I've been singing and playing guitar and bass for some time now, and gained a certain ease at tuning in the right sound I have in mind using a couple of stomp boxes, the right guitar, and the right amp settings. I mean once you get used to your gear, and feel comfortable with rotovibe, flange, wah and disto units, you move into a well known sonic world, and you're able to combine thoses parameters to actually achieve what you hear inside your brain.

I decided to have a go with a couple of soft synths, and some of them have such a tremendous amount of knobs and synthesis modes that the slightest attempt out of the presets world ends up with nothing but unusable noises...

So my question to sound designers is: where to start from? I mean the parameters are almost never correlated to musical parameters we have in mind, you have modulation matrices, LFOs, etc, but no knobs morphing between metallic or wooden feel, huge or small sound, grainy Vs smooth...
You've got to have at least a PhD in DSP processing and physical modelling to achieve the simplest pad sound or what? Sometimes the empirical manner can lead to cool results, but I like to have a little control over what i'm doing!

Are there any reference material I could have a look at? synthesis guidebooks?


cheers!

One of the best out there was originally written as a Virus tutorial,but there's lots of stuff in it for anyone interested in analog synthesis.
http://www.access-music.de/downloads.php4?product=virusb
ew

yeah we like to feel cool. And to do that we have to be kings of knowledge of all things sound including the real lineage analog tie to the very first big bang. (that's a lot of years of reverb) we want things as striped down and barebones as it can get. We don't want a knob that says 'metallicy tone, we want it to say 'ring-mod because we know what that knob turn is doing in the chain of process that eventually leads to sound. With 'real' instruments you physically play them to make the sound. Well, with synths we want to feel like we have actually Created sound too. It's our little way of saying listen to the sound of programming

I bet grabbing triangle 1 and 2, and getting a midi controller would help you out alot.
synth 1 is a great free synth, but I can't remember if it is midi "acceptable" or not (I don't believe it is, but can't really remember)
we can always help you out if you say I want to make a pad for example....
triangle 1 is a great place to start making patches

The thing about synthesis is, like any other music, it takes experience and practice. Lots of time mucking around making stupid noises. Reading some articles helps -- particularly with the less intuitive types of synthesis, like FM -- but ultimately, you just have to try it. A lot.

Having been a decent violinist once... I have to say I prefer that experimental extended foreplay to hours of practice

when starting with any synth, you have to establish the basic cause/effect relationships (trial and error works best). start by turning off as many features as possible, and just experiment with a single oscillator and its envelop. after you get comfortable with that, experiment with the filter to see what it does, in its various modes. as you gain familiarity, gradually add in more stuff (additional oscillators, effects, etc). i recommend starting with a softsynth that has all the functionality on a single page. synth 1 is an excellent synth to learn the basics.

Go here: http://archive.keyboardonline.com/features/soundforum/index.shtml

Download the synth and go through the tutorials. The page i've linked to isn't the first tutorial, but it has links to all of them.

This synth is standalone only, so mainly useful for learning, but it is a great tool for understanding basic synthesis.

Model E also a very straight forward synth to start with

Ohh an interesting topic!!

i also would love to become a "sound designer"
but it´s alot of work, e.g. if you are out to do a specific sound you have to know it´s timbre. You have to know how all sorts of waveforms sound and interact with eachother. You have to have a understanding about different synth constructions.

you probably have to know pretty much about scales and music theory and physics, and also you have to have a wide knowledge about effects and how they form a sound.. you have to know alot about frequencies..

The understanding of all Parameters and how they interact with eachother...


damn the list goes on, i might be a sound engineer in the year of 2050....

an idea would be to share methods and ways to do different sounds, just like VitaminD did with "making a kickdrum in synth1" it was very informative and good, kind like step by step...

if we was to start such thread and discuss matters like this i know i would be there all the time!

we could call it "Sound Design, tips and tricks"

if i start a topic about this will you guys join me for some higher education!?
anyways ill start writning on something and we will see how many people comes to share and discuss

after cutting my sonic teeth w/ fx pedals, i consider myself very fortunate to have bought a nord lead.. not to be a priss about having one, a discrete knob for every param is an asset.. and the sound engine (oc equivalent to synth 1) is well rounded w/ minimal number of elements.. only two oscillators, but 'strategic' functions like the cross-osc FM function allow a wide range of timbres w/o a crowd of options (what people do w/ jp8ks w/o FM is beyond me :p)

seems that being limited to this platform for an extended time helped me to patch resourcefully.. 2 osc vas seem like the bottom of the ladder w/ s/w available today, but it's very rare i'll hear/think somethnig i don't feel like i could come close to w/ the nord.. in general, 2 oscs w/ some interplay options ought to keep you busy for a long time.

i'm not saying get a nl (tho the pitch stick is a necessity for machine based music) but overall it's very thoughtfully designed, ie. features are there to be useful not competetive :p and so a pleasure to use. i guess today it'd be more prudent to get a knob box and drop a cardboard template over it.

