Producer’s Guide: Staple synth sounds
Exploring the fundamentals of classic sounds can inspire patches of your own
When you think of your favourite electronic music do you hear a consistent
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part of the spectrum? The timbre may vary from track to track but we bet you can nail down specific parts. That’s due to the nature of how we experience music and will be similar no matter what creation methods are used, or genre of music is being produced. Think of a standard rock band. Although there are exceptions, you will most likely find a vocalist, drums, bass and guitar. This basic formation has been settled on as each instrument sits in its own place in a mix, without overwhelming each other. This may sound obvious but it’s worth keeping in mind when you build your synth sounds. It’s all too tempting to start plugging in patch cables and twiddling knobs to get the biggest, fattest tones but think a little more carefully if this isn’t an experimental session. Ask yourself where the sound you are working on will sit. Imagine working on a bass patch that fights the lead synth in the mix. You’ll spend a lot of time trying to compensate for that when you come to mixing and although you might be able to remedy some of the issues with big doses of EQ you are better off getting the sound right before you even record.
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So, over the next few pages we’ll be showing you how to create some of those classic synth sounds, which will both fit in a mix nicely, playing well with others but also paying homage to what’s gone before. There’s a reason synths like the Juno are so popular. They can be tweaked easily and intuitively, have an instantly recognisable sound and invoke a predictable response from the listener (and artist).
We’ll deal with these patches using a mix of hardware and software synths but the process is pretty similar, so don’t worry if you don’t have the gear we’re using. Every synth has a slightly different sound and feel but they can, for the most part, fulfil the same roles as each other. The biggest differences will be between polysynths and monosynths. You can coax a nice pad out of mono but it’s a bit easier
with polyphony, where you can create some more sophisticated and emotive chord voicings.
While these pages aren’t really about using effects, there are some examples where a sound can really benefit from a touch of phaser, delay or similar. Just try building an ambient patch without liberal amounts of long-tailed reverb! Similarly a bass patch with a little compression will have more punch and impact, as well as cut through the low end of your mix more easily… Where there is a clear need for an effect we’ll say so. For the most part, at the end of this you’ll know how to set up a collection of sounds that will complement each other, allowing you to concentrate on writing and less time needlessly fixing issues.