Sound Design: Making Cutting Edge Sounds With Any Synthesizer

1. Intro: My name is solo Ray. I'm a music producer and I've been producing music for over 15 years, playing in different bands and touring across the country. And I want to share what I've learned about synthesisers with you. I remember when I first started getting really excited about synthesisers. And I would play different soft sense in my computer and hear the sound coming out and I would get really excited about it, but I would have no clue how to actually adjust the things that I was hearing, the sound that was in my head. To get that to come out of the speakers was just a complete mystery. And identify things that I liked and disliked when I would just scroll through presets. But I didn't know the terms in order to actually troubleshoot the problem of, to adjust this specific part of the sound. Once I've really started understanding how to adjust those things and what those different terms are. It just opened up a whole world of sound design for me? Because every synth is basically the same thing. If you learn one synthesizer really well. You've basically learned to them all at least how to navigate them. And that's what I want to do in this course is to teach you how to understand how synthesisers really work so that you can take the sounds in your head and make them come out of the speakers. You can hear something and understand what it is that you like and what it is that you don't like, and how to go about solving that problem. Once you learn one synthesizer, you learn them all there just a couple of key principles that all synthesisers, vintage, new plug-ins, hardware units. They're all using the same set of rules. They're just mixing them in different ways. So this course is all about explaining what those are and giving you the tools to make the sounds that you want to make will also go over specific use cases of those tools. So how to make things like a base or a pad or leads those sort of specific examples of using those tools. How we can use them to create the things that we want to create. And then there's a whole host of different applications blurring the lines between bass pad, lead keys. There are so many different areas that you can use these tools in. My hope for this course is that you would finish and B, so filled with inspiration from all these different tools that you would go and just make amazing stuff. I'm gonna be working out of Logic Pro ten and using a lot of the built-in instruments in there. But you can follow along into whatever DAW you have. I'll use primarily first-party plug-ins that are just bundled with logic. But I will use third-party stuff from time to time just to show what's possible when you start to branch out into other world. Again, just to provide a sense of inspiration and hopefully give you ideas of how to use these tools. In the class description, I put a download link for the presets that we made during this course. Please download those and check those out. And if you make your own, I'd love to hear what those are. If you can attach that to a Dropbox link or something and then post that in the class discussion. I think it'd be really cool that we can compare each other sounds and get feedback and start to create a library of presets and a library of sounds all from the students of this class. I think that'd be amazing. So please, if you want to share that preset, create a project in this class and you can attach the link there. Lastly, if you have any questions or you just want to reach out and connect, you can connect with me on social media at solo underscore, underscore ray, or you can get in touch with me here on Skillshare and I'll respond and get in touch with you that way too. Alright, with that established, let's dive in. 2. Filters: Let's start out by explaining a couple of key principles that are always going to be relevant when designing a sound for a synth. The thing that I think is the easiest to understand is the concept of the filter. So what the filter is doing is removing things from a sound. That's all it's doing. And there are 1 billion types of filters that remove different types of frequencies in different patterns, in different ways. But at the end of the day, a filter is filtering out certain frequencies. So a good way to demonstrate this is I have a synth here loaded up pigments by arteriole. And I just like the synth because I think visually it's easy to understand what's happening. So I think it's a good teaching tool for that. But you can follow along and whatever Cynthia like. So right here I just have a, just an analyzer which is an EQ, but I'm only using it just to see what the sound is. So I have a sawtooth loaded up in a lot of sense, this is just the default. You go to initialize the preset and just give me a blank, no settings, normal preset, It's just gonna be one sawtooth with nothing on it. And so that's what we have here. And we can see what that looks like on the graph. You can see our first note, which is called the fundamental, is as nice clear bell. And then there's kinda repeating shapes that go up and up and up. And then if we do a different note, C lower notes start lower, higher notes start higher. But it's all based around this idea of, here's your starting note is that fundamental, and then the harmonics extend up through the frequency spectrum. Let's start with a low-pass filter, which is the most common filter. And 90% of the time it's going to be what you want and need for designing a sound. It takes a frequency point and all the frequencies below that, it let's pass through and all the frequencies above that, it attenuates down. So hence the name low-pass. It lets the low frequencies pass through the filter. So I will start with the filter all the way up or all the way open. I will close it down, alternate down and you'll see the frequencies start to turn down, starting up higher and then rolling down lower. And this kind of shape of the filter is what is happening. It's taking the slope and applying that to the frequencies. So let's watch that happen over here. So you can kinda see this shape is kinda helpful to see because it is a good indicator of what it's actually doing to the sound. So that is the cutoff frequency, that's the frequency that the filter is set at. And then everything below that cutoff frequency passes through. Everything above, gets attenuated down. But you'll notice here that curve is pretty subtle. It's not super aggressive. So even though I set it at 300, if I play a note that starts above 300, you know, I still hear it. It's still, stuff's coming through. So that is the slope of the filter. If this was like a complete brick wall, which I don't even think this has a brick wall, but like if I artificially make a filter in here, this just like a brick wall, which I can do by making a high cut, low-pass same thing and making the slope so that it's literally a wall. When you hear that one. It's not like it's an interesting sound, but it's not exactly musical. Which could be an effect if you're going for, but most of the time you'll have some sort of softer slope like this. Because that allows you to just have a little bit more musical information. Because most of the time I still want to hear the sound. I don't want completely muffled. And so those softer slopes are kind of nice, is still letting something breathe. That's the cut-off frequency. There's one other control on most filters and that is the resonance. So let's take our cutoff filter and let's put it somewhere around the middle where it's cutting some stuff out, but we still have a good amount of information. The resonance is going to add a peek at the cutoff point. So if this is set at 880 hz, then this resonance is going to add a little bit of a point to that. If I turn it all the way up, you'll see on the shape what it's doing here. It's like really exaggerating that point. And so we can hear what that sounds like. So if I move the filter out with a really high resonance, it'll be a pretty recognizable sound. That's, that's the cheesy filter sound. Resonances are really helpful for just like fine-tuning where your filter is sitting and kinda how it's taking stuff away from the sound. But when you start moving the filter around with a high resonance, it just has a very specific sound. And sometimes that's great and what you're going for. But most of the time, I feel like most people don't want that. But it's still really useful for accentuating certain frequencies that you want to, with your cutoff frequency and your resonance, you're able to dial in where that filter is sitting. 