How To Make Any Sound From Scratch

or How To Escape The Preset Trap.

These are some condensed notes from Alex Rome's Youtube videos. The idea gels with what I wrote here about 'right use of presets'.

How To Make Any Sound From Scratch (escape the preset trap)

The How To Makey Any Sound video.

Which Synth

Alex uses Serum 2. But much of what he says will apply to many syths.

Basic Structure

1. Oscillators
2. Filters
3. LFO's and Envelopes
4. Effects

Oscillators generate raw audio, which goes through filters and then through effects. LFO's and envelopes change parameters such as oscillator pitch or filter frequency.

Oscillators

• Basic shapes such as sine, saw, square, tri.
  • Tri is brigher than sine, but less than saw or square.
• Unison: multiple oscillator voices per voice
  • Width: how those multiple oscillator voices are spread in the stereo spectrum.

Envelopes

• Basic type is ADSR: Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release
  • Pluck: short A, medium D, low or no S, medium R
  • Pad: slow A, slow D, slow R
  • Stab: fast A, fast R, poss full S
• Some envelopes have more knobs:
  • Such as hold in an AHDSR
• Some envelopes aren't like ADSR, such as on the DX7
• Amp Envelope controls volume of sound, usually it is the first envelope.
• Env parameters
  • Fast vs Slow Attack
  • Fast vs Slow Decay
  • Fast vs Slow Release
  • Decay only matters if sustain is less than 100%

Arpeggiator

Many synths have one. (Serum 1 doesn't, but Serum 2 does.) Some synths can output Midi from their arpeggiator (e.g. ANA2, Serum 2, or Pigments). There are some dedicated midi arpeggiators: Cthulu, for example. And then things like Midi Shaper which generate CC modulations.

Bass

• Filtered square makes a good bass.
• Reese: unison sawtooth through low lowpass filter.

Harmonics

For a low sub bass, we want few harmonics, so either a sine or tri, or some other wave without sharp edges.

A low sine will be audible on many systems, but we can add harmonics using distortion and/or saturation.

Envelopes and LFO's

Use and envelope or LFO to 'turn a knob automatically'.

Example sound to make: one saw osc, one filter, low cutoff, env2→cutoff, short plucky envelope. This gives a basic electro pluck ala Deadmau5.

Example: use LFO to modulate filter instead of envelope. Get wubby sound. Play with lfo shapes.