Craft killer synth brass!

Warm and punchy synth brass is a staple sound of soul, funk and electronica! Here’s how to get it happening on the DM12…

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Initialise your sound by pressing Prog and Compare. Turn off the pulsewave on DCO1, kill the long release on the VCA and VCF and also turn off velocity sensitivity to filter and amp too for authenticity. You’ll now have a standard poly-saw sound.

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Add pitch wobble via aftertouch and LFO1 by hitting the ‘edit’ button under the DCO1 & 2 section, then tweak LFO1 rate to taste. Instant Funk! Now, to spice up the sound, add back the DCO1 pulsewave and tweak the PWM slider to taste.

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To add detuning and vibe, firstly add in DCO2 with its pitch slider fully up and blend the level to taste. Then drop the pitch slider slightly to add subtle detuning. For more thickness and vibe, switch in Unison-2 mode and tweak the unison-detune slider.

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Now let’s tweak the filter. Pull cutoff down to around half, then move the VCF envelope slider to around half. Set VCF Attack, Sustain and Release to zero, then tweak VCF decay taste. Hit ‘edit’ twice (under the poly section). Set lower pitchbend range to -24.

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Add some filter resonance to taste, then go to the FX section. Set the FX to insert mode, and firstly add the ‘Chorus D’ effect for width and warmth, then add the vintage reverb to add some sparkle and extra vibe. Our sound is almost complete!

06

To add the final icing on our funky synth brass ‘cake’, add back in some velocity to filter, then add some ‘pan spread’ to spread the voices out across the stereo spectrum. Use this sound as a funky synth brass template and tweak away!