This Will Change Your Sound Design Forever

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[blakecasimir]

Folks that want to dive in but are still beginners / intermediate at sound design: focus on modulation. It's one the most important aspects of creating good synth sounds.

[spacemanspliff]

I love the way your ear gets better as you get better at picking up on the subtleties of certain changes. Theres so much at your fingertips with these synths, it’s insane. Awesome video, perfect for me as I’m beginning the deep dive into sound design.

[PeteGunnShow]

I realized very early on that I was spending hours scrolling presets when I could just take the time to learn to make my own sounds. So now, not only do I save time, but I have definitely had more fun.

[AnoshterHaar]

While in a perfect and time free world I would love to try this approach myself. At this moment I just can't as I use presets a lot for the writing stage. When I am writing I do not want to be carried away by trying to imagine how I would like a sound to sound. To then waste more of my time transforming my imagined sound into an actual synth.

It's not that I don't understand substractive synthesis or lack the imagination to come up with sounds. The thing just is that it takes my focus away from writing the arrangement in the first place. For me writing and arranging are way more important compared to finding the absolute perfect sound for a synth. I'd rather build from something already in the ballpark of where I want to go, changing it along the way or replacing it all together after a while. Than to reinvent the wheel everytime I get into a creative session. By doing that I keep most of my focus with the writing, arranging and mixing of the song. Which for me does the job fine.

And while I can point towards songs or demo's of me where I clearly missed some cohesion between the parts, I recently have improved a lot and there is always something that you can do to fix sounds that fall short. Either by tweaking a preset, creating a new one, doubling or the mix.

I have nothing against presets and people using presets. Nor against people believing they should avoid presets at all cost. In the end it is about the way you put sounds together and write a story.
And for the people firmly against presets I have no problem with giving you a list of some of the greatest musicians/composers of all time that had no problem at all using presets...

[felixdeubler]

Its a skill to make presets fit together. In my opinion, choosing the right sound plus maybe some ADSR gets you 99% of the way there.

The key point is SOUND SELECTION. Just produce and listen and you will naturally develop a sense for what fits where. You will be surprised for how well the weirdest preset fits in certain parts of the mix. Thats why it is important to always mix and choose sounds in the context of the whole mix.
Noone cares how your sound sounds on its own if it is never heard that way

[robdeepmusic]

Thanks Philip. This makes a lot of sense, especially the "sounding impressive on its own". I've notice that sometimes I can get really tunnel visioned into the sound of one particular instrument like the bass or keys (i.e., the trees), and lose the full scope of the forest (i.e., the entire track). Often times, the harmonics of instruments and their working together change the vibe in subtle ways that are hard to detect at first but you gain more clarity the more you experience. For example, something as simple as sidechain compression of the bass and kick can make the bass "feel more groovy", despite the notes remaining the same and the bass being a simple operator or analog device.

[classfront]

this video is awesome, been looking for advice like this for a long time, its basically a make your own presets tutorial

[JayM]

Problem: you typically don’t get good enough at hearing and understanding mixing well enough until much later. So, even if you make your own, you won’t be well versed in what would make for a better patch than the presets. By the time you know that, you’ll probably already be making your own presets because your ears and mixing got good enough to where you realized you should.

Conclusion? Don’t worry about it. Keep making music. Make a patch; use a preset… whatever you want. Having no one is gonna die if your mix isn’t amazing. Enjoy making music.

[DMTCYMATICSDreamMusicTemple]

I make a living as a sound designer creating preset packs. Unfortunately I have little time for music production. Instead I spend time on each preset in a pack to inspire other music producers and save them time.

[jimmythebold]

yay. i love your enthusiasm. thanks, youtube algorithm, and thank you, phillip-

[TrizziEhgan]

For the sub layer, you could just use the Instrument Rack by selecting the instrument and effects and group them by pressing Ctrl+G, then duplicate the chain, remove the effects in the duplicated chain and do the rest. It's also important to name the chains so that you don't have to guess what's the main sound or the sub layer.

[herrienek]

This sound reminds me a bit of the bells in Altes Kamuffel from PK

[TheSpeenort]

I like Vital because it's so visible. If and when I find a preset I like, Vital makes it easier to dissect and tweak things to my taste.

[One_Call_System]

Awesome! This definitely will help me. You always have great advice, yiu should be bigger!

[humality]

if my project doesn't sound full with no fx I scrap it and move on to the next until something sounds huge then and only then do I find it beneficial to go deeper into sound design a good place to get to is knowing your sketch up tools inside out and reiterating over and over kind of like a pencil and sketchbook, use your basic sine triangle square etc avoid wasting time on setting reverb to a project that isn't even arranged and don't waste time trying to save something that isn't already holding its own.

[unfinishedmonkeyrecords]

if what he says in the first paragraph is true then simply turn off the fx section of the preset, keep the osc settings and tweak any modulation/lfo settings to your liking; should fix the issue...

[eli-shulga]

First 40 seconds : Yes, yes and also yes..

EDIT: Back after watching the whole thing. Very interesting workflow, differently going to try it out. Thank you

[TheShadow]

Your videos are so amazing and inspiring - keep going with this stuff !

[richtreloar]

Fantastic video. Very well explained. I’ve definitely been guilty of tweaking presets to make it fit the track. This approach improves your sound design skills. Cool stuff

[ClicStudio]

Man what a great video, right when im getting interested in how to make sound design