Perfect pads

Bored of surfing presets? Fear not – our in-house producer pro is here to show you how to craft a wavetable-based pad from scratch

Creating the highest quality sounds possible will make your life a lot easier when starting a new track. Presets designed by others are fine to use, of course, but making your own patches from scratch will force you to psychologically connect with those sounds that are only yours. This is why I set aside time and spend entire sessions developing new synth patches to use in projects at a later date.

Wavetable synthesis is especially fashionable at the minute, and can be used to generate a broad range of timbres you’d struggle to come up with through other means. In this month’s step-by-step tutorial, then, I’ll show you how to create a pad part from scratch using Xfer Serum, arguably the most fashionable softsynth of recent times.

To create the basic synth tone, I’ll focus on the two main oscillators, using LFO modulation to impart subtle harmonic movement. Serum’s filter routing is fairly customisable, so I’ll also dial that in before sweeping the cutoff with a custom envelope shape. I’ll then use parallel processing and FX to make the sound my own.

Serum is undoubtedly fun to use thanks to its relative simplicity and intuitive interface. For me, being as experimental with wavetable movement as possible helps to develop musical texture and a signature sound.