Creating Original Sounds

[wilsonrx]

When composing I ususally find it quite difficult to go beyond the presets that come with VST synths these days. The presets usually sound professional and (sometimes) cool. The trouble is when you write a track and only use presets, your track just ends up sounding like everything else. The best electronic tracks usually have a synth or an FX that you have not heard anywhere else; it makes you stand up and take notice of the tune.

So what I want to know is what methods to people use to create original sounds? I guess this is directed more towards people who create music that is supposed to sound electronic as opposed to those who try to replicate real or 'organic' sounds.

For instance:
- Do you start with presets and tweak from there or start from scratch?
- Do you combine different sounds together? Such as layering different synths, putting different things into vocoders, etc..
- Do you have any wacky plugins that can mangle sounds yet still come out with something that you could actually use? Some of these manglers I play with come out with really complex, unusable sounds.
- Do you sample real tracks and then process them to make them very different from the original?


This more than anything gets me stuck in a rut, I spend hours listening to presets and come away unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

Help!

[ConneKted]

ever tried sample a cd ?

[wilsonrx]

To be honest, no.

Can anyone recommend good sample CDs for synths, FX, etc.?

[hoffman2k]

bah. sample cd's in their current form suck.
You're just constructing other people's work. (and you had to pay for it)

---edit---

I mean the ones with "original" sounds.
The library's of orchestral instruments are usually pretty good.

[elemental]

Make ur own!!!!

Part of my sound is spending time twaeking and creating my own sounds. I will rarely use a preset straight off, unless its got something special about it, or if it is a simple bread+butter sound (like a sine wave or 808 bass)

Its the way forward i tells ya!

[ConneKted]

I mean the ones with "original" sounds.
The library's of orchestral instruments are usually pretty good.

that's what i mean 2k

[jeskola]

GIANT spliffs + making your own noises = HOURS OF FUN

[supster]

there are literally thousands of presets out there .. so many, that can be combined in so many infinite combinations ,,,

that nobody - other than the most anal retentive geek locked away in a basement somewhere* .. will ever know or recognize it.

is a guitar or a drumkit or a cello or a flute only good for one song, then we throw it away? no. same instruments, used over and over, to express a song.

only thing that matters is your song, how appropriate the sounds are for that song, and how well they are put together and arranged. how you get them doesnt really matter.

sometimes its the people that spend most of thier time engineering unique sounds from the ground up, that are making the stuff that is the least musical .. imo ...

it was the same thing with guitar players that were obssessed with playing a million notes fast at the expense of any song structure that had any impact. they more were concerned with impressing with technical skill, that they were creating music that worked.

that said - its amazing what you can do with a preset on a synth, a few tweaks on standard controls, some automation, chained through a third party effect (using tweaked presets as well), bounced to audio, then manipulated on the live grid.

you would never know where it came from in a million years and if it fits your song perfectly, thats all that matters ...

*oh wait .. thats most of the Live forum .. er ... ok yeah, start with a square wav, route it through a 6 pole filter and devise a recursive arpeggiated onomicron. and thats just for your hihat
.

[wilsonrx]

I think I am suffering from composer's block. Maybe I will get hold of some new VSTs, I might just be getting bored of the ones I have.

[supster]

Maybe I will get hold of some new VSTs, I might just be getting bored of the ones I have.

try this: take a preset, record a four bar loop, drag it into the arrange grid and start chopping it up to rythmically fit your song.

reconsolidate to a new four bar clip. now listen to it .. see if there are any notes in the clip that would be better off tweaked to a new pitch .. use the transpose envelope to alter the pitch of the clip on specific notes.

now add a rythmic delay. record that. reverse it.

now break this down again into individual clips that you can use to build up this element as the song progresses ....

and so on and so on

presets are only buildling blocks for sound design. once you look at it that way, you dont need a ton of VSTs unless you need a particular sound u cant get with what you have.
.

[Angstrom]

When I think of a tune I normally make stupid mouth noises to myself, generally I can be seen driving through my town gurning stupid faces.
By the time I get home I have an idea of the basic elements of the tune, what it will need to make those noises.