90% of the synth sound comes from messing with the filter. And there are a lot of different ways that we can mess with it. A lot of different tools we have to adjust where that filter is and how it's affecting the sound. That's what envelopes and LFOs are for. And so that's what we're gonna talk about next. 3. LFOs: So we have our filter. It's taking stuff away from our main tone. Let's start with, I think the simplest way to adjust that, which has an LFO. So if we take an LFO and this is what I like about pigments, you can just kinda see what each function is doing by mousing over it. So this LFO one, we can see LFO one here. It's just a sine wave here that's just slowly going up and down, right? So what we're gonna do is I want this LFO, that function, that pattern to affect this cut-off frequency. So in this sense, it's really easy. You can just drag and drop it like this. Now, I can see that that filter is moving at this rate. And I can hear what that sounds like. If I move the route frequency of the cutoff filter, you'll see that that pattern of where it's being adjusted, that range moves up. If I wanted this to be a little bit of movement and do something really subtle. Maybe have the range really small. Have the rate of this LFO, be nice and slow. So you can see that just barely getting some movement going. You can see she's very suddenly going up and down. But there are other wave shapes we can do with an LFO. This is the sine wave, which is kinda the most basic. But we could also do a square wave, LFO. So this is just two values. One that's high and when that's low and it's just alternating between them. So if I bump up this rate, now we can hear it. It's just jumping directly between the two. So you'll notice that's pretty sweet. But the notes are kind of overlapping, which could be a cool effect. I kinda like using that technique a lot. But sometimes if you wanted the LFO to just affect the filter and not have every note start a new LFO. You just want one effect across the whole thing. Then that's what we change. The, it's called a poly LFO or a mono LFO. Polyphonic meaning multiple notes at once, each triggering their own thing. Or monophonic, one LFO that's being triggered by all the different notes. In this sense, we can pigments, we can just switch that by just clicking on here and then moving to where we want, whatever since you're doing, it might be slightly different depending on what it's doing, but there are different options here. But if I just want this just to constantly be running, I can just put that there. That way. Whatever bundle notes, it's always kind of morphing at the same time. Okay, Let's also explain another wave shape which we got, we got sine, we got square. Saw is cool because it's kind of a mixture of both. There's two points, but that there is a jump between. But then it gradually goes from one to the other and then jumps back to the starting point. So that can be really, really helpful for creating rhythms were like arpeggiator type things, pulses, that sort of stuff. Really useful for that. And also to, right now this is just free running, just like some random rate. But you could set this to be like a musical interval. So for sawtooth, wave shapes for like an alpha, that's really, really useful to be able to have that sinks to the beat. So if I put this at a quarter note, you can get cool rhythms that way. Then you can also swap it. So instead of a ramp down, if you do a ramp up in kinda get like a fake side chain kind of effects with that. Just like really fine tune how that is affecting it. And then also certain since, not every, since I have this but certain sense have a just like a noise as a source for the LFO, which is just like a completely random. It just jumps between random values. Which is pretty cool. So this is what that would sound like. And I'll bump up the range of this too so you can really hear what it's doing. And then it's jumping between those different values. We can smooth that out so that instead of it going Bob, it's just picking a point and then smoothly going to the next. But it's still completely random. So this is really helpful for kind of giving things like some like analog flavor, where it just gives some element of randomness. And just like if you do it just really subtly in there, it can really help things feel alive and breathe. It's like it's just barely moving around. But because it's random, It's, your brain isn't like picking up on a pattern to make it feel like repetitive or stagnant or something. So those techniques are really great for pads and anything that's gonna be really sustained where you don't want it to get grading, where you're like hearing it for so long and like, Oh my gosh, I just need that to stop. Some sort of random element kinda helps always make it feel fresh. So that's a brief window into LFOs and how they can affect the filter. Next, we'll talk about the other main way that we modulate the filter, and that is with envelopes. And that's what we're gonna talk about next. 4. Envelopes: So we have LFOs, they can move stuff around. Now let's talk about our envelopes. So envelopes are very similar to LFOs. And that is a voltage. It's a value that is set to affect something. The difference being LFOs are constantly looping. Let me switch this back to a sine wave, demonstrate that. So like LFOs are constantly moving, It's a loop. Envelopes have a set of parameters that they go through. So this envelope VCA, and that is basically the volume of our sound. So right now, because the envelope is set the way that it is when I press the key, we hear the sound. And when I remove my finger from the key, sound goes away. And you can even see the VCA here, what it's doing. On, off, right? So let me run this filter up so you can hear this a little better. So what we can do to affect the sound is, let's say a. If I wanted this to be more like a pad and I wanted this to kinda softly come in and then take a little bit longer to decay. What I would do is I would bump up the attack. You can see the shape here. This ramp is getting longer and it gives me a time indicator. So 100 milliseconds up to second or whatever. So if I bump this up longer and then press a note, sound takes a little while to come in. Similarly, the last indicator, the release, that is how long the note will last or persist after I remove the note. So because it's so short right now, it'll disappear effectively instantly. If I make this release longer, has a little bit more. You can see I like pigments because it gives you a lot of control over this sort of thing. You see this little curve here, that's kinda the shape that's doing it. This shape is going to straight up. Then this one is kind of logarithmic exponential. One of the two, whatever it's bendy, you can adjust that curve on some of these parameters. So on the attack instead of it just having it be a completely linear from zero to the max value. I can have that curve. Or the other way. Just gives a little more control over how the sound is coming in and out. Depending on what sound you're designing, that can sometimes be really, really helpful for making it feel a certain way. Now the two middle perimeters, decay and sustain. Sustain is the maximum value that that note is going to have. Attack reaches up to the maximum value. And then sustain is how hot it will keep it. So if I turn the sustain down, you can see that now we have four distinct stages. We start at nothing, and the attack is the first stage. And it goes from how long it takes here to get to the top. And the decay time is how long it takes to reach from here to the sustain level. So if I have this short and this is why like visually I think it's easy to understand. Saying all those words is really complicated to understand what's going on. But visually, just looking at what the shape is, I feel like it's pretty easy to grasp what it's doing. You know, like if I make a sound like this versus if I take this longer and have the sustained be lower. You can kinda see what the shape is doing. So most often it means sustains or no. I mean, there is no normal, you know, like all these parameters can be completely different depending on what you want the sound to do. But a typical if you just want like I just want to play the sound and then have it completely go away. You could just turn the decay down and sustain up and only worry about the attack and release. And that's gonna be fine. If you only want to worry about those two stages, that's totally fine. You don't have to do anything with decane sustain for it to make a noise. It's kinda nice about having a sustain a little bit lower is allows you to hold out a chord. And then when you add notes, they kind of peek out above the rest of them and then settles in to the rest. So that's a brief look into envelopes. In the next video, we're going to talk about how these things can actually talk to each other and interact. 