Step by step

6. Creative filtering for a modern Reese sound

1 Designing a tearing Reese gives you the perfect opportunity to reach for all those weird, wonderful filter types that your synth or plugins folder has to offer. Starting with the wavetable Reese patch from our previous tutorial, we have a play with some of Serum’s more esoteric filter types. We unroute the Sub osc from the filter, to keep its solidity intact in the mix.

2 Serum’s Ring Mod filter adds in dissonant ring modulation. We mix it in parallel with the Mix knob, then sweep the Cutoff around as we play notes. This blends in unusual harmonics for more nastiness, and our Reese even ‘breaks up’ occasionally for glitch effects.

3 Some of the comb-, phaser- and flanger-style filters are also useful for aggression. We Mix in the Flg H6filter type, and set its HP Freq amount quite high. This is almost acting as another oscillator, giving the Reese an extra dimension of moving noise in the high frequencies.