Avicii - Levels Opening Synth

[Blaaayzen]

What would the opening synth to Avicii's - Levels be catogarized as? Like a pluck, atmosphere, lead, etc.? Im kind of an idiot, sorry. But anything you can explain about the synth like how it was made or details would be appreciated. Im referring to the synth at the beginning where it hits a million notes in a row right from the beginning.

[Sintax makes bass]

pluck

[VirtualMark]

i think he used notes and stuff

[kejk]

In this song, 0:00 till 0:03 or something is a pad.

[Nekminnit]

I was watching a thing on you tube of avicii making a song (it got taken down afterwards for copyright reasons, but you can find a torrent on it )

He starts off with piano for his leads and does them as notes and then he changes the instruments to leads and synths and layers it with other synths and leads to get the effects. He was using mainly, Refx Nexus, and Absynth from what i can recall to get his synths. So most likely they are your typical leads from these programs layered with other synths to create an "original" sort of sound. He's very fast at producing and uses FL studio.

[dickman69]

I was watching a thing on you tube of avicii making a song (it got taken down afterwards for copyright reasons, but you can find a torrent on it )

He starts off with piano for his leads and does them as notes and then he changes the instruments to leads and synths and layers it with other synths and leads to get the effects. He was using mainly, Refx Nexus, and Absynth from what i can recall to get his synths. So most likely they are your typical leads from these programs layered with other synths to create an "original" sort of sound. He's very fast at producing and uses FL studio.

sounds like a tool

[Mysius]

They went through how to make this sound in Future Music this month. It's basically a bright, plucked lead sound and a warmer chord part. Obviously a range of synths etc can be used for this.

Synth Lead Start
We start by loading a template single oscilator 'Saw Tooth' synth patch in Logic's ES2. We add a second oscillator, also set to a sawtooth wave and set a 50/50 level split between the two. We then tune them both down 1 octave and then detune the first down 8 cents and the second up by the same amount. We use Logic's analog dial to bring in some 'retro' analogue synth tuning before setting the low-pass filter wide open and introducing a little resonance. The Cutoff is also affected by Envelope 2 with a quick decay time. We adjust the amplifier envelope to a similar shape but introduce plenty of sustain so the sound lasts for as long as it's played. We then duplicate his sound and copy the part to the duplicated instrument, tuning the copy up one octave to give a thick, rich sound.

Synth Lead Development
However, there's plenty of wave in the original sound too for this, we set up u-he's ACE synth, again, starting with a basic 'PWM' patch. We switch off both LFO sections before detuning the two oscillators by the same amount applied within the ES2: +-8 cebts. We route envelope 1 into the 'Mix' dial to provide envelope control over the sound and then set the cutoff frequency of the first filter to wide open to achieve a bright sound. Again, we tweak the first envelope to produce a punchier Decay time and introduce Key Follow and Velocity Control over the filter to ensure that louder, higher notes are brighter. We then set up a Reveb on aux 1 and route all synth parts into it, tweaking the reverb's tone to ensure it doesn't become over-bright.

Synth Stabs and Piano
The second part of Levels comes from a synth stab part, for which we start with another sawtooth based synth part, this one playing polyphonically rather than as a mono synth. We then set up a new instrument beneath it and assign a piano sound to it, copying the stab synth part down to this second track. we use the filters within an EQ plug-in to dramatically reduce the amount of bass and treble in the piano sound before compressing it to produce a tighter sound. This produces a 'tacky' piano which works well with the stabs and provides articulation. We then send all of the synth parts to an aux bus so they can be grouped and remove the reverb sends from each sound. Instead we route the synth buss to the reverb buss so that all of the synth parts pick up the same amount of reverb from a single source.

Sidechain Compression
Finally, we set up a drum loop playing a basic kick and snare pattern. We route this to a third aux and switch off its output routing so it can't be heard. We then insert a compressor on the synth buss and set its sidechain source to the drum buss, so that the drum loop 'ducks' the compressor to provide a classic pumping sound. To create the pitch ramps, we bounce the resulting file to a stereo audio file and set this up on a new track. We then chop the file up with cuts at the points we want the track to start 'normally'. We then select end sections of the previous regions and apply a real time slow down of 350ms, which forces the pitch to ramp down before each restart. We insert a loudness Maximizer in the output channel to provide inflated volume.

[mthrfnk]

There's quite a few full videos on making both the lead and the plucks on YouTube, tbh most of Avicii's stuff is just layers of tweaked Sylenth and Nexus presets.

[cmgoodman1226]

Sounds like a supersaw lead with a good deal of reverb and maybe some overdrive distortion, playing multiple octaves, layered with white noise and a piano playing chords underneath, and all of that sidechained.