How to learn to create a sound?

[Guest Sprigg]

You lot are such cunts sometimes.

 

Twiddle knobs, read a little, find your program's documentation if you want to know about a particular aspect of your synth, play with more knobs. I've taught myself what I would consider a fair bit thus far over the two years I've been at it. I may not be able to get the sound in my head from scratch, but I'm to the point that I can get fairly close, and at the very least I can now accurately morph an already existing sound into something else and know how to do it.

 

If you don't get it by reading, twiddle. If you don't get it by twiddling, read. If neither works, do both!

[rekosn]

logakght, that girl in your avatar is sooooooooooooo damn cute!

and myself, I learnt everything from scratch with reason and reading shitloads of stuff from the internet,also the reason documentation is a good place to start understanding the workings of synths samplers,drum machines, etc. with reason you can also learn tons, just from experimenting, about signal flow and control voltage -which to me its just sick-those that say that reason is "only good to make trance" should have their heads examined, this software its so much fun,it will take you places!

Id also reccomend to read Jim Aikin articles from keyboard magazone,he is very very clear

and finally, dont use presets! and if you do tweak them into something completely your own...I guess this is the best way to start finding things if youre lazy about studying shit hehheh

to quote sprigg above "If you don't get it by reading, twiddle. If you don't get it by twiddling, read. If neither works, do both!"

my arrogant two cents

Peace

[Guest hahathhat]

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.

it's a system worked for centuries. for blacksmiths, for musicians, for haberdashers....

 

the best teacher is one that largely lets you muddle things along yourself, but nudges you out of a rut when you start to get stuck. sometimes you don't notice you're in a rut, or you don't know what else to do, etc. teachers can also keep the less driven among us on a more brisk schedule. forums do some of this, but the personal relationships don't go deep enough for us to give us each other the "right" bit of advice every time. there's more guesswork, more assumption... and sometimes people are out to screw each other over, too.

[Guest Diao]

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.

 

This.

 

I mowed lawns when I was youngin', had some money, and bought a yamaha CS6x. Terrible synth to start on, because even though it had some controls handy with dedicated knobs, it still involved menu diving. My second synth was a Juno-106, and I highly recommend something like that to start on. Sh-101's are kinda similar, and are great for starting out. They have a few more options than a 106, which I feel are better suited for learning than polyphony.

[Squee]

Hmmmm... I guess it's alright to get some basic knowledge about creating sounds, but isn't trying to learn how to make a specific sound like learning how to draw? I mean, you can read about ways of doing it but without practice you won't master it. Unless you're a child prodigy of course. Fuck the academic way of learning something. Do it and then read about if it interests you enough.

[Silent Member]

I'm with squee, honestly. I've never read anything about sound design, and look at all the success it brought me.

[Guest hahathhat]

isn't trying to learn how to make a specific sound like learning how to draw? I mean, you can read about ways of doing it but without practice you won't master it.

you win the thread for most succinct analogy.

[sheatheman]

I think the truth is that everyone here wishes they had someone to "tell them how to make sounds." But unless you live in a thriving music community, you probably aren't going to find a mentor, or even a collaborator you can bounce ideas off of. As everyone has said, experimentation is key at this stage. A lot of people are recommending reason, I would agree. The demo is free and can give you an idea of what some of us do when we are making sounds.

 

http://www.propellerheads.se/download/index.cfm?fuseaction=download_reason_demo

 

Click "create" at the top of the screen, and then click "subtractor" or "malstrom." This isn't optimal because there are all of these little buttons that control signal flow, so you could be turning knobs and thinking "why isn't it doing anything?" because the signal isn't even going to that device. You can also open presets and demo songs, and when you do, try to become familiar with the different synths and pay close attention to how the knobs are turned.

 

I also learned quite a bit about effects initially from using garageband, if you have access to that.

[Guest Wall Bird]

Hmmmm... I guess it's alright to get some basic knowledge about creating sounds, but isn't trying to learn how to make a specific sound like learning how to draw? I mean, you can read about ways of doing it but without practice you won't master it.

 

In some sense I agree with you; there's no doubt that practice and simply doing are important to comprehension but I think we'd both admit that a synthesizer is much more complicated than a pencil and has an initial learning curve. There's a certain level of familiarity that one must have in order to get good feedback about the sounds they are creating. I don't think anyone would know what oscillator sync, wavetables, or grains were really for doing unless you had a manual to read. If you wanna make the THX sound you're gonna need to read up.

 

Does anyone think they can make a sound without putting their knowledge into practice?

