Alternative Sound Design Techniques

[Wrigzilla]

I was wanting to talk about alternative techniques of sound design, like using your daw as a modular synth kind of thing. I've been blessed enough to be on a degree course that has explored this area in depth.

So I thought I'd share some the stuff I'd shared:

Test Oscillators:

You can use test oscillators as a sound source in a kind of rough synthesis: get 3/4 different tacks with test oscillators loaded up, now you can automate volume individually to get get greater control over your sound than you can with envelopes and lfo's. Also don't forget you can process each different test oscillator different to each other before you bus them together and effect the sound as a whole. Don't forget to resample and twist the sound further.

Drawing Waveforms:

Record some blank audio. Now I know you can do this in Cubase, Logic and Pro Tools but I don't know about other daws (I'm sure you can though). What you need to do is open up the sample editor/zoom in far enough and use the pencil tool to draw your own waveform in. This is a great source for making your own percussive sounds or try looping your own waveform to create a more tonal sound.

Reverb Tails:

Try getting a short percussive sound and adding a reverb as an insert effect (with a generous length). Now bounce this and try messing about with the reverb tail: loop it, filter it, ringshift/whatever.

Manual Effects:

You can recreate some effects without using VSTs. Delays would be the easiest to recreate: copy the audio file you want delay and automate the volume to decrease with each delay (also worth progressively lowpassing the delays so that they sound further away). You can recreate chorus by creating multiple copies of the sound and moving the copies out of phase with each other.

Feedback:

Send a sound to a bus and send the bus to itself (put a limiter on the bus or the master - YOU CAN BLOW YOUR SPEAKERS BY DOING THIS OR DAMAGE YOUR EARS). The send level to the bus is the feedback level, by adding inserts to the bus you can modify the feedback loop. Try automating the volume, send level and insert effects to create interesting new sounds.

Short Delays:

Create a sound and add a delay plug in as an insert (50% wet) now set the delay time to something less than 30ms. This can create a chorus style effect and if you turn up the feedback this goes more into the territory of phaser/flanger. Try messing about with lfo settings to create more twisted sounds

So there's a few ideas to get the ball rolling, feel free to discuss any of the ideas mentioned or put forwards any less conventional sound design techniques.

[tripwire22]

nice 1

[wayoftheworld]

cool post, thanks for this.

[Wrigzilla]

nice 1

No problem, if I recall anymore I'll post them. Ha, I once made a tune with no regions, just test oscillators and automation.

[damagedgoods]

edit: wrong account

[staticcast]

Cool post.

Feedback:

Send a sound to a bus and send the bus to itself (put a limiter on the bus or the master - YOU CAN BLOW YOUR SPEAKERS BY DOING THIS OR DAMAGE YOUR EARS). The send level to the bus is the feedback level, by adding inserts to the bus you can modify the feedback loop. Try automating the volume, send level and insert effects to create interesting new sounds.

Ableton is AMAZING for this. You can very quickly and easily route just about anything to just about anything. You can approximate tape delay by inserting saturation, eq and noise generation (eg the crackle control on Vinyl Distortion) into the feedback loop. Or if you've got an actual tape player lying around, you can send to your hardware out, record to tape and monitor the recorded signal, then send it back into the DAW and feed it back, in order to get a REAL tape delay without having to splice any tape. Check out Robert Henke's videos on "making rain with ableton" for a good demo of feedback stuff; I think I've posted it before...

Don't worry too much about blowing your speakers, your interface can't send out more than 0dBFS anyway. That said, if you work with lots of headroom (which you should) then unstable feedback gets VERY LOUD VERY QUICK so yeah, be careful...

Short Delays:

Create a sound and add a delay plug in as an insert (50% wet) now set the delay time to something less than 30ms. This can create a chorus style effect and if you turn up the feedback this goes more into the territory of phaser/flanger. Try messing about with lfo settings to create more twisted sounds

That IS a flanger. A flanger is just a short delay (optionally with filtered feedback), where the delay time is modulated by an LFO.


Nother thing I like doing - recording to tape, but only on one channel, and quite heavily saturated. Then recording back into the DAW from the other channel so you get leakage and shitloads of noise and amplifying as much as necessary. Nice for melodic samples, pads, synths etc once you've filtered to taste. Ends up sounding lo-fi as fuck.

Sample noise and use it as an instrument. Not white noise, that's really boring. Tape noise, equipment noise, vinyl noise, rumble from playing the label of a record, reverb tails, anything. Then filter it, envelope it, sidechain it off something rhythmic; it'll take on a life of its own. Pan different noise sources hard left and right for uber-stereo without cheating.

[alphacat]

The stock [and very processor-friendly] JS plugs in Reaper do this WONDERFULLY. You can build an amazing modular synth just from those stock plugins.

