[Joe Hanley]

Is it the round paddy bass that starts at the beginning, or grinding bass that drops around 0:30?

[Joe Hanley]

blankface wrote:

Thanks Joe! Hoping to get to your level of skill one day

You’ll get there! Keep at it.

[Joe Hanley]

I take it back. There was a Serum update after we made the Lesson Pack that added the following feature:

“if you save a preset as default.fxp (or Default.fxp) located in /User subfolder of /Presets, Serum will load this preset on new instantiations of Serum.”

[Joe Hanley]

I’m not aware of a feature that lets you do that. In the video I mention that once you initialize the synth, all you have to do is change the voice mode to Mono, and it would be just like Syntorial’s synth.

[Joe Hanley]

Try this:

Oscillators
– Osc 1: Medium Pulse Wave, Unison with several voices, but mild Detune, and spread out a bit
– Osc 2: Same as Osc 1, but pitched up 1 octave, and turn the volume up so these higher notes ring out more than the lower ones
– Noise: White. Pitch it up or High pass it a bit if you can, so it’s not so bottom heavy.

Filter 1: Formant filter. This will create the vocal shape. Experiment with the Cutoff, maybe the Res as well, until you get the sound you’re looking for

Amp Envelope: Medium Attack to swell in, and a long release

Distortion: A bit of tube distortion to make it a little dirty

Filter 2: 24 dB Low Pass. Take the Cutoff down to round off the top, but not too far. Boost the Res a lot to make that cutoff peak out and almost self-oscillate

Reverb: Hall, and pretty wet, like 50/50 Mix.

[Joe Hanley]

You’re really close. The main difference I hear is that the Nexus patch has a brighter attack transient. Try increasing the Filter Envelope Amount.

[Joe Hanley]

Cool patch. I think the two patches are the same, with maybe just a tweak of a difference. Try something like this:

FIRST PATCH

Oscillator: Sine wave

Filter: Low Pass 24 dB. Full Drive, which will give it some girth, and bring out some upper harmonics. Then use the Cutoff to round it down a bit. Decent amount of Res to narrow the shape. And enable Key Tracking so that the lower notes of the big chords aren’t brighter than the higher notes, otherwise they’ll overtake them.

Pitch Envelope: Route this to the Oscillator’s pitch. Set the Sustain to zero, and give it a really quick Decay (around 250 ms). Then set a NEGATIVE envelope amount that’s low enough to create about an octave’s worth of movement. The negative amount means that the Attack stage, which is at a default of 0, will start the sound down one octave, and the quick decay will then bring it back up to the original pitch, giving you an upward octave sweep every time you play a new note.

Amp Envelope: Bring the Sustain down a bit and set a medium Decay, about 1 second. Then set the overall volume of the synth so that the sound is too loud and causes a bit of clipping at the very beginning. This will give you that random crackle at the beginning of each note. These are big chords so you’ll want to do this while playing big chords to get the volume just right. Also give it a long Amp Release.

Voices: The number of voices should match the number of notes in the chord. I think it’s 6. This way, you’ll play a 6 note chord, and then when you play the next 6 note chord, it will cut off the previous one.

LFO: Make a subtle tremolo but routing it volume, with a Triangle wave. 1/4 note speed. Set the Amount to taste.

SECOND PATCH

I think it’s the same, but played higher. And it’s a smaller chord, maybe 3 notes. You may have to tweak the Cutoff a bit.

[Joe Hanley]

Sometimes, especially at this fast speed, the difference is so subtle, it doesn’t really matter. But, it sounds more like filter modulation to me.

[Joe Hanley]

It sounds really close. I think the difference with the second sound is only the speed of the stuttering. I’m assuming you’re using an LFO for that? Have you tried increasing the rate?

[Joe Hanley]

Try this:

Oscillators: Two oscillators, both Saw. Set Unison voice count pretty high, with a fairly strong detune so it sounds a little pitchy, and keep the width modest so it’s not fully wide. Then pitch the second oscillator down one octave.

Filter: Low Pass 24 dB. Bring the Cutoff down to round of a good chunk of highs, but still leaving it pretty bright. Give it a healthy does of Resonance to make the pointier and kind-of nasal. Add a second filter, High Pass 12 dB, and take off enough Lows to remove the bottom frump and make the sound lighter.

Voices: Mono, with a noticeable Portamento. You should really be able to hear each note bend into the next.

Compression: Squeeze it a bit. Doesn’t need to be a ton. Just enough to make the pulsations from the Unison start fight the compressor, making the overall sound kind of aggressive.

Reverb: It’s hard to hear because the tracks are so dense, but I think there’s some space around the sound. Moderate Decay, just a little wet.

[Joe Hanley]

Cool videogame-style organ-esque lead. Try this:

Oscillators: Two oscillators, both sine wave, with the second oscillator up one occtave

Filter: Low Pass 24 dB, and full Drive. The Drive will bring out the brighter aggressive edge. Then turn down the cutoff a bit, but not too much. We still want it to be bright.

Amp Envelope: Set Attack to 0 to get a “pop” transient. If it’s not noticeable, create it by turning down the Sustain a bit, and setting the Decay to a really fast rate, around 10 ms.

Chorus: Use this to widen the sound. Really low Rate so that you don’t really hear the Chorus movement, but instead just get a widening effect.

Reverb: Big room, just a little wet.

[Joe Hanley]

I think it has three layers.

E Piano: The main one sounds like a Rhodes or Wurly sampler run through EQ, Distortion and a Delay.

Voice-ish: In the same range, playing the same (or similar) notes sounds like a synth with either a vocal wavetable or a formant filter. It has a kind of “oh” shape to it. It too sounds kind-of lo-fi so some EQ and light Distortion.

Twinkle: Up high is a synth. It sounds like an arpeggiation playing a series of notes really fast. Probably a simple patch, as once you play sounds that high, they start to sound similar to each other. I’d start with a Saw, toss on a Delay, and go from there. Maybe a touch of Unison, maybe a subtle small Reverb.

[Joe Hanley]

Cool! Let’s hear it

[Joe Hanley]

Hm, this one’s really tricky. I too tried messing with saws and distortion, but it never really sounded right.

So I went onto the second vocal-esque layer to create the wide low end. It’s a formant wavetable modulated to create a “yeah” sound.

And then I realized the distorted layer might be using the same “yeah” wavetable and that got it much closer. Try starting with this:

LAYER 1: VOCAL LAYER AND BOTTOM END

Oscillator 1: “E_Yeah” wavetable with wide 3 voice Unison. Set the WT Pos right around the “y” and then use an envelope attack to quickly move the WT Pos up so that every note says “yeah”

Oscillator 2: Duplicate of Osc 1, one octave lower

Sub: Sine wave. Enable “Direct Out” to bypass the upcoming Chorus, and give us our big steady bottom end

Chorus: Wide easy Chorus, 100% Wet, with a little bit of low passing to take some top end off

LAYER 2: THE NASTY

Oscillator: Same settings as Oscillator 2 above, but remove the Unison, so it’s just a really low, singular “yeah” in the center

Distortion: We want a really nasty aggressive style distortion, so I went with Lin.Fold. I only set Mix to about 9:00 so that we still have some of the dry sound to help blend into the first layer. Then set Drive to your liking. I liked 10:00.

EQ: If your sound isn’t bright enough use a high shelve to boost the top end

[Joe Hanley]

This patch was fun to make. Inspired a tut: