Transcripts
1. Synthrunner Pluck Module - Overview Video: Hey, Runner. Welcome
to this module about creating advanced
plugs on a synthesis. We will create three brand new patches completely together, and I will also include them in the course
for you to download. Let's have a look at
what you will get. In the first episode, we will create an
ambient pluck with a lovely lush and warm rewir. And you will also learn what round Robins
are and how you can simulate that on a synthesis to get more realism
out of your patches. In Episode two, we will craft a plug that sounds either
haunted or dreamy, depending on how you
fine tune the settings. You will learn how bending the rules are bit, in this case, the goal to sound realistic can unleash more
creativity in your sound. In Episode three, we will create a more sound trackish
plug that would fit perfectly to score some
scenes in a movie or game, and you will learn why
filter dies with the mod wheel sound extraordinary
nice on plucks. Are you up for this run? Load up your sinth
and grab a ring. We have got some
sounds to create.
2. First Patch - Ambient Pluck: Hello and welcome to this
new module in series. So this time, it's about plugs. And as you can see,
I have prepared a little bit for the intro. So, when we talk about plugs, this is when we simulate on the synthesis to plug a string
on a stringed instrument. So, for instance, that's a
guitar or a cello or a harp, which is probably
the best example for a plugging instrument. Um, and while when we create leads and pads and other instruments
that are artificial, when it comes to
plucks, we try to somewhat recreate the reality, which doesn't mean that you
are limited to the reality. As I always say,
there are no rules, and you can build your
instruments the way you want, but you need to know the
rules before you can break them and make creative
use of this and now why. Um, so yeah, when we talk
about plug instruments, let's say we are talking
about the G string on an instrument that you would
plug with your hands, right? You would plug that string,
and it would vibrate and resonate until it yeah, until the volume decays, as you know it from
basically from a little envelope for
volume that we always use, um, because this is just simulating principles
from the real world, right? So you pluck the string and
you get the sound until the sound decays and goes away. But there is something
that we need to utilize on plugged instruments. But well, let me not
say we need to. We can. It actually, again, depends on how realistic or organic
you want to have your sound. And I have an example for this. So if you listen to this here, this is a string
sample from the cello, and it's just one note being played repeatedly
pretty quick. Um, I don't know if I slow this, it's an old temple
library, but just listen. So you maybe notice that
there were two samples in this that sometimes
switch randomly. So sometimes we had one sample and sometimes we had
the other sample. This is called Round Robins, and it's basically if there's a ello player and he
is playing this note. Right? He plucked the string
once and they recorded this. What happens is if we
only have one sample, or, like, in this case, I guess, I assume it's two just by ear, is that if you play
repeatedly quick notes, it sounds really artificial and this is called the
Machine gun effect. And this is because if in
reality someone plays in front of you and he's plucking this a string again and again
and again and again, it's always a little
bit different because as a human,
you're not a machine. You always you move your
position a little bit. Maybe you switch the
instrument a little bit, and you pull with a different
strength each time, and it resonates a little
bit different each time, because this is, you know, like physics work
and a real world. But this leads to a
different sound than the exact same sample
repeatedly played because this is not you know this is not showing the reality. And this is what you
can hear. This is why it sounds so artificial. So newer libraries
like this one, from nucleus they have
more Round Robins, which means they may
be recorded four or five or six times the
same note being played. And then each time a note
is being played back, it randomly picks one
of these samples. So in this fast tempo, it will still sound a little
bit artificial but way less. So just spend attention. Of course, this is a bit more
roomy because this wasn't recorded so
close like this one. This was more close to the mic. So this sounds already better by being
more roomy and yes, we can still have here a little bit of this
mashing gun effect, which is due to the sheer quickness that this
is being played here. But this wouldn't occur if you would play different notes and maybe with other instruments or layering with
different octaves. You know, I would go way more
back into the background, while with this old library, this would be still a problem. But enough talk about this. Let me for now, delete this. We don't need them anymore. We are going to create
our first plug patch now, and then you will
see what I mean with bringing this alphabet
alive with these concepts. So just start a new preset, and then we will start as always with the analog
engine for now. And we will set up the basic
parameters for the plug. So in this case, we
take the envelope two and route it again to our cut
off knob or cut off filter. And what we want what
really makes a plug. And actually, let's
first of all, increase the release because
if you plug on a string, it won't instantly stop. Usually, it depends on the
string as well on the tangent, but it will most likely
resonate a little bit. Right? So this is what you
would expect if you play our string instrument
if you plug on it. So we have a little bit of Ruiz. Can even make more.
Not too much, though, if you do
something like this. I mean, it's still reasonable, depending on the instrument. But let's go with something
like this for now. So what you can do, by the
way with plug instruments, if you hold down our note is not a plug
instrument anymore. So either you can
leave this in for the performance ability that you can if you want, you know, like play Something like this, or you just get rid
of the sustain. So even if I hold on a note, I will only get the plug sound. So I can never miss play, even if I forget to
let go of notes. I will always get
the same amount. So these are almost exactly now. So if I hold down or
if I just hit it once, it's exactly the same. So this is good. For
plug instruments. So you even have, you know, like a corn sound, no matter if some notes you play maybe more
connected or whatever. Back to this thing here.
