What Are Formants?

dannydawiz

New member
Hey guys. I've been getting a bit more into dubstep sound design and this term keeps on popping up. Is it important to understand? What is it exactly? Also... I've been finding it really hard to design these sounds using just sylenth. Is massive better for programming dubstep sounds in general?
 
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formants are probably better described as instrument/vocal tract resonances that do not change despite the pitch changing - all notes on an instrument have the same basic harmonic structure, but these are further enhanced by the natural resonances of the instrument body so that some of the harmonics within the harmonic structure of the note stand out more than others

think of it as tunable resonance filters applied to a range of frequencies within the audible range of human hearing
 
formants are probably better described as instrument/vocal tract resonances that do not change despite the pitch changing - all notes on an instrument have the same basic harmonic structure, but these are further enhanced by the natural resonances of the instrument body so that some of the harmonics within the harmonic structure of the note stand out more than others

think of it as tunable resonance filters applied to a range of frequencies within the audible range of human hearing

I see... Does that mean that no matter what note you play, the formant of an instrument will always remain the same? Also... I usually see the term "formant" used when it comes to vowel sounds as well. Do you know how the two terms are related?
 
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as stated before a formant is the natural resonance of the generating medium - it can be the instrument body or the vocal tract; which has several formants based on nasal, throat and mouth cavities

these cavities produce consistent resonant freqs when someone speaks and this is why it is easy to recognise different peoples voices and why we can also categorise different vocal types (amongst things that help with that identification)

as for formants in instruments the resonances remain the same regardless of what note is played - it is why some notes appear to be produced effortlessly (they sing out from the instrument) whilst others are difficult to produce (they seem thin and weak)
 
Sylenth is a bit of beginners synth imo. It does cover the basics very well, but a lot of people find it limiting as it doesn't do FM, waveshaping/wavetable or sample based synthesis. Massive is one option for a general purpose synth with a few more bells and whistles, but don't think it's the only option- I personally think serum, synthmaster and z3ta 2+ are just as fully featured (if not more) and cost less money.

The classic (and probably overused) dubstep growls are usually made by FM synthesis. Massive can do this, but it's a bit limited and a specialist FM synth such as FM8, Toxic biohazard is much more useful- have a look at the seamlessr tutorials. There are some pretty powerful FM stock synths which are definitely capable of making formant-y growls- if you own FL studio or Ableton you could definitely use operator or sytrus to make such a sound.

In terms of how formants are related to vowel sounds, you are correct in saying that formants don't change with the pitch of the sound. Vowel sounds are created by specific sets of frequencies of formants- I believe the wikipedia page on formants can tell you which exact frequencies you need to make the an 'a' an 'ee' an 'oo' etc.

When designing sounds to sound vowelly, here are three methods I use. One is to just play around with synthesis until you happen to hit on something vowelly by chance- FM synthesis often does this, so does sample rate reduction and certain combinations or resonant filters.

A more deliberate approach would be to use vocoding or a formant filter (I like forma-8, especially as it's free), which deliberately introduce formants that are the same as the ones generated by a human voice.
 
Sylenth is a bit of beginners synth imo. It does cover the basics very well, but a lot of people find it limiting as it doesn't do FM, waveshaping/wavetable or sample based synthesis. Massive is one option for a general purpose synth with a few more bells and whistles, but don't think it's the only option- I personally think serum, synthmaster and z3ta 2+ are just as fully featured (if not more) and cost less money.

The classic (and probably overused) dubstep growls are usually made by FM synthesis. Massive can do this, but it's a bit limited and a specialist FM synth such as FM8, Toxic biohazard is much more useful- have a look at the seamlessr tutorials. There are some pretty powerful FM stock synths which are definitely capable of making formant-y growls- if you own FL studio or Ableton you could definitely use operator or sytrus to make such a sound.

In terms of how formants are related to vowel sounds, you are correct in saying that formants don't change with the pitch of the sound. Vowel sounds are created by specific sets of frequencies of formants- I believe the wikipedia page on formants can tell you which exact frequencies you need to make the an 'a' an 'ee' an 'oo' etc.

When designing sounds to sound vowelly, here are three methods I use. One is to just play around with synthesis until you happen to hit on something vowelly by chance- FM synthesis often does this, so does sample rate reduction and certain combinations or resonant filters.

A more deliberate approach would be to use vocoding or a formant filter (I like forma-8, especially as it's free), which deliberately introduce formants that are the same as the ones generated by a human voice.

