tips for beginner sound designer

[bluberblubb]

are there any techniques you found to help you advance your sounds or learning how to design and move sounds the way you want? I just stared having some fun in January and having trouble making anything special. I know I still have an extreme amount to learn. just seeing if there is anything that helped you understand to let you move sound the way you want. should I be going through each wavetable in massive and learning each to the fullest one by one?was reverse preset engineering the best for you? and I know everyone is different, any tips would help. chank you

[titchbit]

no need to go through each WT in massive. reverse engineering presets can be helpful. tutorials on youtube are helpful. you'll learn it over time the more you expose yourself to it. but you don't need to know what each WT sounds like. that said, I would try and get familiar with the properties of sine, sawtooth, and square/pulse.

[GregoryTJ]

To answer your questions;

Reverse engineering presets seems like it might be a good idea but I don't do much of it, just never really think to.
Learning every wave in massive seems like a waste of time, as Dubunked said, focus on the basic ones a bit and leave the rest.

I also think you would benefit from working with a synthesizer other than Massive to begin with, Massive is mostly pre-made wavetables with some interesting PM/RM options, not really my idea of a beginner synth but to each their own.
I would highly recommend Sytrus because of it's versatility with many types of synthesis, although it is a bit daunting to look at sometimes, probably not good for a beginner either.
Start out simple, maybe massive will work for you.

How I learned about sound design;

First I read about wavetable and subtractive synthesis then moved on to more complex concepts like the various angle modulation based synthesis types (FM, RM/AM, PM), from there I read about additive synthesis and just kept going about learning how each one works then applying that knowledge to try and remake sounds I liked/had ideas for.

From that point and sometimes during learning about synthesis I learned how various effects (EQs, compression and limiting , waveshapers and other distortion types, convolution, reverb and delay, filters, phasers/flangers, ect...) worked.

Youtube tutorials can be nice but a lot of them are just telling you how to make a specific sound without actually telling you why or how that sound works, I pissed around trying to learn legitimate knowledge about synthesis from Youtube before I started just googling things and taking a few hours to read about synthesis from one ancient PDF or another...

One thing to understand is that most (I can't speak for all) sounds are relatively simple to design, it just takes time figuring out how they work to do so.

Also, you may already know how something works but you wouldn't be able to figure it out by listening to it, this is where experience comes in to play. It took me some time to differentiate a triangle from a sine wave when it was placed in a mix with a bunch of other sounds, I know it sounds silly but if you haven't allowed your brain to identify certain sounds, all the book knowledge in the world wont get you anywhere, trial and error is essential (or as they say "practice makes perfect".)

Another thing that frustrated me as a beginner, was notes played in chords, I would try to remake a sound only to find out it was actually a group of notes played together and no trial and error in the world would get that sound with only one note.

This is where a background in theory would be really helpful. Since then I have taken composition and theory classes and know a bit more on that side of things.

I am not saying that this is how you should do it or the best way/only way whatever. This is just what I did.

To this day some concepts/sounds still confuse me, I am in no way perfect, but this approach to learning sound design has worked nicely so far.

A couple of other things I recommend researching are how digital audio works and the difference between it and analog sound,
maybe learn something about phase cancellation as well.

Lastly, some sounds are very difficult to synthesize (e.g. realistic sounding piano and vocals) because of all the articulation happening, so the only real way to achieve these real sounds is to record them (a whole other rant), so try to spot these and not get caught up in them.

I hope this helped, I tried to keep it eloquent, interesting and to the point.

[bluberblubb]

thank you fellas, much appreciated. I will definitely do reading on the stuff you mentioned. definitely stoked to learn more and as much as possible!

[bluberblubb]

and about the chords, do you record each note individually and layer them or do you just play all notes of the chord on the keyboard and record it?

[GregoryTJ]

and about the chords, do you record each note individually and layer them or do you just play all notes of the chord on the keyboard and record it?

I normally work inside the DAW I use (FL Studio) but if I record midi from my keyboard I play the full chord.

If I am trying to figure out a chord that I don't automatically know I play around with the notes I think it might have in it until I have the chord in question, then I figure out what it is and try different inversions of it to try and get the closest to the original I can.

[titchbit]

and about the chords, do you record each note individually and layer them or do you just play all notes of the chord on the keyboard and record it?

do you understand MIDI? what DAW do you use?

[bluberblubb]

a little bit, definitely messed with MIDI. I prefer to work with audio though, helps me see what's going on better and I like to expiriment with changing audio and resample. don't know much more than MIDI is a computer generated sound? I feel like reading will help me a lot.

I use ableton 9, love ableton. I tried FL and logic but ableton does it for me.

also have sylenth, haven't tried learning it. as well as albino, fm8 ( opened it looked hard so I closed it for now) and been messing with
massive.

my goal is to write powerful neuro oneday!

thanks!

[azuk]

a little bit, definitely messed with MIDI. I prefer to work with audio though, helps me see what's going on better and I like to expiriment with changing audio and resample. don't know much more than MIDI is a computer generated sound? I feel like reading will help me a lot.

I use ableton 9, love ableton. I tried FL and logic but ableton does it for me.

also have sylenth, haven't tried learning it. as well as albino, fm8 ( opened it looked hard so I closed it for now) and been messing with
massive.

my goal is to write powerful neuro oneday!

thanks!

So you have serveral synths you bought and you haven't tried learning them? I'd try learning those synths first. I never understood any of those synths so i can't help you on specifically, but check out some patches and reverse engineer them

[bennyfroobs]

instead of downloading lots of different stuff learn how to use 1/2 things properly

[bluberblubb]

bought massive. downloaded everything else, I'm broke as fuck.

[bluberblubb]

and yeah its called taking my time with each and exploring to see which works for me. just because I have them doesn't mean I need to learn them right away. I'm still understand how this works. not just know what a knob does.

[bluberblubb]

so far only messed with massive. just have the other ones for the day I can move onto something else. nothing wrong with being prepared with an arsenal of stuff to learn.

[azuk]

Take the time to sit down and throughly figure out what everything does. You don't need to know what it does to the waveform or q/e, you just need to know how it changes the sound. For example, the RM in Massive, you don't need to know what it does (Modulates Volume) but how it changes the sound.

[titchbit]

I'd start with sylenth. And learn what MIDI is. You probably use it every time you open your daw.

[bluberblubb]

thank you fellas, much appreciated

[bluberblubb]

oh definitely. anything out of massive is MIDI then I record it to audio. I use audio drum sample don't really use much MIDI besides that. use it in my metal projects to trigger some drums when I record myself though.

[azuk]

I never bothered to learn Sylenth, it has an ugly ass interface and i never understood subtractive synthesis, which is ironic considering how i completely understand fm.

[titchbit]

I never bothered to learn Sylenth, it has an ugly ass interface and i never understood subtractive synthesis, which is ironic considering how i completely understand fm.

What?

First of all I'd say Sylenth has the most intuitive interface of any synth I've ever used, but that's just my personal taste.

More importantly though, how could you not understand subtractive synthesis and completely understand FM? FM synthesis builds on the basics of subtractive. It involves everything in subtractive, plus more. Subtractive, the word itself, just comes from the fact that filters are used to subtract frequencies away from the sound that is created from the wave(s). FM uses filters (operator Z in FM8).

[GregoryTJ]

I have to agree that Sylenth has an ugly interface, but I am picky about these things.

It doesn't add up that you don't understand subtractive, but you understand FM, though.