While ear training gives you the ability to create the sounds you hear, it will still be an imperfect process. This series is meant to show you the actual process I use to recreate patches by ear.
In this particular video, I’m highlighting our upcoming feature called the Randomizer Challenge – a magical place where patches are randomly generated and you get to spend as much time as you like recreating them. And I do mean AS MUCH TIME AS YOU LIKE… Just remember to eat every once in a while, mkay?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Today I’m gonna do a patch walk-through. To give you an idea of the true process of recreating a patch by ear. And I’m gonna do it using a new feature we’ve been working on, called a Randomizer Challenge.

So, Randomizer Challenge is very similar to a group challenge, and in a group challenge, as you may know, you recreate a hidden patch using all the controls you’ve unlocked so far. In a group challenge, the patch that you are recreating is one we’ve created. However, with the Randomizer Challenge, rather than one of us programming it, the app itself is gonna create a new patch, right then and there, for you to recreate.

This is great, because you’ll be able to just endlessly practice; you can have as many new patches as you want. So let’s give it a shot.

All right, so I like to start with the most obvious things first, and right off the bat, I hear a long tail. It’s longer than that. Okay, I hear a sub-oscillator. Okay. Now, there’s some width in there, and we could get this a few different ways. We can get it from unison, from chorus. I think- I wanna say it’s chorus; let’s see. Yeah, I think that’s right.

I had to slow it down a little bit, and I only wanted to mix in a little bit, but… And then I think here’s a little bit of high end taken off. Okay. Now I gotta check a few performance-related things, like let’s see how many voices I can play.

All right, just one. Oh, that’s the shown patch. Let me try it with the hidden. All right, one note at a time, but I hear some bending between the notes. So there’s definitely portamento. Question is, does it happen every time I play a note, or only when I connect them? It’s every time, so, it’s mono, and we’ve got some portamento; let’s see. Eh, slower.

Okay. Could be a little rounder? No, definitely there. Now let’s check the mod wheel. I don’t hear anything. Pitch wheel? That’s two semitones. Oh, and I’m noticing right now that I hold the key, it’s fading. So, sustain.

All right. And let’s see, what else? Velocity. Now, there’s one little cheat here. When velocity is enabled, you can see the keys change color, like a light touch, we’ll get a very light blue color. I can see that’s not happening. But normally, you’d just hit a hard key, hit a soft key, that’s how you could hear the difference.

All right, now we’ve got to check key tracking. And right now I’ve been hitting middle C, and middle C is not affected by key tracking. So I’m gonna do a higher pitch to see if there’s a difference. No, no key tracking. So, I’m gonna play a little bit, just to make sure I’m not missing anything.

A little slower portamento? No. And I know for me something funny happens. When I listen to it enough times, sometimes I almost trick myself into thinking there’s still something different. Especially if you’ve ever had one of those patches you submitted and it was so close, it was just a tiny difference.

But I think that’s it. All right, let’s go for it. All right! So that patch was, you know, kind of intermediate. Nothing too crazy. I wanna do more of these, just so you can see what the process is like and you can really get a feel for it, and this randomizer feature will be released soon.

This isn’t your ordinary synth tutorial. This is Syntorial. Making programming synths easy, with videogame-like training, teaching you how to program synth patches by ear. Each lesson starts with a demonstration, then an interactive challenge. With over 200 lessons, once you complete the program, you’ll be able to create the sounds you hear using almost any synthesizer. Try the award-winning Syntorial today.-