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So I put in the time designing a nice sounding synth, duplicate it, tweak it, layer it...etc. Then comes the time to give it some motion and movement. Automating various parameters gives me the sound that I like, however, just to get one measure length of moving, twisted dope synth requires automating, say, 10 different knobs.

Once you get that sound, are there any other techniques aside from spending hours upon hours painstaking and tediously drawing in automation on each knob? What do you guys do at this point? Hell, even just to copy and paste the same lines of automation onto each knob is a huge pain in the ass, as well as basically just giving you the same sound again. In that situation of course, just resample it and use the audio. But as far as building an entire track, are you guys/do you guys think "they" are literally sitting there and drawing endless and endless amounts of automation on every parameter to get their completed track?

My sound design game has been stepping up lately but it seems every time I make a breakthrough in one area, another area falls behind. Now I'm getting good sounds but once I have them... I don't want just bursts of different synth sounds and I'm curious what techniques people are using once they have their synths designed.

The type of synth I'm talking about is not used that melodically so changing notes and playing melodies with it is not really an option or what I'm looking for. What else are people doing with the synth sound once it is created? Just endless automation? VST filters applied after to create the rhythms? Yes? No? Any ideas are appreciated.

I've had some luck creating a section with the automation drawn, bouncing that to audio and then chopping up the audio file. This can't be the only technique though. What else can I do?

Record the automation by hand? Just rip a few passes and tweak knobs as you go. A lot faster than having to draw by hand.

Yeah, it really is far past time for me to get some gear. For my electronic productions I've been using nothing but my laptop. I'm actually so used to working the way that I do that purchasing a piece of equipment to help me overcome the obstacle literally didn't even cross my mind until you said that.

Even still, beyond tweaking knobs in order to automate, what are some other tactics to use when proceeding from the point of having a killer synth sound?

Yeah definitely at least get a midi controller. You could try having a really long note and then putting a bunch of random automation points in for like 64 measures or something, then bouncing it and chopping it up and using the good parts.

It's already been said but getting yourself some sort of MIDI controller would be beneficial. Even if it's just a small keyboard with a couple of assignable knobs/sliders on it. Assigning the knobs to the parameters you want to automate then fuc*ing about with the knobs in 'real-time' is a great way of getting cool automations.

As Add9 said, draw in a few different notes in midi (over a few bars) for the synth sound you want to automate. Hit record and fu*k about with the knobs you've assigned to various parameters; bounce this down as an audio track. Do this several times, changing the way you automate the parameters each time, automate different parameters each time too. Once you've got say 5 different audio tracks of the same synth sound but with different automations, slice them fuc*ers up and rearrange that sh*t. This way you can come up with some real nasty automated sounds; automations that you wouldn't be able to get through automating one midi track.

Not sure if this all makes sense, but this is a method I use to get different sounds from one synth. Also, something else you could do would be, once you cut up and rearranged your bounced audio sections as above, have various cuts/slices on different audio tracks so that you can add more effects/automation to specific parts using phasers, cloners, filters etc.

Use macros, then you can assign various parameters to one control

webstarr wrote:Use macros, then you can assign various parameters to one control

^ This aswell. The macros in massive are well worth using - hook those macros up to whatever parameters you want to automate and you've got 1 knob to automate all those parameters. Definitely worth using, will free up some CPU too as you can have one line of automation controlling several parameters within massive.

Keytracking! Super useful. I combine that with macros to get the movement I want. Keytacking > macro > lfo > filter cut-off/reverb wetness/etc

The possibilities are literally endless

Yeah good point, velocity too. It turns a static synth patch into a proper expressive instrument.

Thanks for the replies. I think I might actually swing out to my local music shop and grab a midi keyboard, assuming they have something nice that I'll be happy with. I've been in the market.for quite some time, just still never made it happen for some reason.

I had just saved a new audio effects chain last night using the current effects chain I have been using, this way I can use the macro knobs, I agree that will cut down on a lot of BS. As far as keytracking in Massive, that's one thing I haven't touched at all. About to look up a few tutorials on that right now. And shortly after I posted the original post for this thread last night I ended up automating the volume in various ways, something I don't usually do. I was actually really pleased with how it sounded. Definitely something I'm going to continue experimenting with from here on out.

Look if your DAW has native key/velocity tracking capabilities too. Renoise has a keytacker that you can link with anything.