Old School SYNTH FX

Add analogue style excitement! Classic sounds in the modern world

Are you sick of trawling through sample libraries for the ideal riser or atmospheric hit? If so, building your own synth FX may be appealing. Not only does this approach give you infinite control over the sounds you end up with, but there is also the possibility of producing something truly original.

Although coaxing convincing FX patches from a synth – be it hardware or software – does require some basic programming knowledge, even the relative beginner can get stuck in here. Subtractive synthesis is probably the best starting point for any skill level. The average hardware instrument or virtual analogue soft synth generally offers intuitive operation, great flexibility and the right feature set for creating FX.

Starting with a blank patch can be daunting, so it’s worth visualising the sound you want to create and breaking down the raw elements of it. Kicking off with the building blocks is obviously a good start; you can then familiarise yourself with methods for manipulating your basic patch. Modulation, filtering, effects and even special types of oscillator can all be invaluable.

Let’s break things down into their core components and take a look at the DNA of a typical analogue style FX patch. The sound design concepts discussed over the following pages can be applied and adapted to a broad range of hardware and software synths, so don’t be afraid to experiment and see how each works with you favourite instrument.

A truly useful FX patch is one that you can re-use across different projects. These patches will usually require a quick tweak but can be dropped into most mixes. What is it that these sounds have in common and why do they work so well?

A sound that’s going to work anywhere is likely to be atonal; simply put, this is a sound that is no obvious key and has no ‘tuning’. Of course, pitched effects can be an excellent edition to any track but their atonal counterparts can literally be dropped anywhere. Let’s think about these ‘pitchless’ sounds first.

With any FX patch the first thing to consider is the foundation of the sound – namely the oscillators. Noise generators are one of the most popular ways of creating this style of sound. Not only does noise give us the atonal backdrop we’re after, but it works well when filtered and processed. Not every synth has a dedicated noise generator so it goes without saying that a quick scan of your weapon of choice is essential.

White noise is generally a good choice for generating FX. White noise is basically noise that is randomly generated across the entire frequency spectrum. The great thing is that this randomness is presented at a uniform level so it’s actually very easy to manipulate and synthesize.

With a single noise generator engaged there is little else needed in terms of oscillators. This really is enough to create some very convincing patches. The majority of the sounds you’ll make using noise will probably use plenty of filtering, envelopes and modulation.

Your first stop here should be resonant low-pass filter; this is the perfect companion for white noise. A simple full range sweep and you’ll soon start to see the potential here. If you’re working in software, you might want to map the cutoff to an external controller or your mod wheel. Beyond this, we’ll need some modulation to gain finer control over the patch.

Modulating the cutoff of the filter with a simple LFO will give you an instant FX patch but dynamic movement is really the key here so a little more complexity is often needed to create something interesting. Try using an envelope to take the LFO speed from insanely fast to very slow over time. This will give something perfect for a drop or breakdown.

To take things a step further, try setting up a third modulator; this time a second envelope but acting on the filter cutoff. You can experiment with long attack and decay settings and try switching the amount to both positive and negative values. This will create a long upward or downward sweep in frequency; slight alterations on the attack, decay and release times will allow you to time the sweep with any project’s bpm.

Just these few basic moves can actually produce loads of different noise-based FX patches. Try varying the LFO type and speed to drastically alter the outcome. You can even modulate LFO speed with another LFO rather than an envelope for a very random outcome.