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Hi All,

Very basic stuff, I know but I wanted to find out a little more about white noise (or whatever static noise) applications in many genres of music. when I'm listen to music (edm, hiphop, many many genres) I find that white noise is being utilized quite a bit. It seems to

1. Be used as a long crash
2. Add life, almost give it a a breathing effect, when it's side chained properly to a kick, snare, etc
3. Be used quite a bit for build ups and transitions
4. Be used in the background to enhance/compliment the high freq instruments
5. Be used on snare hits to make the snare sound more warm/organic.

I'm sure there's many other applications for White noise as well.

With white noise (or any other noise for that matter) I find that there's really not much I can do with it besides mess around with the cutoff. This leads me to my questions, besides the cutoff, what other parameters can you control,things like pitch, timbre, etc. I'm using Sylenth and can't seem to change much of the timbre of the noise. Any ideas guys?

listen to BT's Must Be The Love

put a phaser on it, or a flanger, or distortion, or comb filter, or an amp sim, or reverb, or a tremolo, or...

arpeggiated?

A phaser can always sound different with white noise. In terms of parameters to automate there's always colour, volume, resonance on a filter, arpegiation can sound cool. I knwo in the virus ti you can work with white noise in a very interesting way.

use envelope to shape drumsounds, especially hats & snares.

If you have a bass or synth that uses a filter opening and closing, like a wobble of any kind. Try blending in some white noise (or other noise) and connect the LFO / Envelope / Automation to the AMP of the noise, this will make sure the noise is only heard when the filter opens up, but can really add energy to hard EDM sounds, then run that through some distortion.

ARTFX wrote:If you have a bass or synth that uses a filter opening and closing, like a wobble of any kind. Try blending in some white noise (or other noise) and connect the LFO / Envelope / Automation to the AMP of the noise, this will make sure the noise is only heard when the filter opens up, but can really add energy to hard EDM sounds, then run that through some distortion.

Does this really help though? I tried it once and was unsatisfied with the result, I might've had the amp goin up too high... I'll give it another shot.

Ps: cool to see you on here ArtFX. I watched your Tutorial Tuesday Electro videos on youtube. Good stuff dude

I hate the sound of wooshy white noise in like bro and house. it just often is very un subtle and sticks out like a sore thumb. Its just bloody distracting more than anything + people usually make no change to the actual white noise sound except for filtering.

I think it can be useful in synths when you're using filter sweeps a lot. Such as notch filtering - it makes the notching more audible if you add a tiny bit of white noise.

chorus and phasing can work well, and try out different reverb settings, automate the dry/wet to go up/down and the size to go big/small so you get a nice spacial effect

Throw some bit reduction on it and you got tv static.

0.39 White noise is = banger
Soundcloud

Thanks all. All great advice, some of which I've already tried.

I think noise is a underutilized practice that most pros seem to use in many mixes.

peaka wrote:Thanks all. All great advice, some of which I've already tried.

I think noise is a underutilized practice that most pros seem to use in many mixes.

^^^fact. In my opinion though, I feel some of the "white noise" we hear is unintentional noise created by not only individual sounds, but a whole mix. Have you ever heard something in one of your mixes that you didn't put there? I have an wxtra sparkle in my latest track because of how 2-3 sounds compliment each other. Also, percussion like hi-hats hve natural "white noise" sound to them. I see it as background noise, and you always need something in the background

all about the radio static in this one

YeahItsMe wrote:Have you ever heard something in one of your mixes that you didn't put there?

no....

YeahItsMe wrote:I have an wxtra sparkle in my latest track because of how 2-3 sounds compliment each other.

can we hear?

The woosh sound in techno/techhouse/etc.


Can't forget the woosh (also known as the tsssssss or shhhhhhhh, depending on where your highpass is sitting).

Bright noise sounds a little better IMHO