[Guest viscosity]

have you tried checking out the manual? take a gander at it for whatever program you wanna learn, then just experiment

 

tutorials are helpful also

 

atm all I really mess with is Kontakt in Ableton. have created nothing that sounds all that musical, but it's a learning process. I've built up a small library of sample sources and everything is much less intimidating then it was a year back

[Squee]

Hmmmm... I guess it's alright to get some basic knowledge about creating sounds, but isn't trying to learn how to make a specific sound like learning how to draw? I mean, you can read about ways of doing it but without practice you won't master it.

In some sense I agree with you; there's no doubt that practice and simply doing are important to comprehension but I think we'd both admit that a synthesizer is much more complicated than a pencil and has an initial learning curve.

 

I know what you mean but even though you need nothing more than a pencil and a piece of paper to start drawing it still takes practice to get good at it and you don't get good at it by reading other people's thoughts on drawing. Drawing a line on a piece of paper is more than just that. If I were to draw a line on a piece of paper it would look a certain way whereas if you take my best friend who is absolutely amazing at drawing you would easily be able to point out which line I had drawn and which he had drawn. And this is even though that it's just a simple line. His line would be a lot more refined, smooth, and I'm sure you would be able to see that he is a lot more confident with a pencil in his hand than I am. Sure, the concept of drawing is very basic: pen and paper and then there are the XYZ axes which will help you define space in your drawings but what exactly you're able to put into this space and onto this piece of paper does not come from books. You can always read theories on why and why not but these things will not define your output. If you don't have the capabilities to use the pencil because of pure lack of training then books aren't going to get you anywhere. This is why I hate academics and their way of thinking - even though I am supposed to be one myself.

 

Synths are only as complicated as you want them to be. As soon as you get the basics ((envelopes, filters, oscillators) which you'll without a doubt learn as you go by) you will be able to challenge yourself to make certain sounds. Also every now and then you'll notice that you've made a wonderful sound without knowing how you did it and then you'll go back and try and figure out what you just did that made that specific sound so awesome.

So as you go on, no matter what kind of creative field you're in, you'll build up a database of useful and useless knowledge (which at one point will end up being useful - trust me on this ;) ) that will help you create sounds to a certain degree. You might not be able to recreate that one specific sound that you can hear in your mind but with enough fooling around you will end up with something that is almost just as good and with your big homemade synth/sound wiki also known as your brain you will get ideas that will help you make the sound even cooler. And of course at one point you will figure out that you've tweaked it too much and then you'll have to 'kill your darling' and go back to the sound you started out with. Iteration, baby.

 

If the only knowledge you have about a certain creative field (photography, painting, music etc.) comes from books then you're fucked. You can't learn to be creative. You can be creative by trying new things though. And by 'trying' I mean actively doing something apart from reading about it. Last night one of my lecturers sent me and my class mates a link to a

. This guy (who lacks any kind of charm and is more boring than french toast) spends 40 minutes talking about how technology has changed music. And by technology he means anything from electricity, synth, and especially the internet, filesharing, mp3 files and how these things have opened up to a world of music that most of us probably didn't know even existed. Alright. So this lifeless french toast has written a book about something that is actually pretty basic knowledge that most of us probably don't think about when we're shopping for music online. But deep inside we know this but it's not really worth thinking about because it's just part of our daily life. It would be the same if you thought about how amazing barcodes are each time you buy something. But how exactly does this book contribute to anything worthwhile? Academics live inside their heads which to people like us who like to create stuff is extremely pointless because it's an extremely counter productive way of living. Living inside your head kinda leaves you locked on the inside.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that stop spending time on thinking about how and why and just start doing stuff instead.

[kcinsu]

you can take different paths to the same destination. why this debate continually arises, is beyond me. people are different. people learn in different ways. it feels pretty obvious saying that, but it feels like this point is being lost on some of you.

[Squee]

you can take different paths to the same destination. why this debate continually arises, is beyond me. people are different. people learn in different ways. it feels pretty obvious saying that, but it feels like this point is being lost on some of you.

 

Yeah, you're right.

 

Haha - makes me look all silly now ;)

[foresense]

tl;dr spend a lot of time on the subject.

 

 

 

try and emulate what you like, evolve in your own direction once your interest has waned in what set you off initially.

[Mr.Sensi]

The Computer Music Tutorial + Sound on Sound articles + actually doing the things while reading about them = a pretty fucking good start.

 

You could also get Synth1. The Yahoo usergroup has a bunch of synth patches you could take a look at. Then ya can dig deepr into the patches you like and figure out how they're made and all that shiiiiiiit.

 

Further than that? Csound + The Csound book. Conquer that and you can take those skills over to other things like SuperCollider, Reaktor, Max/PureData, my butthole, etc. I don't think there's a better documented "audio synthesis environment".

 

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