the Synth1 for the examples, it is a free two oscillator synth):

When I lived with my roommate last year, he pretty well explained the very basics of subtractive synth programming, but being an idiot I forgot most of it. But the thing I did remember, that it is a lot to start programming, if you have a goal.

Let's say you want to get an acoustic finger played bass or something similiar. Well, then make a small midiloop, that works in the bass region (which is C0-C2) and plays similiar monophonic stuff. You have done 50% of the job there, no matter what type of sound you have. If you try to get the bass sound from C4-C6 area, you have in instant cup of fail in your hands.

Then what I did was that I started from "scratch". I turned all effects etc off and made it as barebone as possible. Then what you want to do, is to determine the oscillator wavetype. I tried the oscillators out and the supersaw and squarewave worked nicely for bass type sound. I ended up using only the square wave from OSC2 and didn't use the OSC1 at all. Then you want to fiddle around with the ADSR curve. If you think what kind of instrument finger bass is, it generally has a pretty long sustain and about medium attack, then adjust the decay and release until it sounds good. As we all know how to use EQ, delay, chorus etc, I don't bother explaining them. Then do the same for the filter.

This was what I ended up with: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1338211/tut/synth/bass.mp3

And when you start to get better, you notice that it's pretty much as easy to make the whole song with synths compared to writing it with guitars, and it takes same or a whole lot less time and you can usually even get better results too :zombie:

 

[Ermz]

The latest two issues of Computer Music are entirely dedicated to synths and sampling. As in the entire magazine, all about both from the ground up. That's what I'm using as my starting point.