[Wrigzilla]

Don't worry too much about blowing your speakers, your interface can't send out more than 0dBFS anyway. That said, if you work with lots of headroom (which you should) then unstable feedback gets VERY LOUD VERY QUICK so yeah, be careful...

All I'm saying is my housemate blew his monitors by using Logic's tape delay, besides best to be careful, if you want to make it in production you want your ears to be more than ok.

That IS a flanger. A flanger is just a short delay (optionally with filtered feedback), where the delay time is modulated by an LFO.

I thought I'd save the DSP lecture till next time - I mean loads of effects are delays really.

Nother thing I like doing - recording to tape, but only on one channel, and quite heavily saturated. Then recording back into the DAW from the other channel so you get leakage and shitloads of noise and amplifying as much as necessary. Nice for melodic samples, pads, synths etc once you've filtered to taste. Ends up sounding lo-fi as fuck.

Word, I use that especially for my hip hop stuff.

Sample noise and use it as an instrument. Not white noise, that's really boring. Tape noise, equipment noise, vinyl noise, rumble from playing the label of a record, reverb tails, anything. Then filter it, envelope it, sidechain it off something rhythmic; it'll take on a life of its own. Pan different noise sources hard left and right for uber-stereo without cheating.

I like recording the noise from my soundcard (I have amplify it SHIT loads, but it's a bit more characterful than digitally generated noise).

[back2onett]

cheers for the interesting post OP, we need more givers in this place

[nowaysj]

Ableton is AMAZING for this. You can very quickly and easily route just about anything to just about anything.

Fl studio lets you route anything into anything so long as you don't create a feedback loop

[Wrigzilla]

I make a lot of dnb these days (the phace/misanthrop end of things) and I've found myself using audacity with the generate tone function combined with the wahwah effect to make the basis of my reeses. I've also got a pD patch which has over 8 sawtooth oscillators which I use as well.

[staticcast]

Ableton is AMAZING for this. You can very quickly and easily route just about anything to just about anything.

Fl studio lets you route anything into anything so long as you don't create a feedback loop

Fair enough, I've never used FL -- but wasn't the whole point of the post that you could route anything into anything *in order* to create a feedback loop?

[Wrigzilla]

Ableton is AMAZING for this. You can very quickly and easily route just about anything to just about anything.

Fl studio lets you route anything into anything so long as you don't create a feedback loop

Fair enough, I've never used FL -- but wasn't the whole point of the post that you could route anything into anything *in order* to create a feedback loop?

That wasn't the WHOLE point of the post but as regards to feedback you can even do this by taking the output of your soundcard and routing it into the input of you r soundcard (maybe put some outboard effects/guitar pedals in the signal path).

[nowaysj]

Ableton is AMAZING for this. You can very quickly and easily route just about anything to just about anything.

Fl studio lets you route anything into anything so long as you don't create a feedback loop

Fair enough, I've never used FL -- but wasn't the whole point of the post that you could route anything into anything *in order* to create a feedback loop?

Yes.

[staticcast]

Ableton is AMAZING for this. You can very quickly and easily route just about anything to just about anything.

Fl studio lets you route anything into anything so long as you don't create a feedback loop

Fair enough, I've never used FL -- but wasn't the whole point of the post that you could route anything into anything *in order* to create a feedback loop?

Yes.

Oh right. Couldn't tell if you were implying "yeah whatever, FL can do this" or "I wish FL could do this"...

[yamaz]

A microphone. Want industrial, sample a boiler room. Want ambient, sample the forest. Want weird, sample torture chamber in an alien mothership. Want sexy sample asian lesbian sex slaves. Want filth sample mud.

[tavravlavish]

OH MY GOD!!! thank you for this I havnt even read it yet...

it's kinda rare when someone comes on here and posts something that has nothing to do with getting fat kick samples

Ill check this out later see what I can take away from it, im sure a lot! I know if I had something to teach id post it on here, unfortunately i dont really, at least Im pretty sure everything I know is common production knowledge.

[Wrigzilla]

A microphone. Want industrial, sample a boiler room. Want ambient, sample the forest. Want weird, sample torture chamber in an alien mothership. Want sexy sample asian lesbian sex slaves. Want filth sample mud.

I think I load more EDM artists need to do an Amon Tobin and start sampling "real" sounds and then mangling them. I'm a great fan of recording/sampling "real" sounds and transforming them into more dance orientated sounds.

This thread is an attempt to get people to think outside the massive brootal electro way of doing wobbles/sounds.

[Project_B]

Im so coming back to this thread when I start my text tune.

Wow.

[Wrigzilla]

Im so coming back to this thread when I start my text tune.

Wow.

Send me a PM with the link to it, I'm looking forwards to hearing it