Postby bulevardi : About making synths

[musikbear]

bilevardi wrote :

I'm totally new to LMMS and still learning the basics.
As first instrument, I used the guitar... very easy to get into new melodies, just jam around, playing melodies and chords...
From nothing, I'm soon into a new melody. I mostly know in advance what direction I'm going to, what the result should sound like.

Now getting used to the midi keyboard and electronic music, and I'm not getting melodies that fast. I'm not quite good in finding my way in what my goal needs to be. Starting from scratch, I do not know what my end result would be.
Trying to find out how synths work is interesting, TripleOsc, Zyn,... but how do you guys get to the right sounds you want, quickly?
Just turn knobs the whole time and test until you have it? Or do you have a good tutorial or guidelines for a beginner.
In a genre like: "you want that type of sound: use these knobs for it".
Synths give me way toooo much options, the possibilities are endless, limitless... that's frustrating me a lot.
With an acoustic guitar (without effects), you don't have possibilities, and you must do it with that.

Anyone felt the same situation?

[musikbear]

..how come you felt that was relevant in Brandys tutorials...
Na.. nvm
You can start here:
https://lmms.io/wiki/index.php?title=Ma ... or_Patches
Then i have also made several tutorials about what all dials and what not does in both Synth1, zasfx and 3oc
Browse through my channel, and you will find several
Obs level of complexity increases, so the oldest are the most simple, but in this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hmJYW14JpU
I build a string preset in 3oc form scratch

[brandystarbrite]

I'm totally new to LMMS and still learning the basics.
As first instrument, I used the guitar... very easy to get into new melodies, just jam around, playing melodies and chords...
From nothing, I'm soon into a new melody. I mostly know in advance what direction I'm going to, what the result should sound

Oh cool. I played guitar and recorder when I was small. But I haven't played in a long time, so I'm rusty now.
Knowing how to play at least one real instrument, eg. piano or guitar, can in most cases, help you with making digital music. Then all you have to do, is transfer your knowledge to DAW's and VST synth sounds etc.

Now getting used to the midi keyboard and electronic music, and I'm not getting melodies that fast. I'm not quite good in finding my way in what my goal needs to be. Starting from scratch, I do not know what my end result would be.

Ha! Ha! I think we all went through that problem, especially when we first opened a DAW, like Lmms or other etc.

Trying to find out how synths work is interesting, TripleOsc, Zyn,... but how do you guys get to the right sounds you want, quickly?

Practice, practice, and more practice.
Lots of experimenting and tons of patience.
And turning dials (that when we first started learning vst instruments) most of us have no idea
what they do. But as time progressed, we later discovered, what the Frequency dial/knob does and what Unison is etc.
Learning to make synth sounds, takes alot of practice and patience too.

As they say on a few music forums, and even on the Lmms Forums:
Learn 1 or 2 synth sound making Vst plugins and not 50 tons of plugins.
Find a cool synth vst, that suits your tastes and style.
Synth 1, T Force Alpha, or even ZynAddSubFX are good ones to learn.
In the case of zynAddSubFX, it's already integrated into Lmms.

Buying a fancy Vst, for presets, is in alot of cases, a waste of time.
Because half to 80% of those paid for presets, you could easily make yourself.

Just turn knobs the whole time and test until you have it?

That works in some cases. And sometimes when I do that, I end up accidently making all sorts of cool discoveries
and sounds, I never heard anyone use in their music before.

Or do you have a good tutorial or guidelines for a beginner.

When I first started off as a newbie, I watched Lmms dudes Trance bassline tut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IUOL05O8so
And from there, I decided that I wanted to learn to make synth sounds myself.
And from there, it took off.
It took a good while. Months of practice and some help from the guys on the Lmms forums. And it paid off.
Owallgren, was one of the few persons on this Forum, that showed me how to make a pluck sound
using the super synth called zynAddSubFX. And a few other sounds too.
And our friendly resident super hero bear musikbear, was another good help too.

Just turn knobs the whole time and test until you have it? Or do you have a good tutorial or guidelines for a beginner.

Sometimes it's a combination of all of those things.
There is really no set way, to learn/make a synth sound.
Everyone does it a different way.

In a genre like: "you want that type of sound: use these knobs for it".

