EPTWhen you first start using music software, synths are the most intimidating things in the world. It took me goddamn forever to figure out how to actually use all the 100s of intimidating knobs and not just click in presets. I still like to use presets, but making your own sounds from scratch is WAYYY more fun and you can get exactly what you want. Its actually pretty easy too, if you have someone around to show you some basics.
With this howto I'm going to focus in on one of the things many people want to learn nowadays: how to make really neat and interesting bass sounds. Yeah, dubstep is cool and all, but these basses can be used in pretty much any genre and are a great intro to how to program synths and create awesome and bizarre effects. In this tutorial I assume you know how to use the basic functions of your music software (playing notes etc...).
Here are some sounds you can make using the methods in this Howto:
DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional sound engineer by any stretch of the word, I am 99% self taught. What I write here is just how I get my sounds, It may be blatantly wrong but It will make cool noises.
HOW TO USE THE SYNTH
The synth I'm going to show the basics of is Native Instruments Massive. Why? Because its a great synth. A word on synths here, most non-sample based synths out there do basically the same things. Its not like a guitar and a drum where if you want a drum sound you have to go get a drum...a really good programmer can make pretty much any sound using any commercial or free synth. What mostly separates synths is just the user interface. I am showing Massive off because it has a GREAT interface and is readily available to anyone who wants it. Massive can be used as a plugin in pretty much any music software (Cubase/Ableton/FL/Logic/blahblahblah), and will operate exactly the same in all of them.
After you've got Massive installed and all that (google if you have trouble), open up an instance and It should look like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3Xjjz.png)
The first thing you are going to do is click File-New Sound, because for some reason it doesn't come up blank.
Now I'm going to show you how this shit works...Its actually REALLY simple.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LoVYz.png)
There are actually only four things in this synth you have to worry about:
1. GREEN: The oscillators! There are three of them, stacked. OSC1 OSC2 and OSC3. They generate the noises you use as building blocks for your sound.
2. RED: The filters! There are two of them, stacked. We will only use one so just ignore Filter 2. They filter the noise, taking away some frequencies.
3. BLUE: The Effects! There are 2 at the bottom and two on the right, they add effects to the noise like echo and other more complicated shit.
4. YELLOW: General settings. They are in tabs just like your browser, you only have to worry about the ones I have circled.
You can ignore everything in the synth I haven't circled. You can fuck around with it later but its not important right now. Basically you will turn on some of those oscillators over on the left, they will make noises that go through the filters and then the effects to come out at the end as savage bass or string plucks or whatever.
Ok, so you wanna make a basic bass. First we are going to pick what oscillator we want, we'll only use one for this simple bass. So just make sure only one oscillator is on (the little blue light next to the name), and make it look like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7bC9X.png)
The pitch number is going to be brought down an octave (12 semitones) because we want bass, and the top setting "Sin-Squ" is picked out of that big drop down menu. This menu is different types of oscillators that make different types of sounds. You can use whatever you like the sound of but lets start with Sin-Squ. The three knobs in the oscillator are its settings, Wt-Position and Intensity influence the sound (wiggle them to see how), and Amp is the oscillator's volume. When you play a nice long note with the synth right now it should make a boringish buzzy bass tone. Great.
Now we are going to add the filter to make it interesting.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1djzR.png)
Click the dropdown menu and select Lowpass 4. This filter is going to let the low frequencies "pass" through, and cut out the high frequencies of our oscillator. How much it cuts off is dependant on that "Cutoff" knob. Lets turn the 3rd knob (Resonance), all the way down for this sound (you can wiggle it to see how it sounds, just adds resonance durp). Now play a note and turn the "Cutoff" knob back and forth, you should hear the high frequencies being modulated....This is the knob you turn to get that classic wobble sound used in dubstep all the time. However you cant sit here and turn that knob manually all day long, so we are going to have the synth turn it for you (this also makes the wobble sound nicer).
