[Anthony Sabatino]

Hey guys, first time poster, but I just finished up all of Syntorial, along with the Serum lesson packs.

So this track has my favorite drop of all time, and it has some INSANE synth sounds, many of which I can’t for the life of me replicate so I figured I would leave this here with a few time stamps and do my best to describe the sounds I am trying to recreate. According to BT himself, he used a lot of NI Razor, as well as the Kawai K5000, though I’m sure many of these sounds could be made in Serum as well.

Here is the track:

First Sound 2:31.5 Bit Crushed “Wow”
This is a sound BT uses a lot, and it seems like a bit crushed “WOW” wavetable or something, but I can’t ever seem to get the timbre right. I think he may be using some stutter edit to create that effect though I am not sure.
This sound can also be heard at 2:38, 2:46, 2:53.5, and 2:57.

Second Sound 2:37 Bass Drop and Glitchy Bass
There is something with this bass drop where it seems to get some heavy FM modulation as it drops, along with maybe some pan automation? He uses bass sounds with a similar effect throughout this drop and I can’t get enough of it!
Similar variants of this sound can also be found at 2:42, 2:45, 2:48, 2:53, 2:54, 2:57, and 3:00.

Third Sound 2:39.5 Bassy Lead
This bassy lead sound has such a cool texture with its frequency and phase content, but yet again I just can’t seem to recreate it! Its clearly sidechained, but it seems like it may have pitch mapped to the sidechain too?
It can also be heard briefly in a higher octave at 2:47.

Fourth Sound 2:39 Chopped Gritty Wub
This is probably one of the simpler sounding sounds, although it still has an interesting flavor that I can’t seem to put my finger on it. It clearly has a gritty king of hypersaw feel without all the smearing, and also seems to have the thickness of a square wave in there too (not to mention the cool stutter effects that are manipulating it).
Similar versions of this sound occur at 2:41 and 2:43.

I would love to know how to make every single sound in that drop, but obviously I don’t want to overwhelm you guys haha. Let me know if any of you have any luck and I look forward to seeing your results!

[Joe Hanley]

That’s dense and complex. Sounds great. There’s so much going on. Have you attempted it yet? I think it would be more productive for you to post your attempt and then I can provide some suggestions.

[Anthony Sabatino]

Here are some patches I was able to get for the Bit Crushed ‘Wow’ sound, as well as another patch for the phasey bass drop sound. Still having trouble figuring out how to properly replicate a bunch of the sounds in there.

I’m thinking about just going through the whole drop and trying to recreate the whole dang thing just as an exercise!

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[Joe Hanley]

The Wow sound is very close. Few tweaks:
– Try adding some unison, with mild detune to widen it out and make it more intense.
– Try switching to a low pass filter, and modulating from bright to dark over the course of “wow”. It’ll make it less brittle, and give it more oomph.

But your combination of wavetable and Quantize comes really close to the tone. The only tricky part I’m hearing is how sometimes in the recording the Wow is really warped, almost like FM modulation, before it makes a clear “wow”. I’m not sure what’s doing that. After tinkering around I created something like it using the E_Yeah wavetable and Mirror. Tweaking the Mirror knob warps the sound in a way similar to the recording, but the overall sound is still a little too far off.

The bass patch was missing a noise wavetable that I’m guessing is from a 3rd party? Either way, I think that patch has a close tone but it’s missing the upfront solid bass character. This is largely due to the effects. So…
– I would take all of the effects off, except the filter effect, which you’re using to chop off some highs.
– Instead, to get the phaser-like character, use the main filter’s “Phs 12+” type. Wherever you set the Cutoff you get this very focused scooped out sound reminiscent of a phaser, but it doesn’t take away from the up-front solidness of the sound. It’s more focused. And it seems in the recording that phaser sound takes on a different character with each note, so from the mod matrix, you can route the “NoteOn Rand1” source to the filter cutoff. Now every note will take on a different phaser character. Very cool!
– Set the Sub osc to the 0 octave, and enable “Direct Out”. This will provide a nice round solid low end as well.

This whole drop is a tornado of sound design. It’s really impressive. I can tell you’re really willing to experiment in order to find the right tone. Nice work.

[Anthony Sabatino]

Thanks, yeah the drop is so dense and there is so much going on its really hard to dissect each sound because they all happen so fast. I know a lot of the sounds were created using Razor and other Additive synthesis tools, so I’ve been exploring that a bit too. I’m sure there is a ton of Stutter Edit used as well. Pretty gnarly stuff regardless. Thanks for the notes!