You are probably talking about subtractive synthesis.
It is very simple.

Make sure you begin with an empty patch(init ?)

Start off by oscillator section and select the waveforms (triangle, sine, quare etc...). There is a mixer to mix the basic oscillator sounds + noise.

The rest is filter and evelopppe.

Filter kind of "muffles" the sound and squeek.

Enveloppes make stuff move like filter and sound volume. Enveloppes are "ADSR" : Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release. Attack is when you hit the key, decay is right after so is sust. and release is when you release the notes.

You can program quite a bit of other stuff too you will learn in time.

Once you understand the basics of the synthisis structure you are working with ( such as analog simulation) then you can design any patch. As some mentioned here, you start with 1 Osc, select a waveform, then the filter / ADSR settings, then the amp ADSR settings. Then try adding LFO and other modulations to the filter or osc. Then add another osc, and detune them slightly. Look for other things to tweak.
Also, you can try pulling up a preset you like, and simply change the filter and envelope settings to taste. Another trick is to Mute oscs'ers or voices ( you can do this in Crystal) and work on gettings one sound section at a time.Then combining them together for an end result.

TimC

To learn the basics of synthesis in a simple, straightforward way, I recommend checking out Synthedit (www.synthedit.com). The best way I know to learn about sound design is to start at the beginning, with a single osc, a single filter, envelope generator, etc. and build from there. If you start with all these knobs and parameters that you have no conceptual knowledge of, how are you to build that perfect patch from scratch, as a sound designer should?

Play around with the various ways of patching together a synth, and you are bound to stumble upon such abstract concepts as FM, vocoder, AM, additive, etc. I don't think you really understand synthesis until you actually see how synthesis works.

L8RZ

ATA

Start with a simple synth. Wasp is great for getting started. It and SimSynth are nice because they display graphically how the knobs are impacting the envelopes.

I'll agree with jzero on this one. Discovery will make a great synth too. It doesn't have the graphical envelopes or anything but once you start getting into using it you can't stop tweaking!

Or you could try SynthOne:

OK I think I eventually find myself in the same position I was when I started playing with stomps! the empirical approach takes heaps of time, but time's what's needed. I remember a demo of absynth I saw at a friend's place, he used the patch named "hendrix in the drainer" or smth like that. whoa man this one was just grainy as vintage fuzz can be, but yet with a certain thick solid feel to it, clean edges and balanced spectrum! That's the kind of sounds I'm looking for!

I must say that I still admire authors of FM synth banks, as those guys seem to go through a lot of suffering programming those boxes. not to mention modular synths ala Moog... unbelievable!

and what if I want to approach the sound of a spaceship core engine, the sort of special FX you hear in matrix like movies, with a low sustained rumble perturbated by radio laser interference like noises?

thanks a lot guys, I'll just have to go through this initiatic rite to sound design then!

I like that demo of SynthOne by morphtec very much! Sweet!

Me too floyd... it´s very cool!
gonna try that synth later

thx for handing the link Mr Smart

Mighty_Hero wrote:

Synth 1 is a great free synth, but I can't remember if it is midi "acceptable" or not (I don't believe it is, but can't really remember)

Newest version (1.6) is equipped with midi control... and it's rather nicely done, Synth1 remembers the CC setup

I honestly think this is one of the best VSTis currently available. It has all the basic substractive synthesis features, is very CPU-friendly and sounds really, really good. And as a bonus, even the graphical user interface is configurable.

Monsterbeetle, absynth has the same structure :

Oscillator (waveforms / FM + ringmod)
Filter
mixer
Effects (reverb, delay etc...)
Enveloppes

Absynth has a few features that make its sound distinct : The "COMB" filter and the waveshaper.

THe "comb" filter is probably whats being used for that Hendrix patch, if I remember right. Look for comb.

The waveshaper simply distorts the output of the oscillator mix.

yul wrote:

Absynth has a few features that make its sound distinct : The "COMB" filter and the waveshaper

Comb filters aren't that unique;it's what most chorus/flanger effects are.The REALLY unique feature of Absynth is its envelope implementation;practically everything on the synth can be controlled by its own envelope,and the envelopes can have up to 63 breakpoints apiece.That and the mixture of synthesis types(additive/subtractive/FM/ring modulation/sampling/granular-often all in the same patch )is what makes Absynth such a great tool.
ew

SynthOne (not Synth1) is a great tool for a newbie just to figure out what shapes sound like what, and what a cutoff knob does. Actually It's a good synth on it's own if you're handy with some good effects plugins.

Honestly, with a few instances of these and some good effects and a little know how you can make some good sounds. It's all about learning