Ableton Forum

Wondering what effects are commonly (or uncommonly) used to get that house keyboard stab effect. I know about gating, reverb and delay, but there is a certain ffat sound to a lot of stabs I hear that I havent been able to replicate. Also if there are any plugins that work better for house stabs Id love to hear about them. i would appreciate any input. Thanks!

grab some phat sounding disco , funk loops and slice them to midi, usually get some great stabs out of that.

thanks. Im more looking for synthesis techniques rather than sampling.

Load up an analog style lead in a synth. Start with it in unison with as many voices as possible and utilize all oscillators (one main and detuning/octavizing the others). Play around with Decay, Sustain and Release until you're satisfied and sprinkle with some slow modulation. Then use pitch envelopes to pitch down the tail.

Pro-53 is great for this with it's analouge-style unison mode, but alot of people get stunning results with Operator.

Not much knowledge about house stabs ..
but to get the stabs you create in your synth sounding full and fat look towards layering (to add weight) > compressing these layers together and utilising filter automation.
Saturator is a good tool for adding presence
..another technique is to duplicate the audio of you stab - hard pan 1 left and the right then route to another audio track to record or render - this fills out the sound and adds a bit more width

I'll give those techniques a shot. Thanks!

Phaser. Make sure it's set deep and wide, and so that it sweeps all the way during the duration of the stab.

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