Creating Interesting Synth Patches

CREATING INTEREST

As with many things in electronic music production, everything operates in layers from the ground up, and small changes everywhere add up to a final product. In this arcticle I’m going to introduce to you some techniques for adding some interest to your synth patches. This is accomplished either through the synth itself or by manually automating parameters if your device routing options are limited.

When designing your sound, of course you will start off with a few basic ideas, the main oscillators, and envelope options on your volume and cutoff. This gives you your basic starting tone. So what are some things when can employ to add a little richness?

GRADUAL AUTOMATIONS

Firstly, one of my favorite techniques is to automate the panning of an oscillator. On the Pulverisatuer you have panning options for each individual oscillator. Instead of panning the entire output drastically, try adding a small slight up and down pan across a number of bars on a single oscillator. Of course you can also try this on more than one oscillator. This is a great idea to implement for pads in audiotool as it creates a lot of extra movement, which is usually the goal with a pad timbre.

You can also utilize this same idea for other parameters. Instead of having a large drastic, obvious change, you can implement, a long, gradual, and slight change by one or two percent throughout the course of a song. You could do this on an oscillator tune, or volume, pulsewidth amount, or any other number of knobs. The net effect is a very unnoticeably changing set of harmonics which operates at different states throughout the song. It’s a great way to emulate old analogue synthesizers which would drift tune from it’s physical circuitry.

KEYBOARD TRACKING

Next, an easy way to employ a little variance on your synth sound is to use the “KB Track” option. This is a common function on many synthesizers and will alter a parameter based on keyboard poisiton. In the case of the pulverisateur it’s hardwired to the filter cutoff. Basically, how it works, is it increases or decreases the filter cutoff position based on what key is played. So as you go up a scale, the filter opens, or reversely if you set the knob the opposite way. This can be a fairly intesting effect, especially with the cutoff envelope also set.

HUMANIZED NOTES

It isn’t quite modulation, but one often overlooked idea is that to alter the lengths and start positions of your notes. Of course, if your recording from a keyboard controller, this is already done for you as you play. But if your stuck with a mouse and computer, you can emulate real life performance by altering note positions ever so slightly, and playing with the note lengths. This shifts the groove of the track slightly, and is especially important for genres like rap and dubstep, which rely on creating a good funk or vibe with the drums.

Another way to spice up your pattern is to use different velocity amounts. Especially with plucked timbres, you can superimpose ryhthmic elements into your pattern by altering the velocity amounts. Choose key notes to hit on, and make the volumes of these the loudest. Use the elements of rythem with your synth pattern as if it were drums. You would be surprised how much funk this can add to a beat, especially at lower tempos.

For a good example of this, take a look at my “virus” track on audiotool.

FILTER SWEEPS

Often not considered by many is to utilize automated extra filters to sweep and add some extra interest. In audiotool, this comes in the form of the slope tool. Try chaining in a slope after your instrument and automationg the filter cutoff. I’m not just talking about the standard lowpass either. Try using bandpass, notch, or highpass filters as well. Adjust the mix ratio to let more of the original signal through and you will create a subtle phase. On that note, using this technique you can emulate a phaser-esque sound by employing a notch filter and sweeping the frequency.

EFFECTS AND ROUTING

Lastly, of course the easiest way to add modulation is to add stereo effects. This includes pedals such as the S. Detune, Chorus, Flanger, and Phaser. Some things to consider however, even though some of these will include a wet and dry amount, you might like to try using them as a bus effect rather than an insert. This makes it so that the original signal is at it’s full capacity with the effect additively imposed on top of it. Some interesting considerations can be made in this capacity in that you can essentially effect an effect instead of stacking up everything in the same effect chain. So for example, you could flanger a delay without applying the flange to the main instrument.

In audiotool there is a feature on the minimixer and centroid which allows you to route external effects in this manner. Yeah, that aux output? That’s what it’s for. More interestingly though, you can utilize a splitter to duplicate your synth output and route different chains of effects along with the dry signal. I often like to do with a splitter and a minimixer. An interesting effect to use in this manner is a compressor as you can mix your compressed, flat output with your punchy transient uncompressed output. Another simple thing you can do with this is mix an S. Detuned signal with your dry signal.

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As you can see there are many ways to add some more interest to your sound. Especially in audiotool this is very important as simply programming the pulverisatuer intself will only get you so far. The more subtle changes you make to a timbre, the more complex it will sound. Of course, keep in mind that in music you want to utilize a sense of contrast, So simple sounds have their place as well, in combination with complex sounds to create a rich pallate of sonic variety!