5. Modulate Everything!: So we've seen LFOs modulate the filter, and we've seen envelopes. Now let's look at how LFOs and envelopes can actually modulate each other when they're affecting something else. And you can get some really, really complex rhythms out of that, that are really, really fun. So I think what I wanted you to demonstrate this is let's start with our LFO, LFO one. Let's get our sawtooth wave shape. And let's apply that to the filter. So we can hear that bouncing around. And our VCA, let me, let's make this a little tighter. Great. So now what I wanna do, we have our envelope VCA, which is like our volume envelope. But we also have these two other envelopes, envelope two and envelope three. And we can put these anywhere. So we could assign these to the filter like this LFO is. But what I wanna do is assign this envelope two to the speed of LFA-1. So the way that we do that is different depending on the sense. But in pigments, it's as easy as going like this. And we drag it over here to the LFO and drop it on the rate. Let's put it on hertz so that it's not a musical value. And so now we look at this envelope to, let's bump this decay down. So it's going to go quickly up and then take a little bit of while to come back down. And we can watch the speed and listened to the speed of the LFO. It's so fun, It's great. So with that LFO being the way that we set it as free running, where it's constantly moving, It's being triggered, or the rate is being adjusted every time that envelope fires. We could change this if we wanted it to be poly, we switch it back to her. Now that LFO starts, every time we hit a key, you can get some really crazy stuff with that. And so, yeah, envelopes effecting LFOs, super, super fun. Let's look at a couple of other examples that you can do. So we can get that bouncing ball effect. Another thing we can get is just even more randomness. So let's say we kinda, in the LFO example we looked at like how there can be a random wave just kinda suddenly adjusting things over time. Well, we can use an envelope to just simulate same exact principle that we're doing here affects the rate of the LFO. But it's just going to give a little burst of extra movement at the beginning of the note and then it settles out. So let's grab, let's just grab a different LFO. Let's get rid of this routing here. Let's grab a new one. This work on Alpha-2. And let's grab our random wave, a little bit of smoothing to it and have a little bit of movement there. Let's, let's stick with the filter. So let's assign our second LFO over to our filter here. So we can see that moving around here. So let's take our second envelope and that we've seen when we were using earlier, it's got that nice decay, nice long decay, and really nothing else going on. And we're going to apply this to the rate of the second LFO. We sign this, bring this over to LFO to drop it on the rate. Now we kinda get this control for adjusting how much it's affecting this. Make this nice and slow and then have this be super fast. So cool, so that you can start to see where all these little building blocks really add up to something where you can make very, very cool things. So I think now that we have a basic understanding of envelopes can affect things. Lfos can affect things, they can affect each other. Filters our thing. Let's start moving into designing specific sounds and using just the tools that we've talked about. Let's start actually making sounds that we can use with them. 6. Bass I: Firm Foundation: So here we have a synth that is bundled with logic called alchemy, taking what we know about filters and LFOs and envelopes and stuff. Looking at this, we can already start to understand what's going on. We can see, oh, filter, cutoff, frequency and resonance. And we can see like here's a section for LFOs and AH, DSR. That's just our envelopes. Let's start by making a bass sound, by using our filter and by using envelopes and having those kind of play together. So we have a saw wave and that sounds exactly like our other saw. So let's start by maybe making a little bit more of a complex wave shape. So we have a saw, let's add another saw. No, it's like kind of sounds kind of strange where they're not hitting all at the same time. There's like kinda out-of-phase and doing weird interesting things. So what we can do, I mean, that's not always a bad thing, but what we can do is let's go into these are all our sources. And then we can go just look at a and just look at B. So let's just look at this second wave shape here, this B. And let's just ever so slightly the fine tune of it. Just pull it down just a little bit. Let me get that lovely chorusing going on. And, you know, while I'm thinking about it too, Let's switch this to motto. Because right now we can make chords. But we don't want that if it's a base. So let's make this mono, let's go back to global. And then in here we can see voices. This is how many notes it can play at the same time. And so I'm going to drop this number down to one. So now it's always just one note, no matter how many notes we play at a time. It's still just one, which is great. So let's go back to B. There's a concept called unison, which is where you have one wave shaped like one saw. And you've seen when we add another and have it be slightly different, you kinda get some chorusing and some other stuff going on. So they have that built into this, where there's this unison control where it's one wave right now. But as I bring this up, then it will be more and more waves doing the same thing. And let's turn off a so we can just listen to B. It gets really crazy, really fast. So what I wanna do is just bring that up. Turn this down a little bit, and then turn our other one on. So we kind of have this like detuned layer that we can just end this pure layer here. But to separate them a little bit, I want to take this down an octave, so I'm going to bring this down 12 semitones. Cool. Now let's add another layer. Let's do c, but this time let's not use a saw. Let's use a sine wave, which is going to be the purest base we can possibly add. And the tuning, I'm also gonna bring this down an octave. Cool. So what I wanna do is I always, in my head, I'm thinking about a base. I always want there to be solid low end in the base to where when I press the note, I want a lot of low end to always hit. So we can look in here, there's F1, F2. These are two different filters. You can see here there's two different filters sections. So this first filter is a low-pass setup. So if we turn this down right now, they're both being sent all the way to filter one. So this will affect all of these voices. Okay, great. I don't want for any reason the sinewave to ever be affected by this filter. I want the sine to always come through nice and clear. I'm going to send the sinewave to the filter to slot, which is off right here. And so what that's gonna do is so that even if this filter is really low, it won't ever get rid of the sign. So that way if I'm playing nice and low, even when the filter closes, I'll still have that steady low-end. 7. Bass II: Shaping With Envelopes: Let's start adding some envelopes to affect the shape of the sound. And one thing I'd like to do, just