So the attack time is a little bit variable, so you can have really
super short attacks or you can go a little bit
smoother, something like this. They make it a
little bit louder. So this is not as
snappy as this. But if you overdo
it, so if you go further, this is still legit. So this is even a
huge difference. But if you go further, here it starts to become
a horn attack, which is this effect. So, of course, we need
to be careful that we don't Get too much into this because this
is really soft and, you know, plug
instruments are plucky. They have this attack
transient at the beginning. However, there are no
rules as I always say so. If you want a soft plug
instrument, you can do it. But I would already consider
this to be our lead. I wouldn't identify
this as a plug patch. But from here on, that's a plug. Now, that's a super smooth plug. But it's a plug. And
for the first episode, as you know, we always go here with some vision into this. I would say, let's make
an ambient pluck patch. So this is a little bit
uncommon because our plug usually lives from
the pluginess. But in the same time, I personally find that
plugs can create beautiful, really beautiful reverb tails. So we will go for our ambient
pluck patch, and therefore, we are going to create
a really well rounded, smooth sounding plug
instrument so that the reverb will as smooth. The patch itself. Because
if you would work here with distortion and harsh nodes, you would get this kind of reab as well, which is fine, too. But just to tackle down a
vision that we can work on, let's just use this
as a basic idea. So a filter is
pretty good so far. Now, usually we do
sub oscillator, so you can do this here. I even would recommend
to do it too, because, um, it somewhat simulates the resonating body
in the instrument. So you're not only plugging
on the instrument, you also hear the body resonate, give you feedback from your
string if you want that. But because you notice it becomes really a
little bit gritty, distorted here because
the sow wave is so rude. So I would take
the triangle here. And it's well more rounded now. Now we can adjust the amount. How much of the body should be there. Something
like this, maybe. Um, yeah, that's fine so far. And let's bring in the reverb already because I would like to have it in
now when we work. So don't overdo it
because if you overdo it, what's happening is the patch
becomes smooer of course, because we hear
more of the reverb, which will swallow or
attack transients. If you go this far, it will, of course, lose the
feeling of the plug. Increase the size because
you want it to go ambient, no pre delay and increase the decay or it's a
longer tail. That's nice. Make it loud a
little bit for now. You can already hear, can
you make this longer? What a beautiful tail
there is. Being created. I would probably
even go more plucky, maybe. Yeah, that's better. So I like that. For now, um, so this is
interesting. Let me. Yeah, that's quite strong.
I mean, that will be cool. If you want something
really surreal, but we don't want this now,
we leave it at default. We are going to bring
in the randomizer soon. But for now, I mean, we
want to keep this clean, but let's see if we bring
in a little bit resonance. That's quite too much. But subtle and gently. We can have a little bit
more resonance here, which is, again, good. You know, like resonance,
as you remember, does increase the,
you know, like, a little bit of the feedback and the high frequent spectrum. Which simulates a little bit, well how this resonates, like the name says, resonates. And now let's try something. So instead of putting the rewab here on the normal channel, let's try to use
the send channel, so we increase the
scent here and go to the auxiliary
and work with this, and we'll talk in a
second about why. I can leave this at 100. Yeah, that's pretty. That's pretty nice.
So the difference is, if you don't know,
that the auxiliary, the send channel
here is creating a duplicate of our signal, which means we have
the dry signal of our plug patch and then the
reverb on a second channel. Which is a difference
because here, this button that we
uses the button we use here will take away 44% no well. Yeah, it will take away 44% of our dry patch and mix
it with the wet signal, which makes our patch being more in the bag while this here keeps the power and the initial attack and
mixing it with reverb. But only if this is at 100, if we go something like this, we just have a signal twice. So it just gets louder and
it's even distorting now. But if we bring this to
100%, this channel here, which remember is a
duplicate of our patch being fed into this is just reverb, the processed sound
from the reverb. Now we can compare what we like. So if we just take
away the scent, so we don't hear it
anymore, it's gone now, and we bring this
back. Can compare. So I think I like this
more because this sounds more it's more one unit, you know, it's more together. So the other way,
like I told you, is a little bit detached
because we have the basic sound and
the reverb split, which is good for
the initial power. But when it comes to
ambient, in this case, I like when they form one unit, so they sound better together. This is already
lovely. I like this. We could even take our
envelope here, you know, this plug envelope and
root it a little bit to the width of Oslator two
just to show you that it. So I'm not quite
hearing a difference. It's probably because
this goes so fast. Well, I hear a
little difference. This has some hollow resonance. I think, but it's really
difficult to say if you. If you listen closely, you can easily get
lost in the sound. So there are two different
philosophies on that. Some people say, If
you don't hear it, you don't need to do it because obviously there's no difference. And then there's me who says that you can't
maybe hear it clearly, but apparently something
is happening here, and this is adding just a subtle amount of
variation to the sound, which works against
the problem of this machine gun effect that I showed you
in the beginning. So we can just, you know,
like just tiny amounts, but we will do this
several times, multiple times on this page,
and then it will add up. But we won't do it
always with the envelope here because it would
always do the same. So what we do now is we
utilize the randomizer. Let's take the first one, do it on sampling and hall. What we want is that
it only creates a new value when we hit our key, which is happening now, right? Each time I play a note, it creates a new value. And we can now take the
randomizer one here, which is this one, and let's say link this a little bit
to the cut off here. So this is going to
both directions, and we can make this a little
bit here on the resonance, and we can bring it
a little bit here on the width and a little bit on the fine tune,
which is the pitch. But look, we just take this
tiny number. So this is 0.04. This is really
almost not audible. Let's maybe take 0.05. And what happens now
is if we play a note, as you can see on all
these little dots now, let's just spend attention
to this one here. If I hit a note, the
position changes, which means that this
note had the value that we see. This was loud. You notice this was louder
than the other ones, and this happened because here, they got a huge increase, probably the biggest
