[Derek Ficenec]

Hi! Grateful syntorial user here.

I’ve been trying to recreate this patch for a while, it’s a pumping saw chord with the cutoff turned down and that gradually opens up from 2:04 to 2:25. Then it has a really powerful drop where the cutoff is turned up.

I’ve tried multiple things to recreate these chords, it sounds like a saw patch is going into two filters (the first with a short attack/decay envelope automating a LPF for the pluck sound, and then a generic LPF that opens up for the saw sound). But I’m missing a few things and can’t replicate the driving low end. Any help would be very much appreciated, thank you!

[Joe Hanley]

Part of the driving low end is due to how the chord is voiced. It’s an open voicing with a doubled octave. For example:

E Major chord (from bottom up): E B E G#
D Major chord (from bottom up): D A D F#

So start with that. You’ll hold each chord down and let the LFOs (see below) do the “playing”. As for the patch:

Oscillator: Saw. 8-voice unison, full Width for a really wide sound. Decent amount of Detune, so that it’s real washy, but not so much that the pitch starts to wobble.

LFO 1: Use this to create the slow repeating volume swell that mimics sidechain compression. Upward saw, 14 note rate (at around 100 bpm), routed to oscillator volume, not main volume, as we want the swell to react with the upcoming filter. If you can, pull back the sudden drop at the end of the upward saw shape so that it slopes a bit, to avoid a “pop” at the end of each cycle. And set the oscillator volume pretty far down, but not all the way down, as you won’t be able to hear the beginning of each swell. Crank the Mod Amount.

Filter 1: We’ll modulate this one to create the repeating 16th notes. Low Pass, 24 dB. Bring the Cutoff really far down (I set mine to around 130 Hz). Bit of Res. Give it some Drive, enough that the sound breaks up a bit and gets a little dirty at the top of the volume swell. Then modulate the Cutoff with…

LFO 2: Standard saw, 16th note. Play with the mod amount until you get the plucky but dark sound.

Filter 2: High pass 12 dB. Bring the Cutoff up a bit to chop off the boomy low end. This will make room for the big kick.

Manual modulation: The changing brightness can be manually changed simply by moving Filter 1’s Cutoff knob up in real-time. And then open it all the way up for the big drop.

[Derek Ficenec]

Wow, thank you so much this is dead on!

I had been trying to replicate the effect with arpeggiated chords while modulating the filter with an envelope rather than holding down a chord and using an LFO on the filter. This is a much better way and I suspect I can apply similar techniques to other sound design.

Thank again for all the detail, I really appreciate it!