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/F2Dk8.png)
You see those blue and green tabs in the settings area? Those are your automatic knob turners (called envelopes and LFO's). The only thing they do is turn other knobs in the synth automatically. Click on LFO # 5, the one I circled. When you assign this thing to another knob in the program, it will turn that knob up and down according to the shape shown in the middle. We want it to turn that cutoff knob in the filter, so all you have to do is click the green + next to its name and drag it up into the first box under the cutoff knob. It should look like this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8yB4Z.png)
Ok, now that thing is automatically assigned to turn that knob. We just need to tell it how we want it turned. This is how we do that:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/T7fsH.png)
Whoa dont get scared, its only three things. First we tell the LFO (knob turner) what shape we want it to turn the knob in, we want that sine wave on top, so we move the crossfader all the way to the top. Second, we want to tell it how far to move the knob. We do this by clicking on the green 5 in the box under cutoff and dragging up or down. The LFO will now turn that knob up and down in that range of motion. Third we need to tell it how fast to turn the knob, we want it to turn the knob in sync with the BPM of our project, so we turn on Sync, then move the bottom number right above Sync to 4 by clicking and dragging up and down. If you set the bottom number at 8 it will sound faster, and if you set it at 2 it will go slower.
If you have all the settings looking like that picture and play a long note, it should make a nice wobble bass just like this:
If it doesnt sound like that make sure you are playing a note you put into the piano roll and not just hitting a key. If you are just hitting a key then the synth cant sync to the program and the LFO wont turn the knob.
Congratulations, you just made a wobble bass from scratch and hopefully actually understood what you did
. Lets add some effects to make it sound better.Lets add a Dimension expander (select it from the drop down), its an effect which will give the sound some stereo and make it sound bigger. Heres a setting I like:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4eUqb.png)
You can play with the setting and various effects in these two slots all you want, just whatever sounds good.
That was cool and all, but how do you make crazy complex sounding stuff like this?
Imma bout to blow your mind....more automatic knob turning, that's it. You know how we had the program move the cutoff up and down? What If you also set it to move the volume of one of the oscillators up and down? Or to turn a knob in another filter? Or even.....to turn a knob IN AN LFO THAT TURNS ANOTHER KNOB....WHOA WTF KNOBTURNCEPTION! Yeah, that's all there is to it.
Lets look at that the bass that made that sound I just linked:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/c1Y1a.png)
Whats going on here? Simple stuff you just did, only more of it. I have 3 different oscillatiors turned on and loaded with different waveforms (Sin-Tri, Acid, and S-Yard) running then through a Comb Filter (up top), and a S-Shaper (in the insert slot), and then finally through the good old Dimension Expander at the very end. Then I just have all 4 knob twiddlers all assigned to different knobs in the filters and oscillators. Its actually very simple. All you have to do is find out what knobs make cool effects when twiddled with. I heavily recommend the S-Shaper I used in this sound, as well as the Wt-Position in each oscillator.
Get out there and assign some LFO's chappies! Remember you can use these tools to make any sound you want, not just wobble bass, you can make trance plucks or leads using the same method, just assign the envelopes to different knobs and use different Oscillators in at a higher pitch.
ADVANCED METHODS
Just one more tip once you are a pro at assigning LFO's. Those blue things (Env) actually do the exact same thing as the green ones, they can be assigned to turn knobs too, only they turn them based on the shape shown inside each one starting from when the note is hit:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/avUsl.png)
And the LFO's can turn knobs not just in waves, they have two other modes as well:
One, the Stepper, which turns knobs to the values you put into a stepping graph:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4uRvA.png)
And two, the Performer, which turns knobs based on a series of curves you put into a chart:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/g7aTj.png)
These alternate options can be selected from the far upper right drop down in each LFO. They behave exactly like the normal LFO except they turn the knob in more interesting shapes.
If anyone has any questions or inquiries on how to get a specific noise or gets stuck and confused or other stuff just post and/or PM me! I can help you probably! I can even stream a little lesson which makes everything about 100x easier so don't hesitate to ask.
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I'm hungry.![[image loading]](http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o150/Infares/Largemouth600x530.jpg)
