Let's now take a look at some sound design techniques to make
individual instruments sound a bit more interesting in context of a composition
or performance [MUSIC] .
I'm not too happy with the sound of one of the instruments in my arrangement here,
let's have a quick listen to this.
[MUSIC] Its this is chord spot here
[MUSIC] It's all right,
but I feel it could be a bit more dynamic and just a bit more interesting overall.
So let's see how to recreate a sound from scratch using Ableton Live.
This is the instrument over here the chords track.
I'm going to select the instrument and just hit delete.
Now in the library, I'm going to go into the instruments category and load in wave table.
I'll just drop it directly on that chords track.
Let's hear what this sounds like.
[MUSIC] All right, so that's quite basic.
So let's build on this and make it a bit more interesting.
Now firstly, I'm going to click over here to switch to
this expanded view so we can look at all the different parameters of this synth better.
The first thing I'm going to change is oscillated ones we form here.
So if I click and drag here,
I can switch it up to a square wave. Let's have a listen to that.
[MUSIC] All right. Not bad.
Let's also turn on oscillator 2.
I'm going to detune it slightly,
and I'm going to set its shape to this saw tooth shape.
With a detune, the two oscillators are going to clash
with each other and create this very nice and rich tonality.
[MUSIC] Nice, let's move down here to the filter section.
It's a low-pass filter set to 12 dB per octave slope.
I'm going to switch that to a 24,
and I'm going to bring the frequency down,
[MUSIC] and leave it somewhere over here,
I'll also increase this residence parameter.
[MUSIC] So that sounds a lot more mellow.
Next, let's address the amp envelope.
So this amp envelope controls the overall amplitude of the sound.
I do not want any DK here,
so I'll set this is thin all the way to the highest,
and I'm also going set this release parameter to a very low value,
like about 11 milliseconds.
Let's hear this now. [MUSIC]
So you can hear it makes the sound a lot tighter.
We still haven't added any modulation or dynamic change over time.
So let's look into adding that.
I want to make use of this LFO here.
I want this LFO to modulate the filter frequency parameter.
We can make that happen in this modulation matrix.
So you can see here we have LFO,
LFO 1 specifically, and if I go down here,
I see filter 1 frequency.
So if I click and drag here,
I'm now assigning LFO 1 to modulate filter 1 frequency. Let's see hear that.
[MUSIC] That works we have change over time in the sound,
but it's a bit too slow,
and I specifically wanted to sync to the project tempo.
So I turn on the metronome here, if you listen to this again.
[MUSIC] Doesn't quite work.
So on LFO 1, I'm going to switch to this LFO sync mode,
and now I can set the rate to any musical subdivision of the tempo.
I'm going to set it to a 16th note. Let's hear it now.
[MUSIC] That works, but I feel it's a bit too much,
so let's tune down the amount here.
[MUSIC]
Nice.
Let's make one more modulation assignment.
So I want that same frequency parameter to be modulated by another envelope,
let's say the envelope 2 over here.
So I'll find envelope 2 in the matrix, and over here,
if I click and drag, now envelope 2 is going to modulate the filter cutoff as well.
I'm going to shift this a little bit.
[MUSIC]
So that way it's brighter the very initial stage of the sound,
and it gradually gets more mellow.
All right. Now for one final thing,
I'm going to turn on unison.
This will take up the overall sound,
give us some stereo width and overall sound a lot more interesting.
I just switched the voices, the two here,
and then reducing this detune amount to about 10 percent.
[MUSIC] All right, let's hear this in context of the arrangement.
[MUSIC] It's a bit too bright,
so I am going to reduce the cutoff frequency here,
[MUSIC] and I think that's about right.
So those are some sound design techniques that you can
apply in your production and performance.
Now you can start from scratch, like I did.
Build a sound entirely from
the very beginning and work your way up to a more complex sound,
or you can work with an existing preset and just tweak certain parameters to get
to the sound that you want to
[MUSIC].