Intro to Synthesis masterclass
Hey everyone! Usually I post lessons like this in our blog over several shorter posts, but I wanted to create a master tutorial for synthesis and sound design that could get updated over time and have a more permanent home. My goal of this masterclass is to teach you to be able to pick up any synthesizer and make great sounds on it. This masterclass will be updated as my YouTube series is released, so keep checking bad for additional content.
Types of Synthesis
The world of synthesis and sound design is vast, and there are a lot of terms to get confused with. You might be looking at a new synthesizer to buy and its description has some title like 'Hybrid Subtractive and Physical Modeling Synthesizer', but what the heck does that mean? Watch this video I made exploring the main types of synthesis, and the background of synthesizers.
Lets talk about different main types of synthesis:
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Subtractive synthesis is the main topic of discussion in this series. You can think about subtractive synthesis as starting off with a very rich sound source that you then filter and control until you’re left with the sound you want. The raw sound sources are usually very simple, but produce a lot of high frequency content which gives you a good starting point. Popular subtractive synths: Moog Model D, Roland Juno-106, U-He Diva.
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Additive synthesis is kind of the opposite of subtractive synthesis. Instead of starting with a frequency rich waveform, you keep adding simple waves together to create your sound. In subtractive synthesis you can actually start with a square wave, and filter it down to become a sine wave - while in additive synthesis you might start with a sine wave, and keep adding sine waves until you get a square wave. Look into Fourier transforms if you want more information on this. Popular additive synths: Buchla Easel, Make Noise 0-Coast (hybrid).
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Frequency Modulation synthesis is created by starting with some basic waves (usually sine waves), and modulating the frequency of those waves with other waves. Popular FM synths: Yamaha DX7, Arturia DX7, FM8.
There are also several more specific types of synthesis:
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Physical modeling usually involves making a software model of a physical phenomena to output a sound resembling the original instrument. Popular physical modeling synths: Arturia's Piano series, Applied Acoustic Systems products.
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Wavetable synthesis recreates sound by using look up tables, but functionally can also be subtractive or additive synthesis depending on the application. Popular wavetable synths: Massive, Serum.
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Linear Arithmetic (LA) synthesis is a kind of sample / synthesis hybrid that uses recorded sound sources or wavetables for the attack of the sound, and traditional types of synthesis for the release of the sound. Popular LA synth: Roland D-50.
In addition to this there is also analog vs digital synthesizers, which I covered extensively already in this blog post.
Take a look at some different types of synthesizers:
Synthesizer Basics
We should probably begin our journey into the world of synthesizers and sound design by talking about signal flow. Typically in most subtractive synthesizers the sound starts with an oscillator generating a waveform (a note) rich in upper frequency harmonics (think of something very aggressive sounding, like a distorted guitar) - such as a saw wave, square wave, triangle wave, etc. Then the sound travels into a filter where it is sculpted to the desired tonality (like turning down/up the bass in your car). The sound is fed from the filter into an amplitude control (to control the volume), which can be modulated by modulator controls such as envelopes (otherwise the sound would stay the same forever).
So in summary: Oscillator -> Filter -> Amplifier
Things get interesting in that technically everything can be modulated in some way. I'm going to use terms from the analog synth world for the rest of this post just for convenience, so let me introduce you to them:
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VCO - Voltage Controlled Oscillator
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VCF - Voltage Controlled Filter
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VCA - Voltage Controlled Amplifier
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Envelope - AKA ADSR (Attack Decay Sustain Release), or Contour, or ENV
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LFO - Low Frequency Oscillator
You don't need to understand all these terms right away, i'll explain them as they come up. So to redefine our signal flow: VCO -> VCF -> VCA. When I say that everything can be modulated, I mean that pretty much every control in these parameters can have some change applied to it over time. For example, instead of outputting your audio at a constant volume you can apply an envelope to your VCA. This will give you controls to shape how the sound starts and stops (does it start quiet and get loud slowly? or start immediately? does it stop immediately? or does it slowly fade away over 2 seconds?).
The same type of mindset can be applied to the VCF, you can apply a contour (or envelope) to the cutoff of the filter, and the amount of filtering will change over time depending on your envelope parameters. We'll break down each of these categories in greater detail later, I just want to give you the top-level story at this point.
What Do I Need To Start?
Remember when we said this masterclass was a work in progress? Well... this is where we're stopping for the time being. Check back in a couple days for more content!
In the meantime check out our blog posts on synthesizers.
Now that you kind of understand how a synthesizer works, you might be wondering how you can get into this (I hope). You don't need one to learn the rest of this material, but its highly recommended so that you can practice what you learn (plus its fun!). There are thousands of synthesizers on the market, and pretty much any of them will do. You can either purchase a software/hardware synth, or get one of the many free software synths - i'll give you some great starting points from each category so you can decide for yourself whats best for you.
Free Software Synths
If you already have a DAW (digital audio workstation, like Logic or Ableton Live), chances are you already have several software synthesizers that came with your DAW. Just create a new Software Instrument track and look in your instruments to see what you have. If you don't have a DAW, you'll probably need to get a free one or purchase one to use any of the free software synthesizers. Here are some free software synths: