Two questions: Layering sounds for leads and dubstep bass.

4

4ngus

New member
Hi everyone!

I have 2 questions for the experienced producers:

1) What are the "standard" sounds that make leads fatter? What is the proper thoery behind layering synths? (I know it's purpose I just don't know when to do it)

2) Does anyone know a good sound design tutorial for the popular electro/dubstep sounds? I really enjoy dirty electro and dubstep but it takes lots of sound design knowledge to synthesize the sounds. I use Harmor(Additive Synth), Sylenth1(Subtractive Synth) and Sytrus(FM Synth) to produce my sounds. I was think about getting Massive but a producer friend of mine said the sounds are too much used and it is not good for originality.

Anyway, thank you for your time.
 
That sort of depends on what you consider to be 'fatter'.

This can be anything from a filter on a deep bass tone, to detuning oscillators to get the snappy thick bass sound, to actual distortion plugins that add noise or shift frequencies. You can also get a 'wider' sound with a stereo field expander or creative panning.

Personally, I get a lot more oomph from my synth sounds if I have a second copy playing an octave(or other appropriate chord) lower(for bass) or higher(for leads) at a slightly lower volume. It can add(or I guess fakes) harmonics and resonating notes the synth otherwise doesn't generate internally.

As far as sound design, play with some presets on the synths you use most often, and listen to what each control is doing to the sound. Start with the obvious things like oscillator mixing and tuning, filters and envelopes, and modulation. You can usually tweak an existing preset into something you like, even by trial-and-error, much faster than you can start a patch from scratch.

-Rob

PS: Massive is used a ton, but you can always come up with a new sound nobody's used yet if you play with it. I still love it.
 
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4ngus said:
Hi everyone!

I have 2 questions for the experienced producers:

1) What are the "standard" sounds that make leads fatter? What is the proper thoery behind layering synths? (I know it's purpose I just don't know when to do it)

2) Does anyone know a good sound design tutorial for the popular electro/dubstep sounds? I really enjoy dirty electro and dubstep but it takes lots of sound design knowledge to synthesize the sounds. I use Harmor(Additive Synth), Sylenth1(Subtractive Synth) and Sytrus(FM Synth) to produce my sounds. I was think about getting Massive but a producer friend of mine said the sounds are too much used and it is not good for originality.

Anyway, thank you for your time.
Click to expand...

A synth like massive can never be overused. I would say sylenth1 and massive are the best vst synths you can buy that I'm aware of. This is because they are truly limitless with the sounds you can create. The problem is everyone's trying to create sounds that have already been made...

Exactly like it sounds like you're doing. Don't try and make "electro" sounds. Go launch your daw and arm a track with sylenth1. Record some little fun melody or chord progression. Initialize the preset (menu-init preset) you will have a basic sine wave. Go through sylenth1 and tweak every single knob. Listen to what is being changed. Mess around make. Cool sound.

Load another synth or sylenth again. Start with another sine wave and create another sound.

It's the same process as picking clothes, you stick with sounds that you think are cool or you like. Don't try to be anyone else just try and wear the sound that you want to.


Don't get massive, the synths aren't the problem you have those. Work on sound design, it's what will take your music somewhere (of course among many other things)
 
For tutorials, check out ARTFX, Dubspot, ans SeamlessR. Dubspot has very mixed tutorials, but many of them are good sounddesign tutorials. Seamless mostly do brostep tutorials, but he also have a great tutorial series on how to use Harmor (I love that synth btw!).
My impression is that Harmor is pretty much like Sylenth1, but with all these additive features (it beats Sylenth1 imo). Though it lacks a noiseoscillator and a Drive before the filters.
Wait until you discover Harmor's additive resample section.

I have a copy of Massive, and it's nice, but not great, and I think it's overrated. It has some powerful routing features, and by my experience I can say that it's perfect for plucks and supersaws, but more than that I just feel my creativity is limited when using it because I can't do this or that.
Anyway, don't bother too much about the originality in your tracks by using Massive, since it's probably the synth with the most presetbanks out there, meaning a whole world of different sounds. I don't think the average listener would sit there and "meh he clearly used Massive for that sound, soo unoriginal".

It's hard to tell what layers are common for leads, because a lead can be a huge variety of sounds.
The point with layering is to have multiple sounds contributing to a one and full sound. Think your sound lacks something? Add a layer and fix it. Or just experiment and come up with that new awesome sound.
 
I don't think that the standard skrillex/zomboy type bass sounds are layered, unless you count the thing where you highpass and add sub layer.
Seamlessr does do most of those sounds in sytrus, but any fm synth should do it.
 
Most dubstep producers do use layering heavily, some just do it more subtly than others. There's kind of 2 basic approaches here. On one hand, you can figure out what sound you want and go build the synth. If you go that route, massive is good, but Operator, Analog, and even Sampler as a granular synth in Ableton all work well. With 9 and Max you can LFO whatever you want, which is where Massive really had the upper hand for a while.

The second approach is where Massive really comes in handy, and that's basically throwing shit at walls and seeing what sticks. You compose your part, open a Massive plugin and arrow down through thousands of freely available presets until you find one you like. Then you duplicate the track, arrow down again mixing the 2 along the way until you're happy, maybe cut pieces of your melody out or add some in, and repeat that process. There's really nothing wrong with doing this. When people criticize others for doing it, it's because they just mixed Massive presets until they copied something Excision did. Whatever you gotta do to get a good sound, it's still a good sound.
 
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