This post was very informative. I actually produce on Logic Pro and not FL Studio. Sylenth1 does have a few lfos that you can use for FM synthesis. The main thing that I like about it is that it's really simple in the sense that most sounds are either made using a saw, square, or sine wave.

The thing that I find tough about dubstep sound design is the fact that it isn't as simple most other genres of EDM. All of a sudden you have these sounds that are distorted to hell and are being modulated in 2-3 different places.


I've been wanting to switch to massive recently but the only thing I don't like about it is that it has a TON of different wavetables. I feel like the simplicity becomes compromised but then again I do feel like Massive is easier to work with at least in regards to FM synthesis. If I make a sound I want to understand how make it conceptually straight from a saw wave or square wave. I don't like how massive has all of these "modern talking" etc... wavetables that I don't understand how to make starting from just a simple saw wave.

Then again I may check out the FM8 since It does seem like something a bit more new and exciting.
 
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If you want to make a formant filtered sound, you need a synth where you can setup 2 parallell filters - one with a bandpass, and one with a bandcut (this one is most important). Then you control the bandcut width and the bandpass cutoff with whatever you like, and envelope, LFO, automation etc. Experiment with the knob settings on these parameters as well as the resonance on both of them to achieve the right movement.
The main formant sounds comes from 2 resonances in the frequency spectrum moving toward eachother, at least with the typical YEAY-sound. Hence why the bandcut filter is most important as you'll have 2 resonances moving as you control the bandcut width. The bandpass is more about balancing the sound.
Massive can do this, and Sylenth should be able to do this as well, however I don't use Sylenth, but I believe it has parallell filters.
Otherwise you could just do this OTB, using 2 parallell mixer channels with different EQ settings, or if you have a plugin where you can do parallell filters.
Anyway, I remember I've once stumbled upon a cheat sheet with what frequency parts that needs to be attenuated for what formant sound, so google it and see if you can find it (if you don't, let me know and I'll send you it, as I have it written down inside my DAW).

However I wouldn't recommend using formant filtering to create growl sounds... because they mostly sound really, really horrible and amatuerish, at least if you're going for a huge bass sound. But for funky pads and leads and such, or noisy effects with a more spicy shape on it, this technique can be perfect.
As for FM synthesis, it's a very recommended and a very reliable synthesis technique for this, but it's not the technique that produces the cleanest and smoothest growl sounds (like the ones Skrillex has), but more rough and naughty ones. Depends on what you want.

Check out this tutorial on a very advanced way to create very smooth sounding formant sounds:
How to actually make your own Skrillex Growls -


PS. "being modulated in 2-3 places"... that's cute ;)
 
I usually see the term "formant" used when it comes to vowel sounds as well. Do you know how the two terms are related?

sorry totally missed this part of your question before

when we say words we change the resonant frequency of the mouth by changing the overall shape: different vowels have different shapes throughout the vocal tract and therefore different resonances - we use formant to describe the way in which the vowel is formed by the change in vocal tract shape
 
The main thing that I like about it is that it's really simple in the sense that most sounds are either made using a saw, square, or sine wave.
FM synthesis uses combinations of sines, squares, saws and triangle waves to make more complex waves.
The thing that I find tough about dubstep sound design is the fact that it isn't as simple most other genres of EDM. All of a sudden you have these sounds that are distorted to hell and are being modulated in 2-3 different places.
As you learn more sound design you might find that this isn't uncommon. 2-3 modulations is still fairly basic compared to some sounds which have dozens.

I've been wanting to switch to massive recently but the only thing I don't like about it is that it has a TON of different wavetables. I feel like the simplicity becomes compromised but then again I do feel like Massive is easier to work with at least in regards to FM synthesis. If I make a sound I want to understand how make it conceptually straight from a saw wave or square wave. I don't like how massive has all of these "modern talking" etc... wavetables that I don't understand how to make starting from just a simple saw wave.
A lot of the more advanced sound design techniques often involve using samples as a starting point- any noise can be integrated into bass for a bit of organic-sounding filthiness. Have a look sample based synths such as alchemy, omnisphere, harmor, iris etc.

Also, a lot of the massive wavetables probably could be made by FM synthesis if you knew how.

If you do want to create your own wavetables from scratch rather than using massive's pre-made ones, have a look at serum- it's one of the most powerful and fully featured VSTs available today.
 
Thank you so much for all the replies everyone. I'm sorry for being a bit late. School, homework, and work are starting to make free time a lot smaller recently.

I'm sure I can find that formant cheatsheet somewhere online. The funny thing is I just saw a tutorial featuring a couple of the monstercat producers (virtual riot, au5) talk about how they make those vowelly sounds. It looked VERY similar to what you're describing. Except instead of using a band reject they used two bandpass filters and automated the cutoff of one of them to "crossover" into the other.

