[Bob Milligan]

SO many cool sounds in this one, but the guitar melody that comes right at the beginning as well as the higher-pitched synth are cool. I genuinely can’t find or create a sound that resembles either. Could I get some help with this please?

[Joe Hanley]

There are several layers at the beginning so I’m not sure which ones you’re talking about. When you say “guitar layer”, are you referring to the plucky metallic sound panned right? And is the “high synth” the vocal-ish metallic pad panned left-ish?

[Bob Milligan]

Yes and Yes. Sorry I had some trouble in my description. I’m trying to recreate the entire beat, but those two sounds seem to elude me. Thanks for responding btw.

[Joe Hanley]

In both cases, I’m willing to bet there are samples utilized. But we can get pretty close with FM and Wavetable synthesis. Try starting with this:

Guitar – FM

• Oscillator: FM using sine waves. Pitch the modulating oscillator up 31 semitones, and crank up the FM. This will give us an approximate tone. You could really experiment with waveforms and semitone settings to get closer, but this is a good start
• Filter: Band Pass. Set the Cutoff medium-high to chop off a little bit of highs, and a decent amount of lows. The goal here is to create a light and slightly rounded sound
• Distortion: Just a touch of overdrive-style distortion to make it a little edgy
• Reverb: Very small space, just a little wet. We’re going for ambience here

Pad Vocal (Layer 1) – Wavetable

• Oscillator 1/2: In whatever wavetable synth you have access to there should be a vocal wavetable. For example, in Serum there is Digital -> Voxu. Set up two oscillators with this wavetable, with the second one octave higher
• LFO: Route it to both oscillators Wavetable Position and with a Triangle wave and a slow rate. The movement through the vocal wavetable is what will give us vocal-sample-ish sound
• Filter: Band pass. Very narrow. High Resonance, medium-high Cutoff. We really want this to sound like it’s being shaped and peaked in the mids. If the filter has a Drive option, turn it up to give it some oomph
• Amp Envelope: Long release
• Chorus: Wide, slow, and very wet
• Reverb: Very big, and very wet

Pad Sine (Layer 2) – Simple

• Oscillator: Sine wave. 1 octave up (or play a note 1 octave higher than layer 1)
• LFO: Modulate the oscillator’s pitch with a square wave, at 1/8th note Rate. Set the amount so that the pitch is jumping back and forth over a 1 semitone interval (C# D C# D etc).
• Chorus: Same as Layer 1
• Reverb: Same as Layer 1, except back way off on the wetness. When it’s too wet, you can’t hear the two distinct notes in the LFO-modulated pitch. So back off the reverb until those two notes sound clear

[Bob Milligan]

Thank you very much you are the GOAT. Thanks for the STARGAZING one too. I may be requesting the patches for a lot of Travis Scott in the future. Thanks again its dope that you can do this so well.

[Joe Hanley]

Bob Milligan wrote:

Thank you very much you are the GOAT.

Happy to help