How did you become good at/decent at programming synths?

[Genevieve]

Like.. my main problem is to have my shit sound.. 'non-bland', basically. That's what's bugging me. No matter how much I do to my synth, it doesn't sound that much more different from what I start with and when it does, it just sounds overblown.

a little eq, maybe a little chorus, and a little delay/reverb goes a long way.
Just a touch of those will do wonders to "un-bland" your sound when done right.

+1

You would be amazed at how little went into the 80's sounds, just a few effects, etc. A lot of these records were pretty bare. Keep at it!

I occasionally think that I just glamorize the sound I hear on records in my head which makes my own stuff sound worse than it actually is. Because yeah I can totally hear that they sound quite simple.

[ovesen]

Using and reading about analogue synthesis for years.

[futures_untold]

3 parts Experimentation
2 parts reading/watching tutorials posted online
1 part RTFM

I kept seeing this guy and the fear he instilled in me got me googling for pdfs:

Besides I'm still learning everyday, too much to know, too little time as a mere mortal...

+ 1

[magma]

Practise.

Read online tutorial/guide/general conversation

Practise

Watch YouTube demo

Practise

Listen to music

Practise

Same as you learn most things.... it's not like there's a pill you can take or anything, you just gotta work at it.

[sackley]

Sound on Sound Synthesis Article Compilation

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

Haven't dove in, but sounds helpful.

[chewie]

Howard Scarr = Yoda

[Ldizzy]

My very personal noob mistakes, maybe itll help u :

1. try to control urself on the knobs and the faders.. ear habituation will make u want to overdo things... and drastically affect sounds but sometimes a tidbit can be enough...

people will only hear the final version of the sound so just make sure every effect / tweak does its job for a good final process... im saying that cause often u get used to a sound and then when u turn a knob it flips the whole thing and sounds new so u go like NICE while in fact ur previous sound was a lot richer...

kinda like cooking really

on massive, if u hold shift while turning a knob, itll move in smaller increments. cool function : its more then a precision tool. itll teach u to take ur time...

2. and think of panning and wideining too... i used to really understimate that.

3. mentally draw the exact signal flow of ur softsynth.. massive has a somewhat defined path. maybe u need to get it clearer..

4. For basses : focus on having low-mid-mid texture and dedicate all ur oscillators to that... leave the sub for a pure sub on another oscillator...

5. if u use lfo rates.. try to find original waveshapes... most of the time switching from ur typical sine/triangle to some weird shape combinations, will lead to fun results...

for me what did it (and im still learning) was being able to drown myself into that constant, second-based, self-criticism process.


i think it would be a valuable exercice that u post a wav with some of ur sounds so we could give some advice! maybe ur just underestimating urself and overestimate other people's patches... sounds put in a context sound fuller then when they're bare naked.

[hifi]

reading, breaking down presets and patches and experimenting

yea this has helped me a lot as well. just looking at a pretty sick preset then examine the synth on how the sound came to be.

[Wrigzilla]

I think it all fell into place for me when we recreated the ESM (a simple synth from logic) in Reaktor at uni. Up until that point I has no idea what any of the parameters meant and was just tweaking knobs at random.

[IK Obi]

Here is a great video on how to program synths!

http://obiaudio.com/2010/07/09/how-to-program-a-synth/

[nowaysj]

Necro!

[ninjadog]

A good place to start is to try and recreate sounds from your favorite artists, or sounds from the days of hardware like old electro and 80's stuff. By the time you figure it out by asking questions, reading and viewing tutorials you should have a bigger understand to get closer to the sounds in your head. If that makes any sense.
I have found with dubstep it is incredibly more difficult than it seems. Layering subs with some midrange and adding some LFO to cutoff just dosent quiet cut it.

But I know what the OP means because I feel like I still really suck, but honestly I haven't been keeping up on practicing, so it's my own damn fault really. And I find I have a hard time with subtlety, I tend to crank knobs to get those instant big changes in sounds.

Collaboration can help a ton as well. I gave a song to someone to check it out and he made a synth of mine just sound so much clearer and punchier just by tweaking the synth where as I would have gone to effects for extra punch and an attempt at clarity which would usually result in muddiness.

[hifi]

Here is a great video on how to program synths!

http://obiaudio.com/2010/07/09/how-to-program-a-synth/

yo that vid is actually pretty useful i learned a couple things like how a pulse wave is a longer pulse width of the "duty cycle" in a square wave. pretty cool and how that and a sawtooth have odd and even harmonics if I recall he said even right? ahah nice video man big up for the link

[jsills]

Manuals? Fuck you. I don't even know how to read.

was gunna say -

a little eq, maybe a little chorus, and a little delay/reverb goes a long way.
Just a touch of those will do wonders to "un-bland" your sound when done right.

Honestly i make a lot more shit sounds than i do good ones. just keep and use the ones that are dope, scape the rest. also nothing wrong with using presets and tweaking them to get unique sounds.

[makemerich]

Exactly as the thread title says.

This goes for anything from leads to bass to drums.

I know how it works, sorta. I mean, oscillators produce the sound, filters get rid of any unwanted harmonics the amp amplifies it and envelopes control what happens to the sound during the duration of it whereas LFOs create, well what I'd describe as vibrato.

Sorta.

But all my stuff sounds like poop. I mean, when I listen to the things I do, they sound sorta.. cheap? I have no idea how to describe it. Just really stale. As if I only minimally mess with the the sound the oscillator produces. That or it just sounds way too huge and gimmicky.

I use Massive, Phosycon (a 303) and Rapture inside of Renoise.

I'm not asking 'how did X get that Y sound' but I'm wondering.. how did you teach yourself how to do it? How did you learn synthesis? I don't get it. After a few months of toying it still sounds like crap so I think I'm just not teaching it to myself well enough.

you a guitar player?

[compactmuzik]

i started to tweak the knobs.

[Kes-Es]

Practice.

[monstrous]

Practice!
start with a simple synth to start off with, such as free alpha from linplug or one that comes with your DAW. Turn all the oscs off except 1, then play with the filters and routing, once you know whats going on turn on another osc and see how the sound is affected.
Read the various "how do I make this sound?" threads that appear on every music forum out there and try and recreate the sounds yourself (even if you dont like the sound in question, it may force you to turn a knob youve never touched before).
Computer Music magazine used to have a synth workshop every month which I found very helpful to begin with.
found a preset you like? move the knobs round and see how they affect the sound.
I cant stess enough how much easier you will find it to learn by using a basic synth to start off with, something like albino or massive will just discourage you IMO.

[Ldizzy]

just when u think there's nothing to do and u suck... turn ur softsynth on and tweak a couple patches...

i find its often at those exact times that i end up makin a skill leap.