A bit of background – I'd been thinking about doing something like this for longer than I'd had the idea of designing sounds for other composers, so when I started my soundware label Treeswift Audio last year, it was clear from the get-go that I'd eventually have to give the synth workshop idea a whirl, too. In each episode, I'm going to take one of my patches and break it down into its essential components, explain how all the parts work and come together to achieve the sound that I was looking for, share the thought process behind the design decisions, and try to leave as many morsels of general synth technique and theory in my trail as I can muster.
For the first couple episodes at least, I'll be using Zebra; but I'm making a point of keeping explanations as synth-agnostic as possible wherever it makes sense, so it shouldn't be too hard to translate most of the techniques to the synth of your choice.The inspiration was quite plainly to try and make the kind of tutorial that I'd have liked having around back when I got serious about programming synths. In this, it attempts to be pretty much the opposite of the "step-by-step-walkthrough of which knobs to set where to get synth staple sound XY" kind of walkthrough that YouTube is ripe with; I'd much rather use the patches as a springboard for a much more in-depth look at basic, intermediate, and advanced approaches to creating sounds that are truly your own. That's the idea, anyway – you let me know whether I'm making it work.
But an obvious consequence is that the videos are fairly long, especially compared to other YouTube tutorials; think "full podcast episode" rather than "bite-sized coffee break tidbit".So, yeah. If you're at all interested in getting your feet wet on creating your own sounds or broadening your background knowledge, do give this one a spin! Curious to hear what you think. Also, obviously grateful for any shares.
The second episode is in the works with good chances of a release before the year is over, with more in the pipeline; you can always find all episodes on the "watch" section of the Treeswift Audio website, and you can if you don't want to miss a thing.Enjoy!
