Anthony Rother - Medium | Strings Synth Patch Remake

Remaking the strings synth from the 2014 song "Medium" by Anthony Rother can be an exciting challenge for any synthesizer enthusiast. Here’s how you can create the "Medium" strings patch and play this iconic sound on most hardware or software subtractive synthesizers (Serum, Vital, Pigments, Prophet, Korg, Moog, etc). We've included the preset download directly for your convenience, but we strongly recommend you use our programming tutorial to recreate it yourself.

Original Audio

A bright, aggresively detuned, sawtooth-based string pad in Anthony Rother’s “Medium” at 1:29. The sound uses heavy unison with wide detune and a chorus effect to smear transients and produce an intentionally out-of-tune, thick ensemble texture. It sits between pad and lead, adding harmonic grit while sustaining through the bar.

Our Remake of The Strings Synth sound

This audio clip is how close we've matched the original tone of the strings synth from the song "Medium" by Anthony Rother, giving you a reference point as you design your own synthesizer preset. Play it as often as you need to familiarize yourself with the nuances of the sound.

Synth Patch Programming Recipe

Getting Started

• Start by initializing your synthesizer to a plain saw with no filter, modulation or effects. For soft synths use the "init"/"default" preset or the the button to reset allx parameters to their default factory values.
• No two synths are exactly alike, so treat the values below as approximate, and use your ear.
• Percentage values (e.g. 50%) represent the relative position of a knob or slider within its full range. The full range of each parameter may differ from synth to synth, so use your ear.

Voices

• Voice Mode: Mono
• Tune: 0.72

Oscillator Setup

Oscillator 1

• Mix: 71%
• Wavetable: Default Saw
• Routing: Filter 1
• Unison Voices: 4
• Unison Detune: 16%
• Unison Blend: 0.09
• Unison Stereo Spread: 38%

Filter Settings

Filter 1

• Model: Analog
• Style: 24dB Slope
• Blend: Low Pass (0)
• Cutoff: 103% (16992.825 Hz)
• Resonance: 0%

Envelope Settings

Envelope 1 (Amp)

• Attack: 25 ms
• Decay: 417 ms
• Sustain: 85%
• Release: 6.61 s
• Decay Curve: Logarithmic
• Release Curve: Exponential

Effects Processing (Ordered)

Chorus

• Voices: 4
• Sync: Frequency
• Frequency: 0.11 Hz
• Depth: Default (50%)
• Delay 1: Default (2.0 ms)
• Delay 2: Default (7.8 ms)
• Feedback: 0%
• Mix: 27%
• Cutoff: 1538.1 Hz
• Spread: 0.29

Reverb

• Mix: 13%
• Size: Default (50%)
• Chorus Amount: 5%
• Chorus Frequency: Default (0.250 Hz)
• Time: Default (0.000 s)

Note: the patch settings may slightly differ in the Syntorial challenge.

Explore More

• Anthony Rother Interview (Waldorf Music)
• Artist: Anthony Rother (Waldorf Music)
• In the Studio: Anthony Rother (XLR8R)
• Ask The Producer: Anthony Rother (YouTube)
• Anthony Rother Gear (Equipboard)

Preset Downloads

Don't want to learn synth programming now? Use our synth preset as your starting point and tweak it from there. Register an account with Audible Genius and download the presets for free for the following synths:

• Vital

Comments

This recipe is the result of a Syntorial community preset remake request. Need support remaking this sound? Have comments?