Sound Design Help

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PandaCat

New member
I'm a really new DAW user (I don't see myself as a producer quite yet :U) and so far the single largest thing that's frustrating me at the moment is figuring out how to make sounds:

1. Picking out a sound from a song and recreating something similar. While it would be almost impossible to completely recreate the sound, I'm having a hard time simply naming what kind of sound is what, so I don't even know where to start.

2. Using different kinds of synthesizers. All these programs seem to do different things, and some of them I do have some sort of grasp on (i.e. Massive and Cytrus), but with the endless list of programs, I can't help but feel like some effort is wasted learning programs I won't ever use.

I don't really know what I'm listening to when it comes to all the technical stuff, most advice when practicing sound design seems to be "turn some knobs and hope for the best", and I don't have any idea where to start since most tutorials are super specific. I've been told by a friend that a good first step into making my own stuff is by practicing making other people's songs that inspire me, so that's my goal at the moment.
 
Since you say you have some sort of grasp of Sytrus, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that you're using FL studio.

Have you read the manual for that thing? It's really in depth and covers a lot of the basic components of its synthesizers and everything else.

The thing about synthesizers is that once you know how synthesis works you can pretty much use any synthesizer as most of them are built up using a set of modules that you're gonna come across in most of them. There are a few different types of synthesis like subtractive, additive, FM, etc. There are tutorials online that would describe the basic modules of synthesizers that could be helpful for you to get started.

I've offered this to some people before too, if we both have time at some point you could hit me up on Skype and I could go over some basics with you with screen sharing.
 
Something that really helped me to get the idea behind the snythesizer was just to follow some sound tutorials on youtube, like a basic tutorial about sylenth, which knob means what, how to design a pluck, supersaw, bass, sub bass etc. in a short time you get the idea behind a synthesizer and easiely know how to produce a sound your looking for :P

Do you know this feeling when you watch a movie that you´ve watched as a kid once and now understand way better the meaning behind dialogues and think like, oh gosh so simple why didn´t I notice that when I was a kid?
Same process here, every time you learn something about the synthesizer, it becomes more natural for you to use it and things start to make sense more and more.

most important thing: KEEP DOING IT
 
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I'd also advise starting with something simpler than Massive and Sytrus, just so you get a firm grasp on synthesis basics instead of trying to figure out what's essential and what's just a quirk of those particular synths, both of which are very complex for a beginner. Samplecraze has good, simple, 7-part intro into synthesis. The Sound On Sound Synth Secrets series is also great, but while it's very in-depth, it's probably also fairly overwhelming for someone starting out. This video by Ethan Winer also serves as a great intro to subtractive synthesis (it talks about "analog synthesizers", but the fundamentals of subtractive synthesis are going to be applicable to almost any synth to some degree).

And yep, KEEP DOING IT. My personal crash course into synthesis was sitting in front of a friend's Korg MS-10 (which is a very simple synth compared to almost anything these days) until I had it figured out. This was the pre-Youtube era though, so there really wasn't any other way to do it :)
 
Thanks for the replies!

#Wallenguard
Yeah, I am using FL Studio. For a little while I was using Ableton, but things just seem to click better so far on FL. I'd be down for some lessons, since it'd a lot easier to just throw out questions. What's your availability?

#Steve Sancteria
Thanks. That makes more sense. I mostly get caught on what sounds are what, and all the different kinds of variation between synths. I'm gonna start on what you and #krushing suggested and start looking through tutorials on bare bones synthesis. Massive clicked pretty quickly for me, but I had a much harder time with Sytrus.:angel:
 
PandaCat said:
Thanks for the replies!

#Wallenguard
Yeah, I am using FL Studio. For a little while I was using Ableton, but things just seem to click better so far on FL. I'd be down for some lessons, since it'd a lot easier to just throw out questions. What's your availability?

#Steve Sancteria
Thanks. That makes more sense. I mostly get caught on what sounds are what, and all the different kinds of variation between synths. I'm gonna start on what you and #krushing suggested and start looking through tutorials on bare bones synthesis. Massive clicked pretty quickly for me, but I had a much harder time with Sytrus.:angel:
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You're probably having a harder time with Sytrus because it's an FM (frequency modulation) synth, a concept which is easy enough to understand but is generally quite difficult and unpredictable.

I'm available at evenings and weekends mostly, but I live in Finland so you're gonna have to take the time zones into account if you live somewhere else.
 
Wallengard said:
You're probably having a harder time with Sytrus because it's an FM (frequency modulation) synth, a concept which is easy enough to understand but is generally quite difficult and unpredictable.

I'm available at evenings and weekends mostly, but I live in Finland so you're gonna have to take the time zones into account if you live somewhere else.
Click to expand...
What time is it over there? Also, what programs would we be going over? :U
 
Right now it's 15:50 here.

I've got cubase and Ableton, a ton of different vst synths and everything like that. What I'm offering you is just to learn the basics of most synthesizers so which ones were actually working with won't matter much. You're going to be able to apply it to any other one.
 
I would be interested in taking some private lessons on skype as well, since I only know the basics of synthesizers and there is so much I have to learn :P
 
at the weekend, it would be very cool, tomorrow is a full business day and I am working on my next release, it´s difficult to think about anything else while your producing your next big track :D
Do you have Serum?
 
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