5 Essential Synth sound design tips for those just starting out

[SOUND7]

Taken from our tips and tricks section at sound7.co.uk we feel these'd be useful for kvr readers starting out in synth sound design.

Start a blank - Always better to start from an Initialization patch than a pre-programmed preset. It'll give you a good grounding to start your sound design and you won't get lost in a sea of parameters trying to find you way out.

Start small - Start by using a simple sawtooth waveform, add a lowpass filter and play with the (ADSR) Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release settings first on the AMPplifer envelope then next on the FILter and build an awareness of how this influences the sounds timbre (colour/tone). Once you've grasped the basics of how these 4 elements interplay with each other you can start building up from there.

Cut your losses - Sometimes you can paint yourself into a corner when in experimental / learning stages. Don't be afraid to cut your losses, save then reinitialise the preset to rebuild on your previous learnings rather than trying to introduce too much into your existing attempts. Adding too many random parameters can often overload a sound. Good sound design is as much about effectiveness through simplicity as it is audio gymnastics via wild modulation settings.

Leave the FX - Don't be tempted to load up on FX, particularly early on. It will cloud your ability to hear minute changes as you experiment with different settings. It can make the sound artificially 'more attractive' to your ear slowing your progress in learning and honing your craft.

Reverse Engineer - Reverse engineer some of your favourite presets from different sound designers. Sometimes the best way to learn is to understand how others got there in the first place. Use these learnings to create something new you can then call your own.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Man after 5 years deeply addictive falling in love with sound design i can say that it's not programming the synth that i am interested so much right now but squeezing the synth until sound start to fill your heart :):)
My advice is to start with default presets and to change some parameters until get used to find what is 'right' for the mix and make instrument u work on sitting better among others :)Cheerz

[BMoore]

So is it "Start blank" or "Reverse engineer presets"?

[Michael L]

Congratulations to the OP for encouraging people to make their own presets rather than to buy them!

Sound designers often use kvr threads as content marketing to sell their presets through links in their signature.

It's great when designers share their methods-- even elementary ones. I look forward to reading more detailed methods in your future posts!

[bleepbleepnonsense]

Recently started back on synth (guitarist primarily) and have been blown away by the amount of free VST synth that have great presets. This should get me back to what I should do, start at the beginning and build up. I like tinkering with settings but a basic sound made by a bit of "theory" will be far more use in the long run. Thanks

[Apratim]

Man i kinda disagree on the fx part
Sometime using only fx can lead to huge or rather i would say enormous amount of sounds from a simple sine wave

Mick gordon for example

And for me sound design all comes down to experimentation of specific things

And reverse engenering of presets is a good way of learning what things does what.. So appreciation on that

[Tj Shredder]

I totaly agree to the fx part. If the fx (often its just reverb) is the only interesting part of the sound you can't really play with it... To add big reverb after you created the essence of a sound can make it stand out. When I browse for sounds and like something with much fx, the first thing I do, is kill the fx, if it still is interesting I switch them back on and use it, if not I don't care about it.
To learn sound design its better without. The big wash that works on any sound doesn't teach you anything... fx is the last part you should work on...
I even prefer synths without any fx chain (with some rare exceptions). There are enough well designed fx out there, I prefer the coder concentrates on the synth side of things. As user I have still all optins to add fx to my liking and with more variety any programmer could deliver within a synth...

[stimresp]

The best way to get a feel for envelopes and LFOs is to attach one to oscillator pitch, so you can clearly hear their behaviour.

Later, adding a small amount if pitch envelope, especially to the attack of at least one oscillator can make a patch subtly more interesting. Same with LFO for vibrato. Try mapping aftertouch to vibrato amount - can really make a patch shine.

Use a tuner to see what modulation amount equates to one semitone, then use this to make your vibrato sound more 'tuneful'.

[Kwurqx]

Reverse Engineer - Reverse engineer some of your favourite presets from different sound designers. Sometimes the best way to learn is to understand how others got there in the first place. Use these learnings to create something new you can then call your own.
[/quote]
+1

About Reverse engineering.

A lot of the Sound design forum is about "How to (re)create..." and is generally not to complicated to follow and/or learn from. I definitely still learn a lot from trying to recreate stuff I hear.
viewforum.php?f=100

About FX.

On the one hand FX (especially FX like Reverb/Chorus/Transient shapers/Exciters/EQ/Resonant filters/Stereo imagers/Delays/Envelope followers/Bit crushers etc.) can "mask" or "change" the signal in such a way that what you hear is actually only partly the result of what you do in your synth. This can definitely hinder the development of actual synth programming skills.

On the other hand, FX are also creative tools (and often an integral part of a particular sound), but to be mastered separately....