The Lmmsdude vid tuts (3 in all) are a good example of those type of tuts.

You can even check the tutorials section, for tuts that deal with making specific synth sounds.
Many of them are posted by Lmms users, who use, a variety of Vst's etc.
As mentioned above, musikbear has some synth sound video tuts, that deal with making simple synth sounds.
Feel free to check them out, or any other synth tut, in the tutorials section.

Synths give me way toooo much options, the possibilities are endless, limitless... that's frustrating me a lot.Anyone felt the same situation?

We all went through that as newbies.

The best way to deal with that, is to take it one step at a time.
Learn to make simple basic or semi basic advanced synth sounds.
Take your time, test out, turn dials and knobs on a synth, and learn what some of the knobs do.

Some synth dials eg. Freq dial, might be different to the freq dials, on other synths.
Not all synths are the same.
There is a sort of magic/science behind them, and making synth sounds with them too.

PS: Tutorials and Synth sound making tutorials are updated, by Lmms users, as time passes.
In my case, new synth sound making tuts will be posted soon.

Wow! It's been a while, since I made a lengthly post. Lol!

[bulevardi]

..how come you felt that was relevant in Brandys tutorials...
Na.. nvm

I was in that thread looking around how to use the synth making cool sounds. Good tutorial, however I'm not using Synth1, yet.

Oh cool. I played guitar and recorder when I was small. But I haven't played in a long time, so I'm rusty now.
Knowing how to play at least one real instrument, eg. piano or guitar, can in most cases, help you with making digital music. Then all you have to do, is transfer your knowledge to DAW's and VST synth sounds etc.

I learned to work with another DAW first last year, Magix Samplitude Music Studio.
Recorded some stuff with guitar I always wanted to record.
Then I wanted to add drums, but not the pre-created samples like EZ Drummer, I wanted to create the patterns my own. Adding some preset synths with my cheap midi keyboard here...
Then thought about adding basslines in the DAW, didn't work out that good, looked around, came up with LMMS... experimented with it.
It feels so nice lightweight, while the other daw I used is taking lots of RAM and crashes all the time.

In my youth I grew up listening to grunge, than all types of metal, post-rock etc... that's explains my love for the guitar... Still want to do stuff with guitar too, maybe combined with electronic music.
But when I started going out in my young days, all local parties in my hometown were electronic music, dance/techno/trance/house styles of music, in fact I loved to dance on it too.. I was forced to listen to it, there was no alternative, no rock parties... But not that passionate about electronic music already to try to create something similar.
In contrary, as a rock-minded guitar dude, I was always biased with the thought: "making beats or electronic music is easy, it's just a computer, pushing a few buttons and you have a song". Someday I said to myself: "if it's that easy, why don't you make it yourself then?" ... tried, failed, error. It looked easier than it is.

As a kid (80's), my neighbours listened to "New Beat" and I sometimes got a cassette from them to listen to. I'm currently nostalgic in going back listening to these songs from then, analysing them how all parts are built up. It's nice to learn.

Anyway, LMMS seems very nice. But I guess it'll take some time to learn the synths.
Will get back on this thread later on if I have more questions. Will look at the videos first and experiment in the next couple of days. Thanks for the replies!

[bulevardi]

Really, it's working out
Just recorded a small melody of Swedish House Maffia's song 'one', on a loop, and started to tweak the waves.

I now put an automation track on it, to see how I can tweak the envelope through time, sounds nice.

Will do a bassline and drum next ^^
Trying to copy another song is a good workout to experiment with the DAW.

Thanks dudes!

[Douglas]

I use a trick that is quite interesting. I mess around with TripleOscillator until I get a nice-sounding instrument. I then clone that instrument twice. For the two clones I change the Phase shift and Stereo shift. If you do it right, they sound fantastic!

By the way, a square-saw-saw pattern for the Triple Oscillator sounds nice, especially if you tweak the left and right fine detune knobs a bit. Throw on C* Plate2x2 for some nice reverb. Turn on the volume envelope, leave the release how it is, increase the hold all the way, and increase the attack a bit.

There are many ways to do this, that's just one of my favorite instruments. For ZynAddSubFX, all you can really do is practice. Also take a look at unfa's music at lmms.io/lsp, he/she uses ZynAddSubFX more than any other composer I've seen.