Advanced Guide to Synthesis

Building confidence with sound design is one of the most important aspects when creating original music and wanting your tracks to be unique. The best way to improve this is to get inside the mind of an experienced sound designer. On this course from Producertech, you’ll be guided through the creation of numerous presets in comprehensive sessions where every part of the process is clearly and concisely explained.

Course tutor Seppa is a renowned Bass Music producer and advanced sound designer and in this set of tutorials, you’ll learn all his techniques for making awesome patches with some of today’s most popular synths, namely Serum and Vital.

The first 2 modules focus purely on bass, showing different workflows for creating dirty, evolving basses, whilst always ensuring they deliver sufficient clarity and punch. The following 2 look at different leads, with a quality poly synth for playing chords, followed by a massive monophonic lead for making epic hooks. After this, Seppa moves onto pads and FX, finishing up with a wonky sequence preset for adding quirky rhythms to your tracks.

Synthesis techniques you can expect to learn on the course include wavetable creation, wave-shaping and manipulation, unison voicing application, serial and parallel filtering, extensive LFO modulation and how to process sounds with many different types of effects, such as phaser, flanger, delay, compressor, EQ, formant and comb filter, and lots more!

Signing up to the course gets you instant access to nearly 4 hours of lessons, plus the presets made along the way and 15 bonus Loopmasters patches for Serum. Enrol today to join Seppa in this epic masterclass and start creating incredible sounds of your own!

Sample Module

Modules

Module 1 - Bass Patching With Serum

All of the main theory for making heavy, analogue-sounding bass patches, including oscillator phase relationships, unison voicing, waveforms and spectral analysis, envelope and LFO modulation, filtering, distortion, sub bass and transient control.

Module 2 - Bass Patching With Vital

Another detailed workflow for making basses, this time with Vital. Many of the synth sections are extended further in this module, including more complex oscillator and wavetable usage, parallel filtering, multiple stacked LFOs and additional FX. There is also a demonstration of how to take the bass from a tempo-sync’d version to a less predictable, fully randomised one.

Module 3 - Building Lush Poly Synths

A multitude of techniques for making a classic, rich poly synth, for creating huge chord sequences. Both oscillators and the sub are combined to create a massive sound, whilst maintaining a solid centre. Additional modulated notch filtering is employed in the FX area to add extra movement and shaping. Then, a long effects chain is used to polish the sound.

Module 4 - Making Rich Pads

A multi-layered pad is constructed from 3 oscillators and a tuned noise generator, incorporating waveshaping, frequency modulation, comb and formant filtering, phasing and a liberal smattering of randomised LFO modulation.

Module 5 - Lead Techniques With Serum

Seppa shows how a huge lead sound can be created by first making your own wavetable, then layering different versions of it together with varying modulation and shaping applied. The lead is then enhanced with comb filtering and a series of different effects, including flanger, delay, reverb, multiband compression and EQ.

Module 6 - Making Sequences With Vital

This final patch design session begins again with a lesson in wavetable construction, showing some of the additional features in Vital, which include built in modifiers to further shape the wavetable. A number of LFOs are then used in step mode to modulate various synth parameters to create different types of sequenced preset, from classic and tuned all the way to anarchic and atonal!

Features

• 4 hours of streamed tutorials
• Accessible 24/7/365
• 7 Course Presets
• 15 Bonus Serum Presets

System Requirements

• An internet connection is required to stream the modules in this course.

Please Note: The modules included in this online guide can be streamed within the Courses section of your account area and are not available to download.