I'm really excited to experiment with the tips you just gave me. Same goes to you band coach. I still have a lot of stuff that i need to go over from your other posts as well. What you said about the vocal Tract changing shape was quite informative.

When you refer to "parallel" eqs... What exactly does that mean? I really like the idea of being able to create this formant sounds just by using two EQs and automation. When it comes to sound design I feel like understanding the theory behind everything is far more important because once you learn it you can recreate it in essentially ANY synthesizers.

What is faster though do you think when it comes to FM synthesis? Working with the LFOs in the synthesizer or controlling things based on automation?


I'm trying to wrap my head around the theory behind FM synthesis. Is it really true that you can create any of the tables in massive using normal FM synthesis? If so... this makes me happy to hear. I'll take a look at serum once I get the chance. I really do feel like sylenth has finally reached its limits. At least until this stuff starts to become second nature.

How is it that a sound could have 12 modulation a going on at once and still retain its sound? I would assume that it would just turn into a big pile of mush. Then again... I'm not very familiar with FM synthesis at all aside from the basic "wobble" bass and the good old "YAI". I don't own a sample synthesizer either so I have absolutely 0 experience when it comes to sample based design.

I'll check out that video as soon on growls as soon as I get the time. Once again, thanks everyone for being so helpful.
 
Parallell EQ's is simply when you run your audio into 2 different EQ instances parallell to eachother, meaning they're side by side, but the audio from one of the EQ's doesn't run into the other, therefore you can make 2 different versions which is then combined again.
So with one EQ you can make that bandstop, and with the other the bandpass, or whatever filter combo you think would work. You could do as the monstercat producers did it, but the problem with that technique is that you lose the lowend and highend as you move the bandpass filters, unless there is a dry/wet mix where you've blended back in the original signal (which means you might as well just automate the frequencies of 2 EQ peaks moving towards eachother).

As for 12 modulations, it depends on what you're modulating. Often you maybe only 2 modulations that makes the core of the sound, the rest of the modulations is to sweeten it up or balance things out, meaning you don't modulate these as harsh.

You probably could mimic the Massive wavetables using FM if you spent enough time on it, but not sure why you would wanna do it, I mean those wavetables doesn't sound that good... I probably only have a dozen of different wavetables in Massive that I return to because the others mostly only sound either thin or like some pointless version of a squarish sound.
You can make far cooler wavetables in Serum, not to mention its warping effects sounds much more on point than the ones in Massive imo (bending, syncing, etc). I've even made a pluck sound using only the wavetable movement.

If you were to go learn FM synthesis, make sure you dive into it and set all other sounddesign experiments and techniques aside for the moment, so you can get FM into the back of your head, because you will get headaches from time to time, I got that.
 
Parallell EQ's is simply when you run your audio into 2 different EQ instances parallell to eachother, meaning they're side by side, but the audio from one of the EQ's doesn't run into the other, therefore you can make 2 different versions which is then combined again.
So with one EQ you can make that bandstop, and with the other the bandpass, or whatever filter combo you think would work. You could do as the monstercat producers did it, but the problem with that technique is that you lose the lowend and highend as you move the bandpass filters, unless there is a dry/wet mix where you've blended back in the original signal (which means you might as well just automate the frequencies of 2 EQ peaks moving towards eachother).

As for 12 modulations, it depends on what you're modulating. Often you maybe only 2 modulations that makes the core of the sound, the rest of the modulations is to sweeten it up or balance things out, meaning you don't modulate these as harsh.

You probably could mimic the Massive wavetables using FM if you spent enough time on it, but not sure why you would wanna do it, I mean those wavetables doesn't sound that good... I probably only have a dozen of different wavetables in Massive that I return to because the others mostly only sound either thin or like some pointless version of a squarish sound.
You can make far cooler wavetables in Serum, not to mention its warping effects sounds much more on point than the ones in Massive imo (bending, syncing, etc). I've even made a pluck sound using only the wavetable movement.

If you were to go learn FM synthesis, make sure you dive into it and set all other sounddesign experiments and techniques aside for the moment, so you can get FM into the back of your head, because you will get headaches from time to time, I got that.

Let me see if I comprehended this correctly... If I were to put 2 channel EQs on one track (one bandpass and on bandreject) then this would be considered parallel EQ?

Or maybe its like this...