possible one, the 0.9. So turn this down a little bit, make this smaller, 0.4. This can stay, maybe even 0.6, and the Wife 0.4. So you want to be really
gentle with this. Otherwise, you lose control
over your instrument. Things can happen then
that you don't want, you know, like this
huge filter opening. On some parameters, however, you can go further if you want, depending on how consistent you want your patch
to be. But now So I like this, but sometimes, what it does is it goes
it goes even lower, you know, because this
goes into both directions. So it can be plus 0.04 or
can go minus this value. If it goes minus, what you notice is that
the filter starts earlier, which makes the attack
quieter, like here. So this is not this
is not the best way. But I think let me just
check this quickly. Yeah, I think there was no way to prevent it from doing this. It's something we
need to live with. Or we could, of course,
to work against this is, we could just say on the
filter, this is too heavy. Let's just make it 0.2 and And now we have a stable sound, so it's not jumping
so much in volume because even these little
amounts were really audible. I think I would like
to have more attack here for more pluckiness. And then, of course, you need
to always make sure that your attack on the
volume isn't higher than the attack on the
filter envelope because otherwise you won't hear
the snappiness of course, because it will happen before
the volume is even up. So now I would like to give this a little bit more release. Let's go for 2.1, 2.1 here as well, around. And Oh, look, like
a total beginner, I forgot to adjust a decay here. It doesn't matter
right now, but, um, let's maybe Let's take off the rewarb so we can
really hear or tail. This is already too roomy, too ambient for my taste. Spring this back. So now we have for one, yeah, first, we have
the volume here, and then we have the filter. So we don't confuse this. This is the whole thing we hear, and this is within
that thing we hear, how much of that time the
filter should open and close. So we can have it even way shorter than the overall volume, which means that the
string is pretty strong and pretty quickly stops
to vibrate and everything, or we can have
this longer within this time and have a string
that is more moving. Um, of course, I need
to dial this back, as well here to the same
amount as the release here. Whoops. There are
still pretty strong, um, pretty strong
inconsistencies here in the sound. So what we can do
to get rid of this? Because I think that a
randomizer is really strong, affecting the cut off
even at the 0.02 value. Um, what we could
do is probably. So this is the
filter cut off one. This is the This is
connected to this knob here. So you could sit change
this to randomizer one. And I'm always a little
bit confused with these numbers here
in pig Mans because, you know, 0.50 is something
like the whole spectrum. And if you go higher, then it means that
it will ignore the limit and go even beyond. So in this case, it would even go further what we don't want. So if we put this at 50, let me check if I'm right. If you bring this to
ten, let's compare. Let's see what the
difference is. Webs, come on. Yeah, you know,
this is the amount, the amount of affection
by the randomizer one. So if this is at 50, then our randomizer will
have a huge impact of um over this length here. And if you bring this
down to, let's say, 0.05, it will just just
a minimum value of this. So, in this case, it should be 10%, right? So 0.5 was 100, so means the whole range
this whole range of 0.22, um whatever this unit is called, and 0.05 would then equal 10%, which means Yeah, it's almost not audible.
This is really gentle now. So we always want to make
sure that the playability is granded and you don't get
this huge volume wipes. So just to show the opposite, if we bring this back up to 0.1, You will see that it
has a huge effect, and it's even going
beyond our value, right? So if it's at 0.50, it will respect the
range we have made here. But if we go beyond,
like I told you, it's going to ignore this and builds up in the
opposite direction. So let's make this
really gentle, something like, you
know, like 0.05. So what it does now is that
the starting point here, I think, is being shifted a
little bit forth sometimes. So sometimes it
won't start here, but rather a little
bit in the front. We can verify this easily
by just going into negative value and see if
this effect occurs stronger. I think it happens
more often now. Even if you bring
this, we can really go extreme to see what
happens now you see. So often we get now these really huge values
into the other direction. So yeah, 0.5 should just give us a tiny bit of variation whips here in a starting position. Um, Nice. So let's bring back the rewap. If you're happy with the tail, I am, which we
adjusted here earlier. Of course, the decay
needs to be the same. So just in case that you're
holding down the note, you will get the same value. Oh So for now, that's not bad. That's fine, but sounds so edgy. Now, this becomes
more of a harp sound, but also a little bit retro. So this is too strong. Could adjust this
a little bit here, but What we could do is, do something like this and take our envelope and along with the filter open this
just a little bit. So we have a little bit of an edgy instinct
attack transient when we pluck the instrument, but then it goes back to, you know, the usual body sound. Let me try something. So
we had this randomizer. Let me just for a
second, take this away. Whoops now took it away
completely. So this was 0.22. Then we had the side chain, randomizer one, and
this little value here. Yeah, I think that sounds
a little bit more organic. Not sure if that's a placebo
because it's so small value, but it's definitely there
and it's doing something. And, you know, like all
these little values they add up together. But now let's try a
little bit higher value. Again without rework. By the way, now for reverb we can hear the wave form more,
and it sounds. Just a little bit artificial, but that's not a problem
because you're not trying to simulate the real
instrument sound, just the real instrument
pluck feeling. And, you know, these
triangle shape we have here, they are pretty smooth, but still have some of the attack transient,
the grittiness. Let me just let me
play a sequence. I just want to
spend attention to the sound and see what
comes to my mind. So I think that sounds great. Like there's a
nice, lovely tail. Um, but I'm not quite
happy with the Corson. So what we could try, let's bring in or let's not bring in, let's actually or let's
bring in a little bit. So first of all, we bring
this in a little bit, so it has a starting point
that is not absolutely quiet. And then we take
or Envelope two, which I just grabbed and make this open
oscillator trees volume. And then let's bring
this one octave up, so we have a little bit
more high frequent content. Can you hear that? Yeah, this is I mean, we're going to shape
this in a second, but this is what was
missing to my ears. I had the feeling
that the sound was pretty dark, pretty damp. So, you know, like it was there, but it's so so um It
wasn't expressive. That's maybe the right
wording for this. And now we got that.