As an example - yesterday's stupid noise involved a kind of human beatbox noise that went 'tsungggunng' .
something a drum machine would be hard pressed to make with the extended preliminary noise.
I realised I needed a synth that could produce enveloped white noise with a variable pre-delay Env before the tonal part which required more complex enveloping involving a hi and low pass filter with a little ring mod.

I knew that for my above noise I could have aproached it a number of ways.EG: Separate the tonal components into samples 'tss' and 'unggg' and put them in impulse. Though I know from using my MS20's than they are quite good at doing the vocal unggg noises.
What I did though was I opened up a synthedit project of a drum synth that I had, and made alterations to the engine to allow the above tonalities. A hi and lo pass filter with osc 3 frequency fed to the resonance of the lopass to create a partial ring mod effect. I didnt use the MS20 becaus eI wanted savable (vsti) patches, stereo and polyphony

What I am really saying here is get just a few synths and get familiar with what each synth is good for.
- you are going to get better sounds out of something you know intimately than a new VSTi IMO

Then when a creative vision arrives - you dont have to struggle through a new interface and effectivley just emerge with a mangled wreck!

Brian Eno is still using the same synths that he used on Music for airports. I think he said the last synth he bought was something like a DX7 !!

Knowing your tools well enough to make your work quickly is always better than just buying new tools.


getting twatted and pissing around is good too.

[ethios4]

In agreement with whats been said above, I'd say learning the art of sound creation is a vital part of the art. Pick a few VSTi's and VST's and learn them well. The more you know, the less you need.
Personally I use all methods to create sounds. I might use a straight preset, or tweak it a bit to get what I want. Usually I find it faster and more satisfying to start from a blank slate and build it up. Thats where my most original sounds come from.
Other times I'll start with a sample and process it into submission. For instance, you can take a vocal sample in Simpler and make a tiny loop that you can move around within the sample. Create a sequence with that using envelopes to automate the start point of the loop. Render this, chop it up, reverb it, reverse it, voila! You've got something new and crazy.
For me, I usually use Moog Modular and Triangle II for subtractive synthesis, Operator for FM, and Absynth for the bizarre. For effects, the basics of delay, reverb, flanger/phaser, compression, EQ, and distortion are pretty amazing. I say use any method available to create.
Its easy to get lost in the sea of effects and instruments out there and spend all day surfing presets trying to find "that" sound. In the long run it works out much better if you just know how to get "that" sound, and make it yourself.
Getting cracked out on the synthesis trance is definately a good way to spend an evening, IMO. There's lots of good info on the web about synthesis, at soundonsound.com here for instance
Like KRS-ONE says "Its time to build; if you aint got skills, how you gonna build?"

[wilsonrx]

Thanks for all the tips guys, I actually had a breakthrough last night and got myself a decent hook as well as a good synth sound. It needs a little more tweaking but the basis of an idea is there.

[Winterpark]

well...

i go through phases when i'm not feeling so creative with my writing, of making patches on my synths... i find it useful, because then when inspiration does hit, you've got a new palatte of sounds to work with.

also i totally agree with the point made about different synths being good for different types of sounds.

-am

[montrealbreaks]

In agreement with whats been said above, I'd say learning the art of sound creation is a vital part of the art. Pick a few VSTi's and VST's and learn them well. The more you know, the less you need.

AGREED. I used to use the Subtractor and FM-7 as my principle tone generators. Lately I'll use the Pro-53 instead of the Subtractor, just cause I'm starting to use Live without rewiring Reason, but really the Subtractor and the Pro53 are almost IDENTICAL synths in terms of controlling them. As far as the FM-7 goes, wih Operator there's no need to ever touch that nightmare interface again.

Because I use so few VSTIs, (only 2 synths usually and a my favourite drum machine of the month for now Battery 2) I really know how to program them. Try limiting yourself to only one or two instruments and you'll learn them like the back of your hand - then you'll really be able to coax some intriguing sounds out of 'em.

It was like that back in the day when everybody still used hardware. You couldn't afford (or at least I couldn't afford) dozens of synths, so one would learn to totally exploit what's available.