The (Hopefully) Official Synth Thread

[Musick]

Okay so one thing I've noticed on this forum, is that yes we have some insanely awesome bass threads, but it seems difficult to find a nice thread (or continuous series of threads) that has to do with making a lead synth or stab. With that said, I think it could benefit a lot of people to even place some general sound theory up for leads, in one place.

I actually do have a few things I'd like to bring up.

I'll start off:

On thing I've noticed in tutorials and listening to artists, is that things like a small reverb and delay tend to spice things up for a chiptune type lead.. To my understanding, they lack a sense of fullness but to put up something like a dimension expander would pull away from the focus of the root sound. Are there any specific rules of thumb? I.e. Reverb/delay on chiptune a and dimension expanders and tubes on basic melodic leads?

And what is the best program to use for leads and why? I know Dodge and Fuski use Nexus A LOT and Sylenth is a go-to for a lot of people. Why is Massive a turn-off for leads?

[mromgwtf]

This is getting ridiculous

[R3b_Official]

Very great idea! Artist are not only using there basses as there signature sound but a lot of their leads are also, like deadmau5 (but he has like 9000 synths as outboard gear.) but you can the same sound with moog vst's.

Not only using leads for a catchy main part of a song but also as there major bass in a sense. Like a lot of dubstep and neurohop have this really intense distorted leads and that makes the whole tune and it really separates its self from the normal growl-beepbeep- growl-beepbeep generic tunes.

So on to the thread! Ill post examples of the leads im talking about. Still not sure how they are done....

You're right on the reverb and delay thing. You can turn any boring loop into something more spacious. I put this weirdly set up reverb on a lot of my bass's and it gets them to sound actually louder and more solid sounding, put it on a lot of my lead sounds also. Gives that humanistic and live feel to it. Also one last thing with leads is to layer them like crazy! So if your in ableton, just make a group rack and duplicate the chain once or twice to get it sound more full and bigger, and not having to duplicate the who midi group and clogging up your workflow.

[Musick]

I was watching skrux's production tutorial last night and his signature sound comes from massive, I was actually shocked. He uses massive for everything..

But you have to be careful where synths are falling into space. If you go for that neurofunk, spacious bass sound, you kinda have to cut the lead from reverb a bit to bring it out, especially if you're going for a pluck arp kind of lead. Unless you want everything to sync in. Look at "Take Me Home" from Porter Robinson for example: literally the best supersaw I have personally ever listened to but it's hard to realize that he actually breaks it up and blends in a lead.

The other thing I've notice is a lead in massive specifically (because since I'm in a huge learning phase, I'm focusing on learning one vst at a time), is that a lead tends to fall into two categories:

-two saw waves with distortion or effects
-two saw waves and a third osc, light on effects

Single osc is usually in basic arps ("Why does it feel" by Borgore for example), but takes A LOT of extra "stuff", like an awesome pad.

[Musick]

Oh and I gotta get on that ableton flow..

[ehbes]

This is getting ridiculous