Make a duplicate of a track of a sound with an EQ on each channel. (One track has a bandpass and the dupe track has a bandreject)


What exactly is "bending" and "syncing" if you don't mind me asking? I've seen those options on the massive wavetables as well. I understand what they sound like but I don't really understand whats happening to the soundwave from a theoretical perspective.
 
Let me see if I comprehended this correctly... If I were to put 2 channel EQs on one track (one bandpass and on bandreject) then this would be considered parallel EQ?

no

Or maybe its like this...

Make a duplicate of a track of a sound with an EQ on each channel. (One track has a bandpass and the dupe track has a bandreject)

yes
 
When you bend a waveform, you either squeeze the waveform together, or you straighten it out, depending on if you do Bend- or Bend+. There are more waveform warping shapes than bending, and most of them are inside Serum, but bending is probably the most common one. It's always a good habit to experiment with bending if you think you like a waveform in a wavetable but you feels like "it's still not there".

Sync-modulation is when you have for instance a sawwave, and let it restart according to the pitch/phase of another inaudible oscillator which pitch you can adjust, meaning the "sync" of the audible oscillator is modulated. You know that lead sound in Daft Punk - Robot Rock? That's an envelope controlled sync sound.
Choose "Formant"-mode in Massive and you can sync pretty much any wavetable.

Here's a great video explaining it:
 
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I just picked up a copy of serum and I have to say this synthesizer is absolutely spectacular! I really like the way it lets you customize your own waveform visually. The only thing now is I'm absolutely lost. I never really got into create wavetables outside of the most basic waveforms.

One thing that I noticed about the bend+ is that it makes it's almost like the highs suddenly increase and with the bend- the lows decrease.

I'm very unfamiliar with this side of synthesis. I don't think I'll be able to ask you guys questions about everything. Do you guys have any sources you think may help when it comes to getting into this more advanced side of sound design?
 
I just picked up a copy of serum and I have to say this synthesizer is absolutely spectacular! I really like the way it lets you customize your own waveform visually. The only thing now is I'm absolutely lost. I never really got into create wavetables outside of the most basic waveforms.

Well, then check out this series of tutorials made by the creator of Serum himself showcasing everything inside Serum :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf4Dj3FSCjc&list=PLCdl4Odo4R1i0q3SzY0o3I0Qwl85N7H9F

And as for creating your own waveforms and such, nothing to worry about, just get in there and act like a 5 year old drawing on a piece of paper, and you'll learn what different patterns may sound like.

One thing that I noticed about the bend+ is that it makes it's almost like the highs suddenly increase and with the bend- the lows decrease.

That depends on the waveform, but yeah I suppose that's correct with the more common waveforms.
 
Well, then check out this series of tutorials made by the creator of Serum himself showcasing everything inside Serum :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf4Dj3FSCjc&list=PLCdl4Odo4R1i0q3SzY0o3I0Qwl85N7H9F

And as for creating your own waveforms and such, nothing to worry about, just get in there and act like a 5 year old drawing on a piece of paper, and you'll learn what different patterns may sound like.



That depends on the waveform, but yeah I suppose that's correct with the more common waveforms.

That tutorial is awesome! I'm just barely getting starting with diving into FM synthesis. The first problem that I'm having is how do you get a sound to retain it's pitch? Right now I'm modulating the pitch of a sine wave at it's maximum rate by another sine wave LFO. I'm getting a pretty interesting wave form but when I try to play it on my keyboard it's like the pitch doesn't exist. It just sounds like a bunch dissonant harmonics clashing.

Is this pretty normal of FM synthesis or am I missing something here?
 
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That's probably because the LFO rate isn't keytracked. On an FM synth I believe the mod frequency is adapted for each key so it may sound musical. Not much to do unless spending lots of time finetuning a custom keyboardtrack on the LFO rate. I'd rather just pull up a real FM synth where it's already set up.

Either that or you've gone too harsh on the FM and therefore introduce a whole jungle of aliasing. What synth are you trying to do it on?
 
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That's probably because the LFO rate isn't keytracked. On an FM synth I believe the mod frequency is adapted for each key so it may sound musical. Not much to do unless spending lots of time finetuning a custom keyboardtrack on the LFO rate. I'd rather just pull up a real FM synth where it's already set up.

Either that or you've gone too harsh on the FM and therefore introduce a whole jungle of aliasing. What synth are you trying to do it on?

I was actually using sylenth. With the LFO1 I was modulating the "pitch" as fast as possible.
 
You don't happen to have a real FM synth, with a real mod matrix? Otherwise you could download the FL Studio demo and start experimenting with the FM synth Sytrus, that one is great :) It's pretty similar to FM8 i believe
 
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