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This is as lush as lush gets. Really interesting use of Velocity to modulate Envelope Decay and Release. It’s also interesting to use the Filter, Noise, Chaos, and EQ to create that vintage analog sound. I added the bass patch in as well since it was almost identical and follows the pad rhythm and velocity, essentially becoming part of it.
How It’s Made
Pad
- Synth: Serum
- Oscillator: Saw Wave. Use Unison to make it washy and lush with 6 voices, kind of strong Detune, even Blend, and 0 Width
- Noise: White, low level so it’s just layered in. This helps create a vintage vibe, making it less clean. Make sure it’s routed into the filter.
- Filter: Lowpass with 18dB slope. Cutoff at 370 Hz and a bit of Res (these set us up to use an Envelope to make the wah character). Full Drive for saturated analog warmth, and a bit of Fat to make up for the low end taken away by Res. Reduce the level to make up for Drive’s volume boost
- Amp Envelope: About 6 ms of Attack to soften the transient just a bit. Sustain at 0, and both Decay and Release at 2 seconds so we have nice long notes.
- Voices: Poly, 4 voices. The chords are mostly 4 notes each, so this way each chord will cut off the notes of the previous chord so we don’t get layered and dissonant notes
- Filter Envelope: Route Env 2 to Filter Cutoff. Attack at 53 ms, Sustain at 0, and Decay and Release at 0.5 ms. Modest Amount (about 20). This will create a really tight wah. Too tight in fact, but that is because…
- Velocity: Route Velocity to Env 2 Decay and Release, and max out both of there amounts. Now, lightly pressed notes will give us a quick and closing wah, and hard-pressed notes will create a big bright sound, that still wahs up, but doesn’t wah back down (at least not for a long time). This is why the pad is sometimes bright, and sometimes closed. But no matter what, you still get that fat horn-ish attack since the attack time is always the same.
- Chaos: Route Chaos 1 (Sample & Hold LFO on any synth will have a similar effect) to Master Tune, and set a VERY small amount. I set the Amount slider in the Matrix to 1, and dial back the Output slider to 25. Just a mild out-of-tune sound that really starts to bring in the vintage vibe
- Note: Make sure the following effects are in the order of this list.
- Delay: Pretty heavy mix at 40%, pretty long Feedback so it echos for a while. Rate at 1/16th (bpm is 83). To make it Stereo, set the Right offset to 1.050. I love how the Velocity-controlled envelope interacts with the Delay. Light notes that have a tight closing wah, create a very audible echo, but the more open and washy notes generated by hard presses, cover up the echo a bit. So the Delay comes and goes depending on how hard you hit the keys
- Reverb: Plate. Medium-Small size (17%), No Pre-Delay so our sound really sits in the reverb. Fairly heavy mix at 34%. Default settings of a little High Cut, a little Damping, and a little Width are perfect.
- EQ: Set the first band to Peak, with Freq 2400 Hz, Sharp Q at 50%, and a big boost of Gain at 13 dB. Set the second band to LPF with Freq 5000 Hz and Q at 40%. This really brings home the vintage vibe, losing some high end and bringing out this sort-of radio-esque mid-highs
- Compressor: Squeeze it. Set Threshold to -30 dB, Gain to 4 dB.
Bass
- Same exact settings as pad, except lower the Filter Env Amount to about 10. This way the bass doesn’t get as bright and focuses more on the low end. Also set the voice count to 2, as each notes is played in octaves.
Pad Notes (From bottom to top for each chord)
- C Eb F Ab (3 times)
- C Eb G
- C Eb G Bb
- Eb G Bb C (6 times)
- F Ab C Eb (3 times)
- Bb Db F Ab (2 times)
- Ab C Eb G (6 times)
Bass Notes
- Each of the following notes are played in octaves. So the first notes is F, but you’re going to play 2 adjacent Fs in the low range
- F (3x), Ab (2x), C (6x), F (3x), Bb (2x), Ab (6x)
Wow! It was a *lot* more complicated to make than I thought it was…
I suspect it was made on an actual analog/old-school synth so some of the characteristics may have come naturally.
Oh, 6ms.
Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed.
Holy guacamole the recreation of this patch was incredibly well done! I love patch Fridays. One wish I have is that these patch Friday tutorials be in a video format 😉
I second the idea to do a video format!
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