[Olaf Dubrawski]

I’m pretty new to synths, as guitar and ethnic music are my main focus, so I’d appreciate the help to recreate the drone that sets the background for this entire song. Can’t quite get it, as my approaches end up being too sterile/modern, and miss those airy and throaty bits. I know it may seem basic, but I’m a newbie to this. All suggestions as to what plugin would work best for this type of sounds would also be greatly appreciated, as I’m curretly juggling around many popular products to see what would fit 😉

[Joe Hanley]

Which products are you considering? In this realm, I recommend synths that incorporate samples in some way, as you’ll probably want to work with all sorts of textures when designing sounds like these.

That being said, you can achieve this drone with pretty much any subtractive synth. I was able to get fairly close with Primer. Try starting with this:

LAYER 1: Low Drone

1. Oscillator: Two oscillators, both saw wave, one octave apart, equal volume. 2-voice unison with slow Detune to smear the sound, and some Spread to widen the sound.

2. Filter: Low Pass. This is where the throatiness comes from and will require some tweaking. However it’s all about giving it a lot of Resonance, and then setting the Cutoff just right. So start with the Cutoff at the halfway point, boost the Res almost all the way up, and then and tweak the cutoff until it matches the recording.

3. Chorus. To avoid sterility, you need some movement in there. Try a pretty heavy mix with slow rate.

4. Reverb. Really wet, and really big.

LAYER 2: Noise

1. Oscillator: White noise. 4-voice Unison, really wide Spread, slow Detune. We want this noise spread out and bubbly.

2. Filter: Low Pass. Start with the Cutoff at the halfway point. And like the other layer, we want a ton of resonance, except this time turn it up all the way until it self-oscillates, generating an actual sine-like pitch. Then tweak the Cutoff until the pitch matches the subtle pitch you hear in that wide white-noisy layer of the drone.

3. Effects: Slap on some Chorus with the same settings as layer 1. Maybe even through on some Phaser with low feedback. And heavy Reverb like Layer 1. We’re going for lots of movement and space.

4. If you still need more movement, you can modulate the volume with an LFO. Use an atypical waveform, like S&H or whatever strange shapes your synth offers.