That's pretty nice. So we have two ways. Now, we could either try to get this into another soft shape, which has this dark
character again. Could get rid of this
by changing the form. Or we can go back to the wave
form here if you like this more and just set down the starting point so we don't end up with
so much volume, which means this part of the patch is a
little bit quieter. Which might blend better
with the other things, so it's not so
prominent in the front. So either we do it this
way or we use this one. I feel that this one has Has a little bit more quirkiness in the high frequencies,
if you know what I mean. But they don't. Like, they
are not hugely different, so I think here, something resonates a
little bit more in it, which is not so much given here. Or let me phrase
this differently. If we take this, it
sounds more coherent overall because we stay in the wave shape we
have chosen here. And if we use this, one can hear that there's a little
different thing in the sound. It's it's not dominant. It's not annoying,
but it's there, and it's audible, and
this is the question. If you want this I would actually stick
with this one, I think. Could you make this quieter? Or make this louder, brighter. Which gives us more of
the track transient. We sounds a bit crystallic now. But this is what we need to live with if we use
this one octafier. If we don't use it one octafier, we don't really need
to introduce this. Well, I mean, yes, still we can because it makes our mid layer thicker, right? So we have Oscillator
one and three, which now are building the mid. And while this is always
there in the volume, this really just comes
with the envelope. So this makes or patch,
you know, thicker. And if you use it this way, we will add this
on top harmonics. Which I like more, I think. It's just more standing out. And then, usually, I like to
work with delay as well on pluck patches because
they have the best, really the best
conditions to bounce, you know, because they
are so snap here. And then if you
bring it in here, they really bounce nice. Creates such a
nice cluster so we can decrease a little
bit the amount here and the feedback. A little bit sloppy at
the end, but that's cool. If you bring now in the reverb, this will be part of the tale. Which I think is pretty cool because now it's being, like, fed into the reweb into the tail and it's going more into
this ambient feeling here, adding a little bit more spice
of interest to our patch. So if you wanted to have a
really realistic pluck patch, then we wouldn't do this, and we wouldn't do the
ambient thing. We would try to create a
realistic room, if at all. But if we go for
the ambient route, we can be creative and explorative and use
the delay as well, which works beautiful here. So So I think that one is really great and we can we can leave it as it is now because I think
there was a huge episode, and we have a
pretty nice result. So the idea we had,
if you remember back, we wanted an ambient patch that is soft and
smooth and plucky, and we absolutely achieve that. So I hope you enjoyed
this episode, and you will see us
in the next one.
3. Second Patch - Dreamy Haunting Pluck: Hello and welcome to
episode two of this module. So let's create
another plug patch. It's a bit difficult for pluck patches to shine
from each other. Well, at least a little bit
more difficult than with other patch types because by the nature of
this short time, where the plug is
really shining, you know, where the
filter is open. This is just this little second here that we always set up. It's harder to distinguish
because in our pad, we can have so much things going on or our lead that
can be hold out. Can have a lot of content. But here, usually we just have this There's a little time, and we need to fill
this window of time with what makes the sound. And this puts us into
more of a challenge. So we need to be more
extreme when it comes to creating these
patches if we want to have audible differences. Of course, you can really
get lost in the detail and enjoy to create a couple of pluck patches
that are still a bit different from each other
but just in tiny flavors, which is what I
usually do when I do my sound sets or
generally for my music. But for the sake of this course, so I wanted to show
you, you know, like, more possible things that are
different from each other, so you get a bigger
horizon on this field. So for the sake of this one, let's make a really beautiful, dreamy and maybe a
little bit haunting, but this we put on
a question mark, but a dreamy and
really beautiful, soft sounding pluck patch. So, you know, the last one
was more ambient and lush, and this will be more
dreamy and magical, I would say, you know, in
terms of describing the sound. And therefore, we
will use sine waves, I think, I believe. And this will make it hard to get a good attack
in the beginning, but this is something we
will take care of later. So for now, just go to
the analog engine again, spring down or cut off, make this a sine wave. So this is where we start with. A beautiful sign with a
lot of harmonic content. And by the way, just a note, I am on studio headphones
when I do this, so I don't have so much low end. So if I hit this note here, this will probably
make your subo for rumble if you're listening to this now on Big Speakers. So if you do this patch and you have some rumbling
going on later, you probably need to equalize the low end a little bit out. But yeah, just a side note. So let's set up our
envelopes first. So we need some release. Maybe a little more. No sustain. And then, of course, the
decay to the same time. We can mess with this later. So our justice later. So now we take Envelope
two as always, bring the cut off bit down, and then Let it open or filter. Of course, shouldn't
be longer again than the actual volume time
because we want to hear this. You can still do
this if you want to this progress to be somewhat, you know, like around here when the volume already
fade out. That's fine. So if you say, Hey, I don't want this to end
at the absolute minimum, you know, like this is
the filter closing, you know, this time. So we hear now the
most closed part. But if I would bring
this more in Whoops. This one was on accident. We still hear this
part at the end. Because our volume
already closed, we can hear the filter here going traveling
all the way down. But the end part was
more open than here. It's really tiny, it's subtle, but just so you know, I think we can live
with that for now. And then let's bring
in a sine wave, maybe. Or higher. I think
higher will be better. And for now, to really
let's make this bit longer. And, of course,
we need to adjust the volume as well,
so we hear this. I think that's better.