so I don't have to constantly go back to the keyboard and play, tweak, go and play. I'll just create just a very simple sequence. Even if I am not going to use this ever just as a way to kinda like have something like here as I'm adjusting parameters. So we can have that looping. And let's start messing with this with these envelopes. So I want this to be like really plucky and like kind of aggressive, like that's kinda what I'm hearing. So let's leave this envelope alone for now, and let's add a new one to adjust the filter. So in alchemy, the way to do this, you can right-click on any parameter and add modulation. And there's a zillion different things to pick from. We want to use an envelope. So we're going to use a ADSR envelope. And this number one here is the one that we have now that's currently modulating the volume of it. It's like a pre mapped thing. And I want to have a new envelope to affect just the filter. So I'm going to click New. Now where before it was just one right here. Now we have this other envelope here. And this other envelope is what is going to affect the filter. So we have this new control over here, the filter cutoff, right? Because I have this selected that's here. These are the different things that are affecting that see ADSR to the depth which is at zero right now. So, so far it's not going to, nothing's gonna make any difference. It's still going to sound the same. So as I bump this up, now we're actually starting to adjust the filter with this envelope. So the way that this is set up, because the sustain is all the way up. It's just gonna be the same thing as if I was turning the filter up. So we need to turn this sustain down. And now we're gonna get this decay amount at the top of the filter. And then it'll take that amount of time to go to the bottom right here. We can see that when the notes kind of overlap, it doesn't reach trigger a new thing. So there are a couple of different ways that we can adjust that like that. And want that bit of expression in there. In this case, I just want every hit to be like all on its own thing. So we could mess with the notes themselves. Like have this note in, pull the starts of the notes back so that there's nothing overlapping. That's one thing we could do. Or inside of the synth itself, we could set the mode to, instead of always being there to re-trigger. So now anytime a new note is played, it will re-trigger everything. Instead of just kinda like changing the pitch of the note, it will actually trigger the whole event that's going on. Okay, cool. So let's bring the root of the filter really low. Nice. And then let's have the amount be more cool. So now with the volume envelope, I'm noticing that sign. I like how steady it is, but it's peaking out a little bit too much. So I'm going to bring the sustain down a little bit. Let's try. This is feeling good. I'm going to try this, bringing this down even more another octave. Let's add another sign. That original octave. Have it go through filter two, which is empty. Nice, this is feeling good. 8. Bass III: Mono vs Stereo: So another principle in sound designing bases. There's this long running thing that like, oh, bases always have to be in mono. Because when there's stereo, in those really low frequencies, it just eats up so much headroom and it muddies the mix and doesn't sound very good. Like generally, I think for most genres, yeah, I think that's 100% true. Except for dance music and dance music. You can't, because everything is like so Razor precise. You can have these like massively wide stereo basis that just like dominate the entire mix. But they work because rarely is there anything else going on in the mix. Like listened to like like something like acrylics or fret again or whatever. It will just have these bases that are just like pinned and just so loud, but still sounds clean. It just sounds like crazy loud. And so all that to say. Generally speaking, your sub information should be in mono. If that is the cleaner way to do things and it does make it easier to mix. And it does give you more headroom and all that stuff. However, there are some caveats where like sometimes just a wide huge stereo bass can be cool in some kinda drop or some kind of fill or whatever. Like, yeah, it can be cool. But like an 808 or whatever, like those are pretty much always going to be mono. Like very fringe circumstances where you have like a stereo sub or Stereo eight away most of the time all that stuff is model. So for this, since I'm going to keep the low-end information, nice and mono. But I do want some width up top. So what I'm going to do for that is let's go to our B layer, which has all that unison stuff on there. And let's just listen to what that's doing real quick. So let me turn these other voices off. Here. The more voices I add, it's adding them at like panned around so you can get wider sort of effect. The detune is how much those different voices are being pinched apart from each other. So if I turn it up, it'll be more of a variation in pitch. Pretty spicy. And so I back it down. We'll bring all the pitches closer together to like complete unison, which doesn't sound very good. Okay, cool. Let me bring this back on. So these are all mono, right down the middle. This one is nice and stereo. And this one, I think now that we've got these signs kinda holding down the fort, I'm going to add some of that unison to this saw as well, which is an octave below this one. Let's turn these off so I can hear just a, Let's bring these back. Nice. Now let's stretch down a little bit. It looks like we're hitting this filter a little too hot. And it's added a little bit of drive. Cool. We bump up the resonance, Let's see what that sounds like. I don't think it was every good. Yeah, a little bit fine, whatever. Okay, cool, cool. I'm happy with that bass sound. I would totally use that. This is where it's a little tricky designing sounds with no context because it's hard to know how this would fit with something else. Or like, what are the drums doing? What? Are there any other melodies that are going on? This could accentuate or counter melody or whatever like, by just having sound design for no purpose. It's a little bit tricky to figure that stuff out, but this is a perfect, its place. I feel like to take this base, save it as like cool, this is a good starting point. And then if I need a song where I kinda want this style of bass sound, I know I kinda have this preset ready to go. And I can call this up and then fine tune it for the specific moment that it needs. So for base, especially I feel like it really is dependent on what the drums are doing, of how the timing of those of those envelopes kinda, kinda breathe and stuff. It's really dependent on the kick and that sort of stuff. But this is, I think, a good starting place to make those adjustments later on. So congratulations, you made your first awesome bass sound. And wow, it sounds so good. I'm so proud of you. Okay, let's make the next sound. 9. Bass IV: Plugin Upgrades: In this video, I want to explore some other base options using different plugins from other companies that aren't built into logic. Just to kinda show how those tools apply to a completely different environment, a different interface. So I have two since here. This one is a Mogi emulation from Universal Audio. And just by looking at it, you can kind of start to see a lot of similar terms that we've already been talking about, like the cutoff frequency and filter envelopes and LFOs and that sort of thing. So you can kind of like start to understand what's going on just by looking at this, we have a filter section here with some controls for filter, we have a very simple envelope in this little filter box. And then we have loudness contour. This is another envelope, but just for the volume of it. And then we have a little mixer section where we can blend a couple of oscillators. We can select the different wave forms here. The pitch of the oscillator here, and then the fine tune of the pitch here. This simple little sound that I just made, get some nice chorus sing of the different saw waves kind of blending against each other. We can detune that a little bit by just taking the fine-tune, bring that down. You can get some of