Abstract Instruments

Spud388

New member
Hey guys, I've been branching out musically lately. The latest thing I've been trying lately is making some unique, abstract, spacey sounds; I want to make some new synths in particular. I mainly use Ableton Operator and the ocassional free synth VST, but if you could explain in a different DAW/plug-in that would help too. What are some ways I could achieve some abstract sounds in that style?


For examples of what I mean:




 
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The sounds in either track aren't very complicated - the lead in the Shlohmo track is a pretty basic saw with a LFO detuning the pitch constantly; the glitches can be just played by hand but it's a bit hard to tell. Joker's synth swooshes are a bit harder to pull apart exactly, but suffice to say the metallic spring reverb splash does a lot of the sound there; the base sound isn't terribly complex, mostly just a quick filter sweep. And then it sounds like he's resampling his own synths and then playing around with their pitch, among other things. In other words, the sounds and the techniques used in these aren't terribly complex or technical by themselves, but work great in the given context - Ableton's Operator & Analog are well capable of producing all of these, it's more just the matter of getting to grips with the controls. Read up on some synthesis basics if you already haven't and continue playing around until you get comfortable with what the knobs and buttons do - there's no magic trick to this, it's just about experience.
 
You just have to find your own voice in them. When there is a parameter to be played with, learn what it does and learn how to control it. I like hardware. My Fizmo has presets like that, glitches included. :)
 
Just thought it's worth saying that it's easier to make a weird sound than a good sound. What I sometimes do when I want to add a bit of colour to my tracks, but I'm not sure exactly what I want, is I just mess around with the randomise function on synths, then tweak the settings to get really interesting sounds. Then after you've got a weird sound you can work at it with all sorts of effects, filters, eqing etc to get a more legit sounding sound. Every now and then I build up a bank of weird sounds and then play around with them to see if I can find a good little melody or motif that can be a good basis for a track. 90% of these sounds end up never being used, but if you just find a good method of creating/generating and perfecting sounds then you can make a lot of unusual (and possibly really great) sounds in a short amount of time :D
 
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