How to learn to create a sound?

[geosmina]

I'm a noob, so I want to know what are the fundamental things (don't know, like what is an additive synth, sub. synth, harmonics, unison, env, res, cut, timbre, etc, etc...) and how they interact... I have always read that, with the right soft/hardware, ANY sound can be created, or at least emulated... But I don't fcking understand anything... I know how to tweak the presets, but I can't really understand how can I create my own personal sounds... So, basically, how can I understand each aspect of sound design?

[Guest hahathhat]

i'd start with legos.

[YEK]

i'd start with reason...

[Guest Blanket Fort Collapse]

You're not even asking as specific question, your asking a small infrequently active forum to basically guide you through the years of time and education it takes to be confident at sound design in general. Experience and knowledge. Experience and knowledge. Experience and knowledge. Neither of these things can be gained with one book or even 2 years at a technical school. Because your experience is more valuable than your knowledge in this regard.

 

THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS.... EXCEPT FOR GOOGLE. OH YEAH REMEMBER GOOGLE? YOU CAN SPEND 6.66 HOURS A DAY GOOGLING SHIT AND LEARNING. IT WILL TAKE LOTS TIME BUT GOOGLE CAN BE THE BEST MOST PERSONAL TEACHER YOU CAN HAVE. USE IT!! TRY SHIT!! LEARN MORE! TRY MORE SHIT!! REPEAT

[Guest hahathhat]

just sit down and start messing with things. it'll start to make sense. well, maybe FM synthesis won't.

 

you could go take some college classes and learn all the theory if you want, but you still need hands-on experience.

[Guest ruiagnelo]

you haven't started in your teenage years and as far as i know, you haven't released any "selected ... works" record, so you should really forget about it. there are plenty of other great jobs anyway

[chim]

Like BFC said. THERE ARE NO FUCKING SHORTCUTS. It takes ages of sucking ass to get remotely confident. Best tip I can give you is spend as much time with one specific synth you kinda like, hopefully a flexible and complex synth, as you possibly can, make tunes with it, experiment with it, learn what all the fun little knobs and things do. Rinse and repeat until it's an extension of your mind.

[Cryptowen]

Start with a simple ADSR synth (ideally something with at least an adjustable filter & sine/saw/square). No effects, no presets. Play around with different patches at different octaves & you should start finding the groundwork of most famous synth sounds.

[Guest hahathhat]

a teacher can help. i guess you could find someone who already knows sound, and ask them to take you under their wing as an apprentice. while DOING IT is most important, someone with experience can guide your doings in order to massively speed up the process. someone who would watch your progress and say, "i think that lad would do really well with reaktor right now," then give you a copy of reaktor. whereas by yourself, you might faff around for ages before finding reaktor... or never find it. you know?

[chim]

a teacher can help. i guess you could find someone who already knows sound, and ask them to take you under their wing as an apprentice. while DOING IT is most important, someone with experience can guide your doings in order to massively speed up the process. someone who would watch your progress and say, "i think that lad would do really well with reaktor right now," then give you a copy of reaktor. whereas by yourself, you might faff around for ages before finding reaktor... or never find it. you know?

 

don't know if you're serious or not, but who gives a fuck about reaktor? as long as you make good music it's all good, isn't it? and teachers can go to hell.

[Guest hahathhat]

"reaktor" was just fill-in-the-blank. i really meant [whatever the individual student needs at that particular time]

[chim]

i get that, i still stand by my remark. i don't think there's such a thing as [whatever the individual student needs at that particular time]. what the student needs, he's already got. he probably also needs to be less like a student. i don't like this student guy, i bet he's a twat.

[Guest ryanmcallister]

honestly i'd grab a book. for me it was Peter Kirn's "Real World Digital Audio". I later spent over $30,000 CAD on an education in music production and honestly the stuff i read in that book covered a LOT of my curriculum already. I've also heard Curtis Road's "The Computer Music Tutorial" is a solid read too, though I haven't gone through it myself. there are countless books though that all cover the same stuff. i'd say use youtube as a resource but it's hard to know what to search for if you know nothing at all. grab a book that'll give you a foundation, tell you what you need to know, then you can further your knowledge using resources online for free. but it will take time, a long, long time.

 

also, ignore dicks on forums.

 

also, when you gain a little bit of an understanding under your belt, check out my channel on youtube (link in the sig) maybe i can help a bit ;)

[joshuatxuk]

I'm asking this with total sincerity: what's your goal? Making your own music? Becoming an audio engineer? Are you trying to discover how a particular sound was made? No one knows everything, that's exactly what these forums are for. You can literally find any answer online or at least find a place to ask or research. Focus on something, your question is currently so vague that you might as well be asking how to become a F1 driver, an Ivy League Department Head, or a combat veteran. Find a specific topic to ask those questions about (how to make a certain synth tone, how to use a MPC, where to take music production classes, etc) and you'll find answers here and elsewhere.

[Guest Wall Bird]

I've also heard Curtis Road's "The Computer Music Tutorial" is a solid read too.

 

It's good. Nice and thorough, though a little dated in certain chapters. I wouldn't recommend it as a first book as I think that it's written more like a reference manual than a step-by-step tutorial for beginners. As a beginner you wouldn't even know what to be looking for when you opened it, so I would try a different route, at least initially.