that action going. We can do okay, maybe we want to square wave bass thing. The volumes of them. We still got all our same filter controls. Filter emphasis is the resonance. Now. Then the amount of contour is the amount that the envelope is affecting the filter. So all those same techniques apply. It's just you're gonna get completely different tones because the sense is different. And so there's kind of an argument that like, Oh, do you really need third-party plug-ins? Can't you do everything just in logic with alchemy. Alchemy is so powerful, can't you just build everything in there? I think given enough time, you could probably get relatively close. I think just the fact that it sounds so different, it kind of speaks for itself. Like, I guess maybe you could build a Minimoog inside of alchemy, but it's not going to sound exactly the same. So if you want a different sound than sometimes, another plugin is like a jolt of inspiration that does kinda lead you down a rabbit hole of new ideas and stuff. I think there's something to be said for learning your tools. But again, like having another set of sounds, I don't know, I think is really cool. So here's another example. So instead of like a vintage thing, this is a more modern idea of wave table synthesis. So wavetable synth, just very, very quickly. We have our different waveforms that we can select an alchemy, right? And then in the mode we can select different waves. In here we have like, Okay, here's saw and then here's a slightly different saw. Here's a triangle, Here's square, Here's a slightly different pulse-width of that square. Wave table synthesis is, let me just grab a fresh preset here. So this is kind of similar to what we've been working with. We have a sine wave here. You can kind of see what that looks like that. And then we have a saw, and then we have a triangle, then we have a square, right? All these kind of basic shapes here. This is what essentially a super simple version of a wavetable is. It puts those parameters in a way where you can scan through them. This is basically the exact same thing as what we've been doing. What is really cool about wave table since is all these different wave tables. So if I go to another wave table like this harmonic morph, this kind of looks like a sine wave, but there's all these different ways shapes in here that it can smoothly animate between. So we can hear what that sounds like, right? And so you can kind of start to hear the possibilities of having that be an automated thing or attached to an envelope or whatever. So we can go through different different wave shapes and find crazy things. So that is a whole world of possibilities of another thing to modulate. And then that wave table can then be sent through the filter and all those same parameters that we've been talking about. So here's an example of a preset that is really useful at attaching a bunch of different things to an envelope and looking at all the different things that is automating. So this is just a preset from Splice, but look at how all of these different parameters are being automated. So what's going on here? What's giving it like metallic, crazy, cool texture. We can see that the waveform is being attached to this envelope. Right? You can see it's scanning through. This is a parameter that can just bend the waveform and do weird stuff to it without scanning to a different wave. And then here, this separate oscillator is scanning through the waveform. And it's also being bent and stuff over time as well. The filter that's super easy to hear. The filter is doing a lot of work there. Here's without it. Cleaning up a lot of high-end, adding some low-end. You can get really crazy with automating all these crazy different parameters. But as complicated as this might look, it's all the same controls and the same tools that we've already been using. You're still using envelopes and having those effects things. You're still using LFOs and having those move things over time. And you're still sending oscillators through filters to remove certain frequencies from them. So even in a very modern style of synthesisers like this, you're still using those exact same tools that the mug is using. They're just a slightly different way of doing it and you obviously have way more options. So those are a couple of different approaches to bases using other plug-ins that might give you some ideas. 10. Pads I: Soft Sounds: Alright, so now let's work on designing a pad. There are so many different types of pads, but all of them basically exist to serve the main function of like filling up space in the mix. You'll have these really interesting things going on. Like really progressive bases are these really exciting leads and the drums are super loud or whatever. And pads a lot of times have the job of just kind of like filling the gaps that are left by these other things. And so that can create a lot of mud really quickly. But generally, pads have a lot of information in them frequency wise. Then it'll be able to carve out specific things that they need to fit so the drums are going big and the lead is going big. And there's a little pocket at 400. And the pad has a lot more information in it. It's just that 400, but you'd have the pad going and boost that frequency with some EQ or whatever. And it would kinda slot it in right there. So that's a lot of times what pads are used for. And also just kinda like sitting in the background, just kinda setting a mood for stuff. So let's look at making some of those. So the first one, I think, will make a couple because pads, there are a lot of different shapes and forms. So let's start with making some sort of like playable key thing, like some sort of backing pad. So let's start off by, we know we're just going to want kind of a slower envelope. Yeah, nothing crazy. Okay, now, let's mess with the wave shape. I mean, we could have, we'll start with saw in there. So let me throw some unison. And I don't like how much the velocity is affecting how loud the notice. When I play a note softly, It's quiet. When I play a note loudly, it's really loud. And for a pad, I don't necessarily want that. I want a little bit more consistency with it. So what I can do is what I can do is what I can do is look at this master control here and see what is adjusting the volume. We have our first envelope, which is always set to the volume, and then we also have velocity. And so we can see this depth knob here. That is how much the velocity is affecting the volume. So if I bring this down, well, if I just turn it off completely and now, no matter how softly I press the note or how hard I press the note, it will be the same volume. Which is great. To compensate for that, I'm just going to turn this down a little bit. Since now everything is effectively max velocity. Bring into a little more. Cool. So what I'm gonna do is let's take two saw waves and let's do a similar unison move to this one. But I am going to pan this one fully right and pan this one fully left. Set the volumes to be the same. One of my negative 20 on here, 21, okay. 116. Okay, close enough. So now they have these settings set the same and they're pan fully left and fully right. But because there are slight differences in the de-tune and how it's spreading those voices apart. I'm effectively and they're fully pan left and right. It's going to, in theory, sound super wide. So let's see. Sweet. That technique is called a binaural thing where you have a completely different sound in the right and a completely different sound in the left. Even though they're kinda sourced from the same idea here, the sound super wide because they're different from each other, even though all the settings are set exactly the same. There are still subtle differences in where the wave starts when they press the note. That's just the way that this synthase designed, which is good. It makes us that you can do stuff like this and it doesn't get like static year or are weird sounding, it sounds just super wide and beautiful. Cool. Now let's get some filter action going on. Okay, So these different options for this, like 12 db gritty, 24 dB edgy, 20 dB rich. They're just slight variations on the curve and how it is taking those frequencies down. It's still