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couldnt find a thread to throw this question in.

people talk about "oh I hate presets and so on". But I was messing with Crystal and fiddled with the Acid trumpet preset and it got me thinking...

can you, right now say to yourself "I want the sound of a tenor sax" or any instrument and make it in a decent amount of time. surely it's possible. piano, trumpet, flue, e bass, whatever?

No. But usually my goal is not to create a representation of an acoustic instrument using a synthesizer. I use synths as a means to create harmonics which I can't get from acoustic (sampled) source. While I do have an appreciation and respect for people who are skilled at replicating the sound of "physical instruments", I feel that the power of a synthesizer extends well beyond this realm. When you buy a guitar, you are buying a unique "voice", when you buy a synthesizer, you are buying an almost unlimited amount of "voices". That's not to say that synthesizers don't have their limitations.

If you are interested in Synthetic representations of acoustic instruments, I encourage you to look into Physical Modelling synthesis, in which computer programming attempts to approximate the physics of strings, impacts, and other concepts at the heart of "real instruments". There are many software physical modelled synths available If this is your aim.

I just found it interesting that people are possibly able to replicate the sound of a sax in a synth. same with drum hits...people using synths to make kicks and snares and the like.

truthfully, synths introduce a whole world of sound that couldn't be reached in most cases.

well tbh i only started messing with synthesis properly when i started using reason (which was about half a year ago). before that i use hardware samplers and drum machines. the whole synthesis thing was kind of overwhelming, it still is really, but i really really think that reason helped me so much in understanding how different synths work.

that's why although loads of people bash reason and like to call it limited i think it's a great learning tool. i think the 3 synths (subtractor, thor, malstrom) are more than efficient and there are countless tutorials out there regarding those synths, as reason is pretty popular and they are the only synths available within reason.

for me i just read the manual. watched a lot of videos. then i tried to deconstruct presets and see how they worked. i started out trying to make drum sounds. then i just moved onto pianoish and bass sounds. i'm obviously just an amateur when it comes to synths but i really enjoy learning about them. i was a hardcore sampler before and knew nothing about synthesis and i just find it amazing at all the possibilities that synths have.

i agree that synths open up entirely new sonic capabilities and replicating already existing instruments is odd. sometimes i like to listen to those amazing pad presets where it sounds like so much is happening from just holding down the note. hopefully someday i'll be able to create something like that

Sax would be a pretty hard one to emulate without a really complicated synth, but some simpler sounds are pretty easy to set up. I think everyone should know how to synthesize kicks snares and hats at least so that they can be layered in with samples if you need them...layering synthetic perc with sampled hits adds so much punch and weight. In my track Ghost (found here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/518773/%7BKn ... st-320.mp3 ) Most of the drum hits and the flute were made on an analog synth from scratch. On the newest Portishead album alot of the solo string sounds are done with a synth as well, but sound absolutely convincing in the context of the track.

that acid trumpet patch is great

Mu.

I like donkeys.

Yeah I use synths in a strange manner to begin with. Won't get into it here. But sound design is a creative process to me.
I'll use anything as the source, organic or synthetic. Sample or dynamically generated. To me it's all just source signal and I take it and make it mine to fit in my mix.

If you want to get in depth with synthesis check out the book howard scarr wrote for the access virus - it's free!
http://www.access-music.de/page/render/ ... us_ti.html
click on the synthesizer programming english
it's aimed at the virus but the stuff he goes on about can be used in any VA synth

knobgoblin wrote:Sax would be a pretty hard one to emulate without a really complicated synth, but some simpler sounds are pretty easy to set up. I think everyone should know how to synthesize kicks snares and hats at least so that they can be layered in with samples if you need them...layering synthetic perc with sampled hits adds so much punch and weight. In my track Ghost (found here: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/518773/%7BKn ... st-320.mp3 ) Most of the drum hits and the flute were made on an analog synth from scratch. On the newest Portishead album alot of the solo string sounds are done with a synth as well, but sound absolutely convincing in the context of the track.

really? this is some serious shit! that flute is dope

chewie wrote:If you want to get in depth with synthesis check out the book howard scarr wrote for the access virus - it's free!
http://www.access-music.de/page/render/ ... us_ti.html
click on the synthesizer programming english
it's aimed at the virus but the stuff he goes on about can be used in any VA synth

much props for this one


but I'm delving deeply the built in ableton synths....amazing shit.

decklyn wrote:I'll use anything as the source, organic or synthetic. Sample or dynamically generated. To me it's all just source signal and I take it and make it mine to fit in my mix.

Thats a really good way of putting it. Respect man.

yellowhighlighter wrote:
that's why although loads of people bash reason and like to call it limited i think it's a great learning tool. i think the 3 synths (subtractor, thor, malstrom) are more than efficient and there are countless tutorials out there regarding those synths, as reason is pretty popular and they are the only synths available within reason.

which of those three synths do you like the best. which is more complex, etc.

is it like a beginners-intermediate-advanced thing? one of the synths being beginners, etc?

86. wrote:

yellowhighlighter wrote:
that's why although loads of people bash reason and like to call it limited i think it's a great learning tool. i think the 3 synths (subtractor, thor, malstrom) are more than efficient and there are countless tutorials out there regarding those synths, as reason is pretty popular and they are the only synths available within reason.

which of those three synths do you like the best. which is more complex, etc.

is it like a beginners-intermediate-advanced thing? one of the synths being beginners, etc?

Subtractor is based on subtractive synthesis and is the easiest to learn
Malstrom is graintable synthesis and more intermediate
Thor is more more of a modular synth so you can build it up to what you need, definetly the most complex.

As for synthesizing instruments I feel they dont really come close enough to be mistaken for the originals, but I guess it might be more of a challenge to make it sound as close as possible. You have to listen to instruments in a different way and deconstruct the sounds. Maybe my stance on that is because of those old casio keyboards where everything sounds like a synthesized fart and nothing like what it is supposed to.

I do however like the idea of synthesizing insect sounds.

ninjadog wrote:

86. wrote:

yellowhighlighter wrote:
that's why although loads of people bash reason and like to call it limited i think it's a great learning tool. i think the 3 synths (subtractor, thor, malstrom) are more than efficient and there are countless tutorials out there regarding those synths, as reason is pretty popular and they are the only synths available within reason.

which of those three synths do you like the best. which is more complex, etc.

is it like a beginners-intermediate-advanced thing? one of the synths being beginners, etc?

Subtractor is based on subtractive synthesis and is the easiest to learn
Malstrom is graintable synthesis and more intermediate
Thor is more more of a modular synth so you can build it up to what you need, definetly the most complex.

As for synthesizing instruments I feel they dont really come close enough to be mistaken for the originals, but I guess it might be more of a challenge to make it sound as close as possible. You have to listen to instruments in a different way and deconstruct the sounds. Maybe my stance on that is because of those old casio keyboards where everything sounds like a synthesized fart and nothing like what it is supposed to.

I do however like the idea of synthesizing insect sounds.

thanks for the info!

in Alchemy the insect sounds thing came very easy

well yeah basically i learned the subtractor first. i'm not an expert with it or anything yet but once i knew what everything did and how everything worked i tried to make certain sounds with it. then i learned the malstrom which is kind of weird but a really cool synth!! i wish there a vst version of it. i stayed away from thor for a while. i think once you have a basic understanding of the subtractor and malstrom, thor becomes a lot easier to understand.

i am by no means good at synthesis. i'm still just a novice. i just think that using reason really helped me understand the fundamentals of synthesis.

there are some great books and even some hardware synth manuals are great for beginner and advanced techniques on synthesis