Now, let's bring in some delay for now.
Not that much. Some feedback. Stearspread. Sounds pretty good already. Yeah. So maybe let's
think about the cut off. This is too. I mean, this becomes
not plucky here. That is because the
filter starts and ends so low that we
really have the contrast, the difference between, like, nothing and the highest part. But this is too plucky for now. I know we want to
plug, but you know, bear with me, we're going
to make this great. Let's first go for
the core magic sound. A more tech. Make it softer. And maybe less of
a foot opening. Yeah. That's try on lower again. I like that. Sounds lovely. And we can take the Llevo one and modulate this fine tune here on the second oscillator. Faster? Or maybe we will hear
the stronger, of course, if this is two octaves
higher because the low end, you know, like, we can't
hear the details so much. But here really shines. So we wouldn't treat
this as sub oscillator, but rather just as,
um, top oscillator. I don't know if this
word is a ping but You can make it stronger, maybe. So now it sounds more haunting. And this, to me, has two vibes. The first thing I
need to think of is silent Hill instantly. And the second thing I need to think of is ghost in the shell. There's there's a piece that's called
something like night in the Museum or Museum, and they play some like some really calm
things like here. This sounds already pretty good. But now, what is missing doesn't really
quite feel like I plug. It does a little bit, but Not enough. So what
we can do to get that fixed is we gonna
take envelope tree, root it to the volume
of oscillator tree. You can already hear it.
Something coming in. We just try to create a
little attack transient here. Maybe not zero, a
little bit more. So this adds too much of this
feeling of the square wave. So either, we Oh, yeah triangle. You know, like the triangle is the perfect mix
between sine wave, which we have here and the saw tooth because it
has this round shape, but also the edges. And this can provide
us with some attacks. Listen, this is the
original sound. And if you bring this in, I don't know if you
could hear this, but we have more edginess. We can, of course, increase
this a little bit. Um, Of course, if you want to hear
what this does alone, we can just turn
these off for now. So this is really
all it's adding. Can make this louder? So we really just get this
little attack transient. Could you make this shorter? As you want only
this little peak. Then it adds to a patch. It's almost not audible, but it's giving this
clickiness in the beginning. Making the sound a little
bit more like a plug. And this is even more, but this is too strong for my taste. Um, Let's introduce Unison. On this patch, I
wouldn't add reword because I mean, you could, but It does really lose the It has so
few plug character. It really loses the
plug character, then. But still, you can do it. Sounds good. There
are new routes, but. So by definition,
technically, it is a plug. Because a lead would
sound different, and you could hold
down notes like this. So I'm holding a chord now with four notes, but you
don't hear anything. So it's definitely something
that falls under plug. So patches don't always
need to be overcomplicated. Sometimes it's a lot of
detailed work like here. So we have this little
modulator here on the fine tune for this
haunting effect in the pitch. We have the Oscilita two, one octave higher to add
more of this high nodes. I mean, This sounds different. Especially down there. But
with one octave higher, We can distinguish these two oscillators better
from each other. And regarding this one here, gets too clicky, one
octafierO lower, we will lose the um We
lose the clickiness. You know, there's more low end
now if you listen to this. This is not as strong
and snappy as this. Here, you know, this is
the perfect sweet spot in the middle with enough
high frequencies to shine, not too dark, not too bright, giving this nice effect. And, of course, what we
could do now, you know, we could introduce FM
to our sine waves, but this will
completely mess with the beautiful sound and
make it more gritty. Of course, we could just
for the sake of trying out, see if we can make the cluiness stronger in the beginning. Now, this, you know, playing
it down here sounds like some Dios x m pluck patch. Can totally imagine this. Um Doesn't sound bad. I like it somewhat, but it becomes more
Synthi because now we had this beautiful arm,
magical, dreamy sound. And now. This really gets
more into a lead feeling now. Although it's not technically, it's still a pluck patch, but it doesn't sound
plucked anymore. I mean, to be fair, it doesn't in the way
we have here as well. But this is what I said earlier, we don't always have to
build realistic instruments. So if you imagine a
futuristic instrument, it sounds like this, if you plug it, because
you wouldn't ops, if we wouldn't plug, it
would sound like this. You know, so this is
how you would play it. And if you would