doing the same thing. They're all low-pass filters. They just sound a little different, just gives you more options for different sounds or something. So I like the rich filter. Just because I like that this resonance isn't as pronounced. Cool. So let's add another envelope to this. And let's have this be a longer attack. Let's bring this all the way down and then have our sustain is really what's going to be effectively setting the level of the filter. Cool. That's feeling good. 11. Pads II: Life Through Randomness: Now let's have another oscillator in here. This one, I want to be an octave up to kind of emulate a shimmer, ish, kind of feel. So let's, let's do the same thing that we did there. Where let's put it the same thing but on different sides. So let's bump this up. Let's put it to pull it down. 20, 1 ft left, foot, right. Let's add, I think to detune, let's see what that feels like or to unison. Let's put this up. Cool. Now, let's have the LFO slowly adjust this filter as well. So I'm going to get a sign. I don't want the rate sinks. I want it to be nice and slow. And I want this to affect that. Okay? So now the filter cutoff we see as being affected by this envelope, but it's also being affected by this LFO. So let's adjust the depth of that down. So it's not bringing it up and down too much. So that's the amount that I want and I'll bring the rate down. So we have all sorts of wave shapes in here that we can use for an LFO. One that I like is this random glide, just kinda moving around, but in a soft way, we can turn the depth up to you here, what that's doing. Yeah. So we bring this down to where it's just kinda barely moving. And then also this, this filter envelope, it, it's blooming a little too much, I think for me. So I'm gonna take the depth of it down a little bit and then raise the overall filter to compensate. Reasonable, more. Nice. And for the volume envelope, I'm going to bring the sustain down just a hair. We can make this decay nice and long, but I just want it to be a little more movement so that notes don't last at the top for so long. Let me just give myself like brushwork voices too. Cool, That's feeling good. I think at this point let's start moving onto effects. Okay. Is it pad, even a pad without reverb? No, it's not. So we could use on-board effects and we probably will for certain things. But for reverb, I've talked about this before a lot. The best Reverb, 11 of my favorite reverbs is this guy, Valhalla supermassive. It is free. Go get this plugin right now. It's by Valhalla DSP. And it is absolutely the best reverb for this type of thing, like just big expansive pads where it's not trying to sound like a room. You're just trying to just blow the thing up. It's amazing it that it's got all these different modes that kinda do slightly different things. And because the way that it works is it's a delay that then smears those delays over time into a reverb. So all the different modes are kind of like different variations of if it's more delay versus more reverb or more reverb first and then the delay isn't really there. So the presets do a good job of showcasing those different modes and how they work. One of the latest ones at the time of this recording is this Libra mode. And it's really beautiful. It sounds like this. So what I wanna do to be able to play this pad, I want to map the mod wheel to the filter amount. So as I'm playing the synth, I can actually move the mod wheel up and open the filter up and really expand it out. And then pull the filter down with the mod wheel to really close things off. I find that like when I'm playing a pad, That's really, really useful for going into a chorus or something to kind of open things up. Just to have that level of expression with the mod wheel, I feel like for a pad is super, super helpful. So what we're gonna do is bring this filter down. We're going to add another modulation to this filter. And we can select it from this drop-down menu. And I want it to be the mod wheel. So if I go bd mod wheel, boom, there it is. So when it's set to 100, that means if I turn this all the way up, it brings a filter all the way up. We have some other stuff already adding to that filter though. So I don't know if I necessarily want it to go that high. So what I'm gonna do is here's with it off. Just like very, very low. So I'm going to bring the mod wheel all the way up and then move the depth up until I get to the brightest that I would ever want the sense. Okay, cool. So now if I bring the mod wheel down, great. So I mean, that's like the basics of making a pad. Everything else beyond that is just kinda flavor. So adding more delays or running things through EQs and giving it more texture and whatever, like. All that sort of stuff is a very big part of what gives a pad sound. But the basics of like here are the mechanics of how to make it. I mean, that's really all it is. It's just variations on those couple of steps. 12. Pads III: Plugin Upgrades: In this video, I want to go over some third-party alternatives for pads. And there's a lot logic has some great built-in solutions for Pat's alchemy is awesome. And you can really make a pretty decent pad out of anything with a creative use of reverb and stuff. But I'm going to pick some of my favorites that have a lot of different interfaces and show how those tools apply here. So the first one I want to show is with this plugin repro five. This is an emulation of a synth called profit. And there are a lot of controls. But if we take what we know about envelopes and LFOs, oscillators filters. And look at what we got going on here, we can start to understand what's going on. We have an amplifier envelope. We have a filter section here with controls for the filter itself, as well as an envelope that is inside that filter box. A mixer for the levels of the oscillators and introducing noise, and then our oscillator controls here. So what's cool about this preset is every time I press the key, I'm going to hear a note and then I'm going to also hear an LFO kinda move the filter up and down. But if I press it again, the rate is gonna be different. Little slower that time. If I press it again, that's faster, right? So how, how is it doing that? So what this is doing is it's taking the second oscillator of oscillator B, having it be so low that it can't be heard. And it's using that as the source for modulating the speed of that LFO that's going vote, vote. So I know that's kind of complicated and it's like a lot of different ways of using that modulation. But at the end of the day, here's what that would sound like. Practically can open up the filter. So, yeah, that's kind of the prophet style of sense for making a pad. Next, I want to go over on the sphere. On the sphere is hugely popular. I'm sure you've probably heard of this plug-in before for good reason. It's amazing. It can do so many sounds. It basically is a sample library. And every oscillator it has like a synth. As far as like, you can bring in a specific waveform. Like if I wanted to go to layer and just bring in, it's got a bunch of different wave forms. But it also has a bunch of samples. So this is a sample of this modular synth thing. But at the end of the day, again, completely different interface, completely different workflow, still using the same techniques of having some sort of source sound of an oscillator. And then that being manipulated by an LFO or an envelope or whatever, being passed through a filter. Like those same building blocks are still at play here we have a filter. We have envelopes here. This one is laid out where here's just the filter controls and then they just put all the envelopes together. So this pad sounds like this. Really cool texture is very, very cool. And if we wanted to adjust the sound of this, all same techniques, apply it. So we just wanted to brighten it up and take some of that filtering off. We could just raise the cutoff filter. This one we can see has two oscillators. We have an a, which is this guy, and then a B, which is this one, which has its own set of controls. So let me turn off this so we can just listen to this one. It sounds are completely insane. But they're still using the same tools. Lastly, this is a plugin, binds company slate and ash there. Awesome. I