Which type of synthesis for emulating acoustic and electric instruments?

How to make that sound...
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

While I do get a lot out of my subtractive synth, I wonder which of the other types of synthesis yield even better results when emulating instruments such as a rhythmic Strat or a punchy Jazz Bass or a realistic French horn.

I have never bothered to learn anything beyond subtractive synthesis, which seems the most intuitive to me.

I do have a rompler, but frankly, the guitars and basses are pretty weak.

Post

You can get some interesting results with FM synthesis as well - especially electric guitars and feedback type sounds. But, indeed, subtractive synthesis can work well for guitars and horn sounds - especially if you have a useful feedback path, as with Massive.

Post

Frequency Modulation is probably your best bet in this case. Or additive resynthesis. Both of those would get you good results.

Post

Obviously physical modelling is useful :)

Post

Unaspected wrote:You can get some interesting results with FM synthesis as well - especially electric guitars and feedback type sounds. But, indeed, subtractive synthesis can work well for guitars and horn sounds - especially if you have a useful feedback path, as with Massive.
What do you mean by feedback? Of what to what? 8)

Post

FM, I never really understood how it works, it is so little intuitive :?

Post

fluffy_little_something wrote:
Unaspected wrote:You can get some interesting results with FM synthesis as well - especially electric guitars and feedback type sounds. But, indeed, subtractive synthesis can work well for guitars and horn sounds - especially if you have a useful feedback path, as with Massive.
What do you mean by feedback? Of what to what? 8)
Well. I mentioned two feedback concepts there so it could be confusing.

With regards to horn sounds, Massive has a feedback path in its signal flow and this is very useful for physical modelling. It also makes it possible to recreate an 808 kick reasonably well.

The other concept was not using feedback but creating sounds like an electric guitar feeding back and for that, FM synthesis can sound pretty good.

EDIT: Here's an example of some horns from SticksNStones for Massive:
Horns: An overdriven hunting horn, crazy brass and yes, a demented clown horn.

Post

fluffy_little_something wrote:FM, I never really understood how it works, it is so little intuitive :?
It depends on the instrument. FM8 offers quite a few options which really help when making new sounds. The waveform view is useful. If FM synthesis seems a little scary, try modulating a single sine wave with others and try to make a sawtooth wave from them. If you observe the waveform whilst introducing each modulator you should be able to push it in the right direction. Of course, you can do this with any FM synth and an oscilloscope.

So that can help as a rough guide. Another method that I use is to tune by ear, which I find to be most intuitive. You need to have an idea in mind as to where you want the waveform to go and what qualities you are looking to create - which will influence both pitch and waveform selection.

One more method which can give interesting results is to use FFT to analyse a sound and then select from the stronger frequencies over a reasonable bandwidth. Tune the operators of your FM synth to these values and then experiment with the routing. I've managed to create some pretty good string sounds this way.

When it comes to routing, the first few choices should be logical but after that, feel free to experiment. And don't just leave things as they are. You can achieve some interesting transformations simply by changing the routing matrix.

Post Reply

Return to “Sound Design”