pluck the strings of this artificial
instrument that we just created, Sounds way different. So I think it's legid. It's plucky enough and we have the freedom to say that
this is a plug patch. And because it's so soft, I wouldn't actually
change anything. I wouldn't add randomizers
because we want to always make sure we
have this softness. And for the softness,
we don't want to have different fragments,
you know, that change. The patch is thick already. Especially with the
voices we added. Remember, it sounded
like this before. Which I also really like. This is a more focused sound, and depending on what
feeling you want to create, you make this decision. So let me click this. I don't like this red bar. So this here, oh, I
killed the sound. Why did I kill the
sound? What happened? Um, let me just click on
my audio driver again. Oh, well, okay. I have no sound. I don't know why. It
sometimes happens. But anyway, I
didn't want to say, much, so the patch
is anyway, done. I just wanted to say that if we go for the sound
without the voices, there's more focused thin sound, then that's more it
feels more abstract, I would say, more
foreseen way of feel, maybe a little bit
more uncomfortable, more haunted and making the tree voices to get
this big unison sound, which splits the
signal into, you know, three different voices left,
right and middle channel, we get more of this dreamy feeling because it's, you know, like flying around us and it's a bit more
softer and gently. This is all I
wanted to say. So I hope you enjoyed this
patch and this episode, and then we will see us in the next and last
episode where we will create a more typical pluck
patches again. See you there.
4. Third Patch - Scoring Pluck: Hello, welcome to
the last episode the final patch in
this little module. So let's go for a more classic, more typical plug patch. Like, the first one was ambient. The second one was dreamy, and now we want to
create, you know, like the most basic core plug that you would really use
in most typical music. Um, well, what means
typical music? Of course, it's my style, so it's different from
what you maybe do, but you get the idea. What we did last episode
was more special. You can't just use
this everywhere. It serves a specific purpose. And now we rather create
a plugged patch that has more ability in different
genres or musical pieces, you know, because it's not
so specific in its sound. This is what I
wanted to say, and I think that's a good
way to look at this. So let's go to the analog
engine and set up, again, the basic values. So gonna bring in this. So we can already hear the side. The range. I like this range. Maybe open a bit more. Yeah, this is good. And now we're gonna get rid
of the sustain here, decay around 2.2.
Same for the release. And then the same here? So, no matter what we play, we get the same sound. And now let's revisit this here. So that's pretty dark. This is too dark, if
you bring this up. Yeah, this is too dark because
of the starting point. Let's bring this back
and decrease this. Something like what we
had in the beginning. I think that's good,
maybe a bit brighter. And now instantly bring
in oscillator two. And if you just bring in
a little bit fine tune, usually we always modulate this or do something with this, but we can just bring
it in a little bit. So if these two share
the same waveform, which they do, it works with different waveforms as
well, but related ones. So it would work with
this one as well, but less with this one. But this works perfectly with always two
of the same type. And then, you know, you compare. I'm just
playing the same. So you notice from around here, it starts to really drift
away from each other. So this is too much unless you want this
particular effect. But if you just go a little bit, We instantly get a
little bit of thickness. And this is because these are the same oslators on the same
waveform on the same note. But now, this one is a little
bit detuned in its pitch, which basically
means that we can distinguish both better with
our ears from each other, making the sound more thick
because now we can To layers. So you can imagine this. I just show you so
you can see this. We not used this
yet. But, you know, this is the cors
visual representation. So this is our first
oscillator and the second one. And this is what they well, imagine that we would close
them completely like one line is if this is at,
you know, 12:00. But if we bring this al
bit down like I just did, what basically has happened
is that these two waveforms, they get a little bit more
wave from each other, right? Because they are not
the same pitch anymore. So if this is an
A, which I play, the other by the way, I'm just using this for
the visual representation, so don't bother with this
module here with the chorus. So if I bring this fine
tune here down, basically, what's happening if this is an A means they are
further apart in pitch, which makes them more audible. There's nothing different.
