> Step by step
25. Synthesising patches from scratch within an arrangement
1 To start, we record in an eight-bar MIDI chord progression in the key of Dmin over a halftime 170bpm beat. These chords trigger Xfer Serum, which we use to synthesise an FM-driven, reverb-soaked chord pluck from scratch. While doing this, we quickly duplicate Serum and create a buzzy, low-passed bass riff to underpin the original chords. 2 Once our solid musical idea is laid down, we load up VPS Avenger on another track and start jamming a monophonic lead line in D minor. Unexpectedly, the synth’s default saw patch sounds pretty good once a bit of faded-in
Vibrato is dialled in, so we run this wobbly tone through Avenger’s Talkbox filter to give us a characterful, warbling lead. 3 During the creation of our track idea, we make sure that we don’t stay too attached to any one sound. For example, after tweaking both the MIDI notes and synth parameters a little, the plain sawtooth oscillator starts to grate on us a bit… so we end up swapping it out for one of Avenger’s more timbrally-interesting wavetable oscillators. 4 Next up, it’s time to inject life with filter and volume movement. We get Avenger’s filter cutoff wiggling via its Mod Envelope, which we set to PingPong looping mode to give the talkbox filter a back-and-forth motion. A tempo-synced, saw-down LFO is then used to modulate the oscillator’s level, creating a sort of ‘sidechain pump’ gating effect. 5 Once Avenger’s master low-pass filter cutoff and ‘sidechain mix’ macro knobs are set up, we move on and quickly design an FX rise in another Serum instance, by using a slow-rising LFO to ramp up the sample-based noise oscillator’s pitch over time. Next stop: a quick arrangement… 6 For our 16-bar intro, we automate the Avenger lead’s low-pass filter, and tweak our curves to hit the juiciest sweet spots. After ramping this down to increase tension, we sharply sweep the filter back up on the last two beats before the drop, and simultaneously send it to a huge delay to create an echoing wash over the chorus.