don't see enough people talk about these guys. Their stuff is just so crazy, cool, really, really powerful, really flexible. And there's this whole other host of effects, everything but, um, looks like here's what this preset sounds like. And then we can kinda show how we can adjust that using that stuff that we've been learning. And open up a filter here. Tubercle, this plugin is called choreographs, by the way, it's saying ashes, the company, but we have three oscillators. I can go in here and see all these different oscillators. And this is sample-based. So this is taking these like audio recordings of this oscillator and then it's pitching that up and down. And you know, I'm doing all sorts of crazy stuff to it. There's always new toys to play with and new effects and whatever. But these are some examples that I thought highlighted how you can use those same tools that we've been learning. Showing that once you know those couple of terms to look for, you can navigate your way through pretty much any synthesizer interface based off of LFOs, envelopes, oscillators, filters like how to navigate that sinth interface to solve that problem that you're hearing. So yeah, hopefully that was helpful and yeah, we still got more. So let's go. 13. Leads: So for leads, you can really do anything, honestly anything. What makes something a lead or not is super subjective. There are no preset rules of like, oh, it should have a really strong fundamental or anything like that. It's just, it's complete aesthetic. So what I thought could be interesting just to show how anything can really be used to make some sort of lead melody is by taking that pad that we made earlier. And we're going to sample that back into logic to use as a lead. So I have the filter, I just cranked up the drive and brought the filter up a little bit. Also added this other distortion on top of it, just to make it a little more aggressive. So I'm just gonna record that OneNote and then we'll sample it back. Okay, cool. So let me quantize that. So it starts on the right thing and we'll bounce in place. Now we have this audio file here. And we can just take this audio file, this region, and drag it into an empty spot right over here. And boom, quick sampler. This will create a sampler instrument based off of this one file and just map it across the keyboard. What's cool about logic, because you can do this optimized version, which all it means is it analyzes the key that it is and assigns it. And then kinda like looks FOR loop points and all that stuff. But really, the only thing we're worried about is the key so that I know if I play C on the keyboard, it will actually play C. And if I go to G, it'll play G. All that stuff already set up. So let's try and make this some sort of lead sound thing, whatever. So I was purposely kinda moving the mod wheel around to kinda get some movement. So let's try having the start point be a little bit closer. Cool. Let's fade in this shorter. Okay, cool. So now let's take that and let's start just adding stuff to it. So let's add some reverb on top. And let's use our supermassive. Cool. Now, just filter some of that stuff out a little bit. Now on top of that, Let's slam it with some compression. Yeah, I'll try and stick to free stuff for as long as I can. Let's see how smashing we can get this compressor. Okay, that's cool. And then let's add some delay. Cool. Yeah, if we're sticking to Built-in stuff, here is a little secret in logic that nobody ever talks about inside the pedal board plugin. There's this tape delay one right here. And it is super cool for this one feature has this little knob here or there exists a switch, normal or reversed. You can do reverse delays, which is a nice free built-in reversed delay, which is pretty sweet. And it sounds really cool too, with the different tape EA kinda warbling stuff going on. It's really nice. Now let's clean up some EQ stuff. And I'm going to use the also built-in to logic, the vintage EQ. It's just a nice, cheap way to kinda get that sort of nice flavor stuff going on trips and lows. And then I want to boost the mids too, which is kinda where like the main, where I imagined the main meat of the whatever part. Sitting. Nice and gritty and fun. Yeah, sweet. Like it. Yeah. I think this is a really fun sound. So that's the basic idea for leads. It's like you really can just take anything and make it into a lead by applying stuff to it, cutting stuff away from it. And you just kinda go on this journey of discovery until you find something that is interesting to you, that inspires you. You know, it really is just whatever you wanna do. This is like there are no rules just right for, for making leads and that's the fun of it. 14. Keys I: Playable and Memorable: Alright, so now for like keys, I thought it'd be helpful to make just a little groove, a little jam to be able to start putting things together in the context of other music. So it took our pad from earlier and our base from earlier and just kinda created some simple chords. So at the base I put a little arpeggiator on it just to kinda dumped him to step through the notes. And I came up with this with the pad. I just kinda relied on that random LFO just to kinda keep things moving and interesting and just really held out some sustained things, kept the filter low. And this is what that sounds like. Then I just threw some samples together and created a little drum groove. This is what everything sounds like right now. So I think this is a perfect spot to demonstrate where keys can kinda come in. I want to go back to pigments for the synth keys, show off a technique that I think is really easy to see and pigments. It's called a self oscillating filter. So certain filters, if you turn the resonance all the way up, we'll start to resonate at a tone like that. Resonance gets so high that it actually starts to generate a tone all on its own. There are no sounds being used. So there's no sounds being fed into the filter. Now to make this really fit this vibe, Let's go in and adjust this. So from what we know about envelopes and LFOs, Let's see if we can look at this preset and see what's happening. So we know that, okay, if we want to adjust how long the sound is lasting, we're going to look at the envelope because we can tell that notice lasting a long time, that's going to be for the envelope and we can see in pigments. Oh, there it is, right there. There's the envelope VCA that's affecting the volume. And we can in this case, they're pairing the release with the decay. So they're kinda one knob together. As I adjust this, adjust both of them. Right? So how long I hold the note has no real impact. So if we wanted to turn this more into a key thing, more into like a piano type thing. Let's take the release down a little bit. Let's bring the decay. Sustain rather up. A little reverb here. Cool. Let's listen to them contexts. And a lot of times, what I find really helpful is to take some sort of acoustic source, like a roads or a piano or something layer that with something that is a synth. And then you get something that's kind of, it's neither. It's somehow organic, but it's somehow synthesized to it. It, it feels very, very fresh. So there are some great samples in key Escape that is really phenomenal, like old vintage keys and stuff that I think are perfect for like layering underneath things. So I'm just going to layer some Brighton gospel he kinda chords here. Cool, That's great. 