Let me take this away. There's nothing different in its very principle than
playing two notes. Right? So, of course, we
have more information than playing one note
and slightly detuning this gives us with a really
tiny version of this effect. So this is good to
add some thickness. Then we can bring
in a sub oscillator because we don't want
to mess with this one. We don't want to bring this
down because if we do, will I show you, we will
lose a little bit of this. Cool effect. It's
still in there, but since they are not
the same pitch anymore, it's not as strong as together. So we rather utilize
Oscillator tree, a sub oscillator,
make it quieter. By the way, we don't
always need a sub, right? You could say, Hey, I'm
having a heavy baseline or I have heavy kicks with a lot of low end
or low end percussion. I don't want the low end
here in this patch, right? So You could just
stick with this. So you don't need always to
put a sub oscillator in. But right here, I'm not
having any composition. I'm just creating this patch. And therefore, I try
to get the best sound out of this patch
in the first place. You could still turn this
off if you composite with it and you figure out that
you don't need to low end. So this is more gentle. The pulse is really the biggest, fattest low end you can
get. Here's a lot of power. Compare. This is more like gnaring bus
to the sides base. This is more gentle, which is good for plugged instruments
because remember, this doesn't sound
as plucky as this. And we're still making a plug here, so that's good so far. We can turn this
here a bit louder because if you bring
down the cut off a lot, you can just compensate
with the volume because, of course, it becomes quieter. So far so good. So it's possible to
bring in modulation, but as you know, it's really difficult in this
short time to shine. What we could try is
take our envelope to and modulate the width of sub. Doesn't really
make a difference. This here does, though. So here. It gets really bouncy and dirty. So we wouldn't want us to
be always there, but maybe. And without So it becomes grittier. But especially down here,
that's really pumping. That's really hard. And
without this, whoops. It's a bit more gentle. We
can maybe make this more. Yeah, I think this is more soft and gentle
because this year, No, this is a broad, a big white waveform. And like I said, the big Sintran of course, if you're enrolled to this, you remember that I said, what you see is what you get. Often, that's true. And a bigger and wider waveform actually creates more
thick sound then. These sharp, little agile ones. So this is a bit more
easy on a patch. Let's bring back in what I
accidentally clicked away. But here, down here, again, you can hear there's
really some ugly kind of stumbling in the sound. I don't quite like this,
so let's don't do this. And let's rather now
focus, you know, like, in this case, right now, because it's, like I said, difficult to really work on plugs so much in detail because they don't
have much time to shine. So instead of messing with
everything else we have here, because setup we have
a great setup, right? We have this little
detune here and we have a little change
in the sub oscillator waveform to be a
little bit thinner to add a little bit
less of low end here. Um, so now what we could do is to rather work with
some more FX, you know? So usually you don't
always need to do everything here in the
engines in the oscillators. This is just the
core, but here we can do some nice processing. But before we do so, probably I'm not going
to stick with it, but let's see what happens here. Bring in some volume,
because volume, some noise, volume from
the noise, because noise. And this is actually one
of the rare moments where the noise really has a
meaningful task in a patch. I can increase clickiness. Right, so this sounds a
bit like a paper hit. I hit with a piece of paper. We can even White
is white spectrum, blue has more height, so
we go this direction. Hmm. Not for this patch, but
just so you have the idea. I mean, we could we
don't need this because, you know, a pluck
is plucky enough. Doesn't need more pluckiness. But usually, what
you could do again is take envelope tree, make it really, really,
really, really, really tiny, and then, you know, throw in the noise with
that if your patch is not clicky enough to you. But this one here's
plenty of power. Really nice low end. So let's go finally here and
let us do something new. So we don't want bit crush
our distortion because it has some basic distortion
in it just by the fact that we are
detuning with the fine tune. And I like what it sounds like. So we could work with Hmm. I could use a phaser flanger. Let's see. I'm I'm not
leaning towards flange. This is why I want to try
and sort that out first. No, that's definitely
too strong. The fas I could imagine with the right settings, then
we have the chorus. If you want a more fixed sound and some more maybe 80s
vibes or ritual game vibes. And now I played little chords, well, two tone chords, but that's, of course, a little bit awkward for plucked instruments
because usually you just pluck single strings
and don't play chords. But who's gonna stop
you to do this? So, um, Oh, yeah. I have actually no idea
what the BL two flanger is. It's probably a
different algorithm. Let's just find
something that we like. So you can hear it swing here. This makes the sound a little
bit more hollow, I find. Not a fan right now.
Let's take the phaser. This is funny. If you're
bringing the feed back to the maximum on most
things on a synthesis, it will cause the signal to be fed back into itself
creating this funny. This funny thing that
comes in the end. Okay, the stereo
one wasn't good. Because sometimes I hear more on the right side
than on the left. This makes it a bit thinner. Hmm. And chorus? Yeah, I think I'm leaning toward chorus. I think
it sounds better. And now that sounds
a bit tedious, hearing the same note
again and again, but I'm really playing
the same note, so I can compare with
what I heard before. If I would play now melodies or something that sounds good, it would, you know, I
couldn't compare it then, of course, because I played different frequencies,
different melodies. So I'm playing this
stupid same note again. I know it's a bit tedious, but that's the process to
really hear the difference. So if we bring this
close, this is good. This is basically like a
light version of what I did with what we did with
this little button here. If you bring this further apart, get more of the wobbly
and stable sounds, I would go for a
nice, gentle version. So this really sounds
like two duplicates. This is like trot bikes
riding next to each other. I like the result. I like it in fact so much
that I wouldn't mess with all the other, um,
parameters here. I want it really this way. 580. Let's keep this in
mind. Okay, maybe. Dots even cooler, I think, because this is this
is almost inaudible. So the rate in hertz, as always with hertz,
what I always say, low frequence which
