I need help making sounds like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FYKmcV6etU
The drop of this one
Anyone know how to make good horn sounds?
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 5 posts since 6 Mar, 2013
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- KVRAF
- 1595 posts since 17 Nov, 2007 from Seattle, WA
The way I figure it, there's two separate parts of what makes a sound, ahem, horny.
The first is the texture, and it's kinda anything goes by now. Used to be, people were trying to make a synthesizer sound more-or-less like real brass horns(a very misguided project). Today, thankfully, not so much. There's not much I can think of for guidelines on the base texture, since there's so much that fits the bill, and tastes evolve to include more and more textures. Better to focus on a specific texture(common dubstep leads, perhaps), and afterward, apply the one criteria I think they've got in common
The criteria that I figure they have in common is the filter envelope. Basically, a horn is a filter envelope in a stab configuration that also includes a clearly audible attack phase. Tweaking filter envelopes to be just right is a royal pain in the neck though... Where is the cutoff, how deep is the envelope, how quick is it, how much resonance, how steep is the cutoff curve... Totally down to taste, and a pain to even know how to talk about. But I think that damn envelope is the key to a good horn(to use the term extremely loosely).
There's some other stuff that I think often gets put in this style category, like a quick pitch envelope, scooping down(or up) very quickly, to give the sound's attack some pzazz and glitter and unicorns or whatever. Or more exotic things(pulse modulation, phase modulation, ring mod) mostly aimed at the early attack of the sound, but that's in the realm of experimentation, not guidelines.
The first is the texture, and it's kinda anything goes by now. Used to be, people were trying to make a synthesizer sound more-or-less like real brass horns(a very misguided project). Today, thankfully, not so much. There's not much I can think of for guidelines on the base texture, since there's so much that fits the bill, and tastes evolve to include more and more textures. Better to focus on a specific texture(common dubstep leads, perhaps), and afterward, apply the one criteria I think they've got in common
The criteria that I figure they have in common is the filter envelope. Basically, a horn is a filter envelope in a stab configuration that also includes a clearly audible attack phase. Tweaking filter envelopes to be just right is a royal pain in the neck though... Where is the cutoff, how deep is the envelope, how quick is it, how much resonance, how steep is the cutoff curve... Totally down to taste, and a pain to even know how to talk about. But I think that damn envelope is the key to a good horn(to use the term extremely loosely).
There's some other stuff that I think often gets put in this style category, like a quick pitch envelope, scooping down(or up) very quickly, to give the sound's attack some pzazz and glitter and unicorns or whatever. Or more exotic things(pulse modulation, phase modulation, ring mod) mostly aimed at the early attack of the sound, but that's in the realm of experimentation, not guidelines.