 

I assume you'll be teaching yourself. I had the luxury of someone else walking me through the opening stages of my development so I never had to find such a book. I'll let you know if I come up with a good text for absolute beginners.

[kakapo]

Find a simple, straightforward 2 osc polysynth, whether in hardware or software, where the signal flow is laid out clearly in front of you i.e osc ->filter->amp, and that has some basic modulation options. If you're using software get a midi controller and map the controls to some of the main parameters such as cut off, resonance and ADSR. Don't get distracted by other synths, stick with one for the time being. Then read 'Synth Secrets' at soundonsound, going through them chronologically.

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/search?Keyword=synth+secrets

 

You won't get everything straight away. The important point is that you need to put theory into practice, rather than either blindly twiddling or just reading about things. Come back to me in 3 years time and I'll give you the next step.

[chim]

good stuff kakapo. also, what you can't do with a synth, you can do with a synth and an effects unit.

[TechDiff]

Strange question. How do you learn anything? Just doing it a lot is a good start I would've thought.

 

You say in the original reply that you know how to tweak presets, which is a weird phrase, but probably not a bad idea. There is a lot to be said for opening up some preset sounds, fiddling with the controls and trying to observe what effect they have on the sound. You can learn a lot in this way with enough persistence.

 

also, RTFM!! Every bit of software comes with documentation, and most of the time it's with really simple explanations. Of course you want to be learning loads of different bits of kit, but there are a lot of terms and names that are universal. Building up a basic knowledge of these terms and what they mean will allow you to transfer your knowledge across to loads of different programs.

 

I think to start with, it's a good idea to limit yourself to a small number of applications that you feel comfortable with, and turn every single control in them! You're not gonna break it.

 

also, google is your friend, searching for terms you're unsure about, but to be honest, its one thing knowing the names for stuff, knowing what they do and how they sound is another thong completely.

 

I always thought of it as learning a language, for your ears, an ear language! Different frequency ranges, different wave shapes and synthesis types, different filter designs are things that are not in your ears vocabulary at the moment. What always worked for me was to play around with things, and make a mental note of how it sounds, and what was making that sound. Eventually that will translate to hearing something and being able to tell what kinda wave shape, tuning, filter type etc is needed to make that sound. and finally that becomes the ability to make the sound in your head, from scratch.

 

Now, this is probably gonna come across as a really arsey thing to say. But not everyone can do this stuff, or rather, not everyone can get this stuff easily. it's all about finding a method that works for you, as everyone learns in a different way. that may be looking things up on YouTube, or reading, or just experimenting, but I think the last thing you should consider is spending a lot of money to take a course, may be a big waste of money.

[Guest Karen Tregaskin]

Learn the basic principles of sound and acoustics first, like frequency, harmonic content, amplitude, acoustic envelope, phase, velocity and wavelength etc.. Then everything else will follow.

 

You can get all the info online, just need to know what you're looking for

[kcinsu]

God you guys can be asses.

 

If you're going to reply to someone asking for help, reply with some help...

 

Here is an intro to synthesis. Haven't read it, but I believe I went to school with this guy... The name sounds familiar...

 

Read this, and if there are things you don't understand, google them.

 

Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions!

 

http://beausievers.com/synth/synthbasics/

[Silent Member]

You need a synth, I'd start with a basic analog polysynth (or a vst mimicking it, oooor a secondhand VA-synth, should be cheap), do not get a rompler or similar where you have to go menu diving to get anything done. Fuck around with your synth of choice and ignore all oher synths/software. Tweaking presets is a nice way to learn how sounds are built, so keep on doing that, when you have a general feel for what does what I'd start reading. I wouldn't start with the theory, but that's just me, maybe youre... different.

[Guest]

you haven't started in your teenage years and as far as i know, you haven't released any "selected ... works" record, so you should really forget about it. there are plenty of other great jobs anyway

I started when I was 15, and I have a selected works cassette, but I'm the only one who has one, and the selections are only decent. I can't tell if this means I should stop or keep going...

[ZoeB]

you haven't started in your teenage years and as far as i know, you haven't released any "selected ... works" record, so you should really forget about it. there are plenty of other great jobs anyway

 

This is terrible advice.

 

I started when I was 15, and I have a selected works cassette, but I'm the only one who has one, and the selections are only decent. I can't tell if this means I should stop or keep going...

 

You should keep going! I'm not at all convinced there's such a thing as innate talent. There is definitely such a thing as a skillset, which is built up from years, even decades, of studying and practicing. Making music is enjoyable for many people. If you're one of those people, keep doing it! Don't worry about whether you're good yet or not. It will take roughly ten years of solid practice to start getting consistently good. Keep at it anyway, not because you're good at it, which you won't be to begin with, but because you enjoy doing it. Before you know it, you'll be ten years older, and actually starting to get pretty good, actually.

[soundwave]

look on Sound on Sounds site for synth programming lessons

[Guest Wall Bird]

Check out the book 'audible design' from Trevor Wischart, it's quite good.

 

Indeed it is. Really good. However, I think it would be too advanced for a beginner and to execute most of the tricks that Trevor suggests would require either a highly flexible modular, an ability to code these DSP processes, or a copy of the Composer's Desktop Project software, which is still too much for someone who's beginning.

 

The tutorials that Kcinsu posted looks like a really good place to familiarize oneself with the terminology without being weighed down with too much information.