is this swings slower and this is so slow that we have
really a slow effect. Could hear this when I do this? So I hope you can
hear the difference. This is, like, wobbly, and this is really,
really, um, narrow. So it really goes slow
and you can hear it, and this is really quick quick in terms of what
this module here offers. But something like
here, I think, this was a sweet spot earlier. I think this is characteristic. So let's bring back to sustain. And this is just the
amount of voices, so tree gets a little bit more stereo and
in the same time, a little bit less
exciting, I find. Two, really, they
work well together. With tree, it's split and lose it loses a
little bit of detail. So I like it so far, and I barely I really rarely make
pluck patches without delay. I usually do it
only when I want to recreate some realistic
sounding instruments. So in my sound set, we have this koto patch, which is a futuristic version
of the Japanese koto. So, of course, I kept
that without sorry, without delay. But here, We can, of course, use delay. We can use the tape echo, delay. So I think that mimics the, a little bit of, you
know, like the old tapes. They had some instability and
pitch shift and, you know, the old a little bit
like lo fi, you know, not quite lo fi, but in this
genre you can think of. So if you spend
attention to the echo, to the bounces that
come out of this. Will notice that I
have a little bit of distortion and then get
swell out into darkness. And we're fine, this is what
this tape element comes in. If you remember old tapes. If you use them a lot and
they were pretty much used, they started to have this
little pitch shifting in it. Of course, not that strong, so we can just so you know, like this is our original sound. And if I bring this
at this position, what will happen is that
our initial sound when I play the first note with
sound the way we are used to it and the
bounces here in the echo will have a
little bit of this shift. But I think let's try the
normal delay in comparison. I want this a little bit softer the attack right now
before we proceed. Because it's really Yeah, this is a little bit
better, this softness. Well, I'm not sure, actually. Let's do something
in the middle. 1.2, maybe. I don't want to sacrifice
too much of the cluiness. Um Hmm. And maybe something
of this value. And then regarding the delay, um, more stereor more feedback. Less feedback. It's too long. Maybe not so much stereo spread. So the delay creates a
ribbon now we can play with. Not the best melody
in the world, but this is what it
sounds like now. And So here, it's clipping. I'm not clicking there because I'm afraid I will kill my sound. I don't know why it
happened earlier, but I just turn it
more quiet here. Let's see. So So pin it's a rock solid patch. It's not the most interesting
patch in the world, but it doesn't always need to. I mean, in terms
of its complexity, of course, in its sound
itself, I really like it. And this has, you know, like, some dark, mysterious character. So if you would see a scene in a movie or
in a game where someone is secretly sneaking around a company's facility
in the shadows. I can totally
imagine this there. It sounds lovely
for this purpose. You know, like to score these light scenes and what we could do here
with the mod wheel, I really want to do this. We attach the mod wheel to a negative value on
the cut off knob. And now, if I increase
the mod wheel, you can see it here and here, and here because, you know, it messes with the filter now. So I can bring this down and enjoy a little bit of even
more tension in the patch. And I mean, this was a little bit sloppy life
playing just for fun. You know, it's the
end of the cure let's do some funny things. And by the way, the
cool thing about this reworb we have set up here is that it creates its
rhythms, if I play. I can play with the rhythm.
You have noticed this. I play with a little
bit of input delay, which makes it hard to be
really perfectly on time, but So, you know, like, I'm playing a little
bit rhythmically playing with the delay as my second
player, you know. So, um, So this is just really basic now, but let's imagine
we have a sequence, Then just one hire. And now with the Motwa we can
move smoothly. Into this. I just moving this here. So that's pretty
cool. I like this. Now, of course, this was
a really boring sequence, but this is not about
making compositions here. Just wanted to show you
this way of doing this. And, of course, you could
even find more things to control with the
mod wheel here, could even, you know, like, make your envelopes short or longer, whatever
you're looking for. So if you want this to get more plucky when
you increase this, you could, in the same time, pick the mod wheel and bring the decay here a little bit
back and the release as well. Minus ten -30 here on both. And now, this is
even more clicky. Compare this to if
we don't do this. Yeah, that's
basically, you know, just a little different, another twist, which is gradually
making a change, right? So if I bring up them
by the full amount, we get the full effect. But if we are halfway through, it still gets more
clicky already. More snappy because now the decay and release time is still being affected, right? So even if I bring
this mode here, just in by this amount, this will already,
as you can see here, this orange button here, always already starts
to shift this. So it doesn't only
affect the end in the beginning if you play
with the heart values, but even if I if I go So even if I play
a little sequence like this and open
the mot wheel, we will have gradually
these changes in the patch. And especially with pluck
patches with delay, these kind of things work well, especially with this filter
closings because the delay now really enjoys to let this little clicks
bounce in the back. This is something that you
don't have in this fashion in our lead patch in our
typical lead patch. So this is something that you can explore and experiment
with in your patches. I would emphasize
you to do this to really get everything
out of pluck patches. Yeah, that so far, these are all three
patches on the long way. So we had the ambient patch. Had the dreamy patch, and now we have a real
plug instrument. Yeah, and as you can
see, like I said, it's not always
about complexity. Sometimes it's really
about the details like making the details sound good. Just because we have tree LFOs here and tree functions
and tree randomizers, we don't need to all of this
and throw this into a patch. Often this leads to a lack of playability because
there's so much stuff going on that this patch would
absolutely destroy every composition because
it's so super um, space consuming doesn't leave room for the other instruments. So you want to consider this as well, when you create patches. You can go complex, but
you don't need to always. You can really spend,
high quality work in the fine tune as we did here. So I hope you enjoyed
this plugged module, and I hope you'll see
us in other ones. So see you then.
Daniel Voider, from the future
