Designing pitch-drifting, analogue-esque chords using a modern softsynth

Here’s how to make a state-of-the-art plugin synths sound like a crusty, ageing nostalgic timepiece using its onboard controls

> Although most well known for its aggressive wavetable synthesis and plastic-like timbre, Xfer Records’ Serum can just as easily be made to sound like an ageing analogue synth. Load up a fresh instance of Serum on a MIDI track in your DAW, then program some chords. > Everything sounds a bit too bright and digital, so let’s darken the oscillator’s tone. Turn on the Filter and change its Type to MG Low 18. Set Cutoff to around 12000Hz, Resonance to 10%, then increase Filter Drive to 10% and Filter Variation to 75% for more grunt. > First, change Osc A’s wave to Analog > PWM Juno. To mix in extra bite and flavour, activate the Noise oscillator and choose the Analog > J 60 waveform. Set Random to 100% to randomise the noise sample’s start point with each new note, adding subtle variation. > Over in the Global tab sit Serum’s two Chaos oscillators, which are two extra modulators for adding subtle randomisation and imperfection. Let’s use them to add gentle analogue pitch drift: head to the Matrix tab and set up Chaos 1 as the source and Osc A > A Fine as the destination by a subtle 10 amount. > For thickness, set Osc A’s Unison amount to 2, then pull the Unison Detune amount back to 0.04. To maintain our analogue aesthetic, let’s remove the modern-sounding unison width – head to the Global tab and pull Osc A’s Unison Stereo Width amount down to 0. > In the second Matrix slot, use Chaos 2 (which has more of a ‘stepped’ effect) to modulate Noise Level by an amount of 2. We’re also gently modulating Osc A’s unison detune amount and wavetable position for more analogue subtlety. To finish, splash the patch in dark delay repeats.