15. Keys II: Scattered Loops: The third keys technique that I want to demonstrate, it basically is one piano note. You have a couple of different octaves that you just kinda play between. And then re-sample that back into a sampler and then play that back and you get all these really interesting rhythms that happens. So I will show that by doing this, we can take any piano sound. It doesn't really matter. And we're just going to dance around on the different octaves. Like so. Just like that all on the same note. Downs that in place we have our audio. But instead of bouncing this out too quick sampler, like just dragging it into the track. We can force logic to treat this a slightly different way. If we load a full version of sampler up, then drag the audio into the plugin. Now we can force it to use this full version of sampler, which just gives us a little bit more control. We're still going to use optimized zone per file. So it does the same thing of just mapping it across the keyboard. But now we can very easily adjust things with this, which I will show why that's helpful. So here we have our sound. So what I wanna do is have the panning move around. So we have different notes being a different painting intervals. So let's the target is going to be the pan. And the source is going to be if we have random as an option, yes, we do. That's excellent. Which is kinda bump this up. Cool. So now let's get some looping going on. So right now it's just playing from start to finish and then ending. What I wanna do is go back and forth. I want this to play forward. And then once it gets to the end, to reverse that, I'm not really carrying too much about like having it be a perfect loop because it's going to, you know, I'm not really trying to hide the loop here. So now if I play a note, well, let's have this loop right here. Now if I play a note, I keep feeding it new notes. So as this plays, it will never repeat itself exactly the same because these loop points are all different and the speeds of them are different per every note, the start times of the nodes are all different. You know, it's just, it's always going to be kind of generating new stuff. So really helpful for just kinda like smearing stuff around. And with the panning being random too. It's just a really nice way to just kind of give some things, some texture, but that feels close. And then we can use the reverb to kinda push it back in space if you want. You just grab like a simple reverb. Now if we layer this stuff in here, nice, cool, feels nice. And you could do that technique with anything. I think it sounds nice on piano because it's just nice and pretty, but you can do it on guitar is you can do it on to others since you know you can do it on anything. 16. Keys III: Time and Pitch Machine: Another way you can do just a quick way to make it even to just kinda double the amount of layering here, bounce it in place, convert it to audio. And then we're going to do is in here, double-click it to open it up in our editor. And in the File tab, we have an option for time and pitch machine. And this is like offline editing for making stuff last longer or adjust the pitch of it or whatever. So if I switch this to Classic Mode, then It's basically like an old DJ effect or something gets faster and it gets higher in pitch, or if it gets slower goods log dose. So if I do it in octave, just 1,200 cents, then it will be half the pitch and double, or half the speed, which is an octave lower. And it'll be twice as long. So process and paste on this audio. Boom, like that. Now if we listened to it, we have what we just had, but it's an octave lower and half as fast. So we can share that with the original. And also one thing I'd like to do to win doing this. I'll throw this little gain plug-in. That logic has, just because there's this option for swapping the left and right channels. So everything that was left in here is right in here. So it just creates a more difference between the left and right. A lot of crazy load on here too. Similar to lead saying that there's a lot left up for interpretation here. It's as organic or as synthesized as you want it to be, as what your aesthetic is. There aren't a lot of rules here. And when in doubt, grabbing something that is real, like a piano, like a Rhodes sample, something like that, layers really nicely with other synthesized things. So even in like more dance oriented music, I think grabbing some of those more acoustic elements and blending them in can really level up the sound of the production and make it sound more professional and just polished. And so those are some examples of how to make different keys sounds. 17. Saving and Sending Presets (Logic Pro X): If you want to save a sound that you've made to either use later or send to somebody else. This is how you do that. It's important to remember though, that when you save a sound, it saves the instrument, as well as all of the plug-ins that are used to make that sound. So if you send the sound to somebody and they don't have these exact same plugins on their system. They won't be able to load that specific instance of that plugin. It'll just have a little red symbol next to it, showing that it can't be loaded. If you're using just first-party things inside of logic, then you're golden. There are a couple of ways that we can save the sound. First is by opening up the library, which is this panel here. It's open to buy this button. On the upper left. You'll notice there are two user folders, user patches and user channel strip settings. User patches can be a collection of channel strips all bundled together into one sound. User channel strips settings will just be one track and all the plugins on that. User patches can have multiple channel strips. User channel strips are just one thing in and of themselves. So if I use this save button down here, it will save my current selection as a patch. I can do that here, call it Juno keys, but in whatever folder I want. And then there we go. Here's that preset just made. And I can scroll back and see that it's in that user patches setting. If you use main stage for playing live, use your channel strip settings might be a better way to go since it's really easy to swap those back-and-forth between main stage and logic to save something to the user channel strip settings. Click and hold on the Settings button here. Scroll down to save channel strip setting as. And then it'll automatically put you in this file path here where you can name your sound, throw it, where you want to throw it. To send that sound to somebody, we just need to follow that file path to grab the file in a new finder window will hit music, audio, music apps, channel strip settings, instrument. And here are all of our presets. So if we wanted to grab the Juno keys that we just made, we would hit keys. And here we go, Juno keys. This is the file that you would then upload or send to somebody to get your sound that you made to install a sound that's been sent to you. Follow the same process and just add that dot CSV file right here. You can also do the same thing for patches. Instead of going to channel strip settings, go to the patches folder and you'll have all of your patches here as well. 18. Outro: So believe it or not, that's actually 90% of really all that it takes to make any sound that you can hear. It really is true. Every synthesizer really does work largely the same way. Once you understand how to effectively use envelopes and LFOs, oscillators and filters. Everything else is just kinda extra flavor that uses those tools in interesting ways. But it's always gonna be based on those. So hopefully you have some really cool ideas and interesting things that you want to try with those tools. I would love to hear them. So if you make a cool sound or if you want help making your sound better or whatever. Make a project with this class, go to this class in the Creative Projects section and upload your preset file using Dropbox, Google Drive or whatever you want to do. I would love to check it out and I'll respond personally and get feedback. And then we can build our own repertoire of student presets. I think that'd be really cool if you enjoyed this class. It really means the world to me. If you would leave a review, it really helps this class reach more people. And it also tells Skillshare that you like it, that I'm doing a good job as a teacher, so please review it, but it really helps me out a lot if you want to reach out to me personally, like I mentioned at the beginning of the class, you can reach out to me on Instagram at solo underscore, underscore array. Or you can reach me here on the class. I'd love to connect with you there. I also make YouTube content from time to time that you can check out, just search solar ray and you'll find me if you're hungry for more. I have other classes available here on Skillshare that you can check out. Go to my teacher page and you can see all those there. I'd love to have you there. Thanks so much for hanging out and learning, and I'll see you in the next course.