Hey guys, in this video we’re going to cover the built in synthesizer that comes with Reaper.
There is one available with Reaper, but it’s a bit limited on its own.
It is possible to get a lot of difference free and paid plugins to work with Reaper,
but for this video we’ll be sticking with the built in instrument.
Before starting this video, make sure you’ve checked out the rest of the series so you’re
all caught up.
So the plugin we’ll be using to generate synth sounds in Reaper is called ReaSynth.
We’ll add this plugin as a new virtual instrument track like we did in the previous video with
our other plugins.
To start manipulating the sound, we’ll want to have our track armed for recording with
a MIDI controller, that way we can easily hear the different sounds.
I’m using my Akai MPD218 midi controller for this, and I’ll link those in the description
for you guys to check out.
They’re best for drums, but they will allow me to control MIDI without having to exit
the plugin, and listen to what it sounds like at different velocities.
Whatever MIDI controller you have access to will work fine for this, but I find it necessary
to have one to work efficiently with this plugin.
The first thing we’ll take a look at with this plugin is the Wave shape.
This is where we’ll get most of the control for the plugin.
The first option at the top is the Square mix.
This shifts the sound between a sine wave and a square wave.
At 0, it’s all sine wave, and at 1, it’s all square wave.
Below that is the pulse width and that changes the tone of the square wave, but not the sine
wave.
Then below we can adjust the level of the sawtooth mix and triangle mix.
The extra sine mix is a bit of a special case.
This blends the wave generator above with a separate sine wave.
At 0, there is no extra sine wave.
At 1, it’s only the extra sine wave.
On its own, the extra sine wave doesn’t do anything unless you detune it.
You can detune it just slighting to get an oscillating sound, to minus or plus 1200 to
make it an octave down or up.
This helps add depth to these waves we generated.
Now let’s get into some of the settings we have up above.
First is the volume for the overall synth, and that’s pretty self-explanatory.
Next is the tuning, and we can detune the entire synth.
We’ll come back to this in a minute.
After that we have timing controls.
First is the attack.
The default is a very short attack, which means the synth comes on almost instant.
A fast attack can make it sound like a click when it starts.
A slow attack is more of a fade in.
Decay and sustain sort of work together.
Sustain is the level that we can have it drop down to after the initial attack.
The default is 0, so there is no decrease in volume as we hold the note.
We can have it decrease, or even swell and increase if we want.
The decay time is how long it takes to reach sustain while holding the note down.
The release is how fast the note fades out when we release it.
It can be nearly instantaneous or a longer fade.
Even after adjusting the wave shape and dynamics of our synth plugin, there’s only so much
we can do with a single plugin to make interesting sounds.
Here’s what it sounds like so far.
The real fun comes when we start automating changes with an LFO and layering different
synths and plugins.
The next thing I’m going to do to this synth is add a second layer.
It will be almost identical to the first, but pitch shifted to give it a slight out
of tune oscillating sound to add more depth.
To do this, I’ll right click on the first plugin and copy it, then paste it down below.
The only thing I’ll change is the tuning to -15.
Now when we play something, we can hear the layering starting to happen.
Shaping our synth sounds in Reaper is definitely not limited to only using the ReaSynth plugin.
We can use a lot more plugins like chorus and reverb to shape it.
For this video, I am using both a chorus and reverb plugin, but I’ve taken them from
a different digital audio workstation.
The main idea behind this is the same with Reaper plugins, but I got the sound I was
looking for with these instead.
Simply add the chorus and reverb plugins after your synths in the FX chain to alter the sound.
Let’s hear what just adding the chorus does to it.
So that creates a subtle change in our sound.
It really starts to smooth out when we add reverb as well.
You can get a smoother sound by changing the balance of the waves you’re using, but it’s
never quite the same as applying these plugins afterwards.
Let’s hear it with the reverb as well.
So this is a much better sound and it’s more useful for actually creating songs than
with the original sound we had from just the synths.
It’s also given us a small amount of stereo spread, whereas the wave generators we started
with are purely mono.
If we want our sound to vary a little more, we can add different plugins like EQ to further
shape it.
On a normal audio recording, I usually use the EQ before the reverb, but feel free to
put it after to really change it up when working with synths like this.
In this case, let’s try using a notch filter to change the tone.
Then we’ll go to the top of the plugin and use the parameter button.
We’ll click parameter modulation MIDI link.
Just make sure you’ve clicked on your parameter first to select it before doing this.
Then we’ll turn on LFO.
This gives us options for how this parameter we’ll vary.
In our case, we’ll be varying the notch frequency.
The first slider at the top sets our baseline for the parameter that it will vary around.
It can vary with this point at the center, bottom, or top of the range depending on what
you choose for the direction down belowThe speed of the oscillation is pretty obvious,
but the strength just changes the amount that it varies against its baseline.
We can also change the shape of the wave if we want to.
Thanks for checking out this video on using the ReaSynth synthesizer in Reaper.
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