Ableton Forum

Hey guys,

Been working with Ableton for a few months but mainly using presets, now I'm trying to branch out and learn to design my own sounds with Operator and Analog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYUsKD8tRdA

There's a synth sound used throughout the above track and I'd love to know how I might go about recreating it, or something similar at least. Can hear there's definitely some frequency shifting going on but no clue as to the type of waveform, oscillator settings and so on.

In general my favourite musicians tend to use these smooth, soft, warm kinds of synths so I'd appreciate it massively if someone could help!

Cheers in advance

anyone?

Try this as a starting point:
Analog or Operator (operator will probably be a bit smoother, like theirs), with a Sine or Sine + Tri (super mellow tri, not saw, and mixed in beneath the sine), get that ADSR set pretty close, then start to work on that slow warble he's using. The warble can be achieved a couple of ways. The simple way is to map an LFO to the pitch of the sine OSC. Be sure to set the LFO fairly slow, and apply it lightly. The longer, but cooler sounding (think Boards of Canada would be to take a Simple Delay effect, drop it in after your synth, right click the Simple Delay's title bar, and choose Repitch. Then set it to %100 wet, %0 feedback, and use automation to make the delay time warble very slowly. This will give you that tape warble sound and is an awesomely indispensable trick. Then just send that sound to a long reverb and some liiiiiiight delay. That's my take on a starting point, haha.

p.s. Nosaj Thing kills it

Cheers Quirk - will definitely try to have a go at that tonight/over the weekend and post my results!


Keep the suggestions coming

Yip, what Quirk said is pretty much how I would approach it.

LFO set to noise or sample & hold, very lightly applied.

All I would add is to play around with putting Spread on the operator fairly wide.

A very nice sound - glassy and warm and wobbly.

The Finn wrote:Yip, what Quirk said is pretty much how I would approach it.

LFO set to noise or sample & hold, very lightly applied.

All I would add is to play around with putting Spread on the operator fairly wide.

A very nice sound - glassy and warm and wobbly.

Great, will give it a go over the next couple of days then and post results here. Thanks!

Quirk wrote:Try this as a starting point:
Analog or Operator (operator will probably be a bit smoother, like theirs), with a Sine or Sine + Tri (super mellow tri, not saw, and mixed in beneath the sine), get that ADSR set pretty close, then start to work on that slow warble he's using. The warble can be achieved a couple of ways. The simple way is to map an LFO to the pitch of the sine OSC. Be sure to set the LFO fairly slow, and apply it lightly. The longer, but cooler sounding (think Boards of Canada would be to take a Simple Delay effect, drop it in after your synth, right click the Simple Delay's title bar, and choose Repitch. Then set it to %100 wet, %0 feedback, and use automation to make the delay time warble very slowly. This will give you that tape warble sound and is an awesomely indispensable trick. Then just send that sound to a long reverb and some liiiiiiight delay. That's my take on a starting point, haha.

p.s. Nosaj Thing kills it

The Finn wrote:Yip, what Quirk said is pretty much how I would approach it.

LFO set to noise or sample & hold, very lightly applied.

All I would add is to play around with putting Spread on the operator fairly wide.

A very nice sound - glassy and warm and wobbly.

Okay, here's my first attempt (hopefully the link works!):

http://vocaroo.com/i/s06cjbbAyI64

Can definitely get closer to the original and the chords I'm playing are wrong, but ah well. That's with LFO set to noise, synced to OSC A and at about 10%. Not perfect, but I like the sound!

If you listen to the original, it has quite a thick, full sound, almost like there's a bit of sub bass there. Any ideas how I can get that? Wondering if it's a separate instrument or he's got another oscillator. Or something altogether different.

Thanks once again for your help guys.

Well, try it. Group the operator, duplicate it, and slap a minus 12 pitch shift in front of the second one. See what it sounds like

For me, the point is always - don't try to get exactly the same sound- try to get a sound you like.