[cskeating]

I am not very good at sound design but I do have Serum, Omnisphere and NI Komplete 11 in case someone can design a patch for anyone of those products.

The song is called “Love Bird” and has a smooth chillout vibe. I have always wanted to create that organish type sound that comes in and out but have never even came close.
The sound I am looking for starts immediately along with the beat. I think it is like an organ sound that pulses throughout the entire song. It will be apparent when your hear the song.

Soundcloud Link:

Hope someone can help!

-Chris

[Joe Hanley]

This is a smooooooth organ-style patch. I like it. Here’s my attempt:

Made with Primer. Patch attached.

How It’s Made

• Oscillators: One osc, pulse wave that’s just a hair thinner than square
• Amp Env: Attack at 175 ms to get that quick swell (though that may actually be caused by sidechain compression in the track. But this gets the same effect), Decay around 2700 ms with 0 sustain so that the sound gradually fades
• Filter: Low pass 24, cutoff around halfway, a lot of resonance, key tracking up to keep brightness even across the keyboard range
• Filter Env: Decay and Release around 2000ms, Sustain 0. A VERY small amount of envelope amount, so you’re just getting a little “eeow” movement
• Effects: Very small-room reverb, about 30% wet

This requires a lot of filter tweaking to get it just right.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to access attached files.

[cskeating]

That sounds great!!! Thank you so much and for doing it so quickly!!!

[mstaicu]

That’s simply great Joe! Do you think we could add an extra request for the MIDI notes or the notes played? I find that sharing a patch is more or less 90% of the way, but it’s missing the other 10%. Like with any instrument, the notes convey different emotion with different pitches.

[mstaicu]

Also, one more thing, what are the best practices for pitches when it comes to such sounds? I always get a big mess of a sound that is both taking up space and it sounds muddy. I’m usually playing the classical triads.

[Joe Hanley]

MIDI attached. In this case it actually is a triad. Bb, Dd and F. And then it sometimes switches to Gb Bb and Eb.

It’s hard to give general advice on how pitches and sounds interact. It’s such a case-by-case kind of thing. I would say that the lower you play, the wider the intervals have to be. Like in this case, if you played those chords down a couple octaves, it would sound like a muddy mess. The sounds waves are bigger the lower you get, so the overall sound gets thicker, and if you’re not careful that thickness can turn into mud.

Triads have pitches that are very close to each other, because they use adjacent chord tones. So, if something sounds muddy, one thing you can do is move some of the pitches around. Like a classic open voicing in this case would be to take the middle pitch, Db, and move it up or down one octave. This way, you still get the same 3 pitches, but with much more space between them.

So I guess a general rule of thumb: The closer the pitches, the thicker it sounds. The farther the pitches, the thinner it sounds.

Apply that to each case’s specific context of range and sound, and that might help steer towards a cleaner sound.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to access attached files.

[cskeating]

Thanks Mstaicu for the question and Joe for the informative response. Ive wondered the same thing myself on why I sound muddy sometimes.

[marcelkamst]

Great effort Joe and thank you Chris for the “challenge”! Wouldn’t have a clue on this one. I will load up Primer and tweak a bit more because I think the filter should be just a tiny bit more closed.