i have literally only 2 presets that i actually use as chords
1 harsh
the other one a preset i got somewhere
#How do i not make the same chord saws every time
abstract plume
outer falcon
Tbh, there's filters, distortions, reverbs, flangers and phasers and all that you could play around with, but the one thing that I uncommonly do is actually not use a saw wavetable shape sometimes.
Or there will be 1 saw, and others that aren't.
Pitch bend/tuning is also another thing to play with, though you'll need an lfo for that one.
But you can get different results by pretty much messing around with those and finding what you'd like.
ofc with a dosing of 16 voices or 4
abstract plume
thanks u :)
hot river
Do you have Vital? Free, basically as good as Serum, and plenty of resources out there. Digging through presets can be annoying and unfruitful but there are some good ones.
Have you made supersquares as an alternative to saws? They are a little less dense, more spacious, easier to get to sitting nice in the mix, IMO
FM synth sounds can be good too. To shape those, instead of applying a regular filter, you probably want to use an envelope on one of the parameters in the synth vst itself -- this gives a more organic sound and is how they do the e-piano, bass guitar, brass sounds that you may be familiar with from chiptune, 80s music, etc
outer falcon
This is true-
abstract plume
Do you have Vital? Free, basically as good as Serum, and plenty of resources out...
i have vital
but no sound design skill :0
light halo
My biggest suggestion from a beginner standpoint is listening to a huge variety of genres and try to replicate whatever sounds seem interesting
Most of the time I play a lot with Vital and using the four basic waves and just mess around with FX and filters
outer falcon
There's definitely a lot of things that could be replicated out there- Of course, no need to be perfect, but definitely experiment-
As an example, I took a neuro reese preset to use as reference from LOBOTIX and ended up with a desirable outcome- All in vital-
Even though it literally took me most of the day to figure out- (geez-)
Or you could reference any ol track and try to make hardcore as a start-
I also, half of the time, end up researching tutorials-
light halo
Tutorials are an absolutely valid way to learn to produce
A lot of the biggest obstacles many producers like me have faced is the difficulty of pushing pride aside and not focusing on originality
Experimentation is where a lot of it is at, the hard part really is just the mixing
You could have the most detuned goofy ahh sawtooth and still make it the lead part of a banger song
Don't be afraid to download some Cymatics midis to see what your sound can potentially be like in terms of melody
outer falcon
Tutorials are an absolutely valid way to learn to produce
A lot of the biggest o...
not the eqing out of the specific frequencies then making sure everything stays in it's own slot
But yeah.
All of this I quite agree with.
light halo
Compression gang
My best advice on learning music production is not to learn it as a giant blob trying to find an entry point, but to find a reason to make something and let it branch off from there
I've learned to make dub techno by first looking at a tutorial on dub techno in general, then once I got some terminology down, I just look up tutorials on how to make things like dub techno automation
The same can be applied with whatever genre you're going
abstract plume
thank you
light halo
Good luck on your journey friend
hot river
Sound design is a rabbit hole for sure. For most, toward the lower end of priority to learn in making music, especially with so many samples and presets out there. For me, it was the first sticking point -- I couldn't get any further without figuring out the sounds I wanted. After I got a physical synth with knobs, I started figuring out subtractive synthesis really quickly. And when you can play notes with one hand and turn knobs with another, all of a sudden it's like... ohhhH! THAT's how they do that!!