Using soft synths

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Whiteglass

New member
I feel like that is my biggest weakness within my creative process. Crafting the soft synth sounds. I want to learn, but I am finding that my resources are limited. I try to just experiment, but I feel like I am not progressing. Any advice?
 
Mostly Massive....although my bigger problem is that my DAW crashes every other time I open up Massive.
 
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Yeah that would be a pretty big problem. What kind of experimenting are you doing and what kind of sounds are you looking to make
 
Well I'm pretty set with my bass, drums, and other effects, but I'm just trying to get some simple lead sounds. I'm going for just a rather straightforward, warm-fuzzy sound; drawn-out chords. It's not the composing part...it's the actual synth sounds.
 
Dubspot has got some really good tutorials on massive, check out their YouTube channel. What I use to do when I was trying to learn synthesis was find a preset that was similar to the sound I wanted and then reverse engineer it to get an idea of what made it sound like that. You're probably gonna want to start with a saw wave if you're looking for those "fuzzy" anthem type synths. And mess around with some delays and reverb to taste. I'm no synth genius tho so def check some tutorials on anthem/trance synths (I'm assuming that's what you're looking for) and even if they're using different synths, you can still apply those techniques to massive.
 
mess with the attack/hold/and release of the synth. also lo/hi pass filters to fatten or thin out sounds to fit over beats more better.. that's all I really got besides fx.
 
Thanks to all three of you. Those Dubspot tuts are already helping, and I'll be sure to check out propellorhead stuff.
 
Read the NI Massive manual. Find out what each control and knob does. Edit patches. You really have to take your time with software synthesizers and get to know how it works.

Most just jump from softsynth to softsynth for the presets but you should be able to craft any sound you desire once you know how your device works under the hood.

Find out Massive's signal flow. With most synths you general shape the basic tone of the sound with the oscillators. Then you build on that by filtering it, modulating things, adding effects until your satisfied.

It's definitely a creative process though. Getting a midi controller and mapping some controls to it should make things a lot easier.
 
for every 20 min of tutorial watching do 1 hour of messing around with whatever soft synth you have that works. get the basics of synthesis down, but don't spend too much time stressing over the technical stuff.

Develop dynamics and be ok with making lots of dumb beats and laughing at them.

Above all, just MAKE LOTS OF BEATS!
 
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