How to make this great synth? I've heard it in lot tunes and in Ishkur Guide to electronic music, there says it's a some form of TB-303, but I don't know. I can't get it. I'd like to construct this synth and play with it. I think there some glide/portamento and that it's something like TB-303 just with high notes:
I managed to make a pretty decent approximation to it in FL studio's sytrus, its not too different to other software synths so im sure you can follow this whatever program youre on.
.get 2 operators on octave 2, turn one to saw wave, the other to square
.put both through the standard svf filter
.tweak the cut off just to take away the harshness of the square waveand put an envelope just to that there is a curved attack, flat hold and then a very very short curved decay (to make it a bit like a 'bloop' noise)
. put the same envelope on the volume just to get rid of any unwanted noises at the start and end of the sound
.next rout it throught the FX instead of the OUT,
.if your sytrus is like mine it'll be automatically have a light helping of chorus and it will have unison turned to 4
. finally go to channel settings, under polyphony, hit mono and turn slide to 50% for that lovely portamento
this was very similar to the synth in the song but obviously it will be better with more tweaking.
if you want me to upload pictures of the patch or something let me know
hope i helped.
ps. thanks for inspiring me to make a cool lead synth
I'm glad I inspired you, but I can't get it to work :-D I'm on FL Studio 10 too. I tried it from clear patch in sytrus, the FX part and operators are ok, but don't know the filter part. I've got ops routed to svf filter (x1) and tweaked the cut off, but I don't know how to setup that envelopes from your post. Filter - volume envelope or cut off envelope? A picture of that envelope would help greatly as I can't imagine the curve :-) thanks!
this is what i have, could need a bit of tweaking, i did copy their riff into the piano roll too but i have been out for several hours and have had stuff to drink so i cannot repeat it. :p
but yeah this has the 2 operators (you might not need to detune them) the basic envelope shape for vol and cut (although maybe a bit more of a curved edge on the right hand end of the envelope... )
and then the FX channel
this sounds liek the basis of their synth they may have modulated some other waves or something, but just mess arounf with it and see what you get, their riff is in the C5 octave. and the notes are all about half a beat in length.
ps. wow FL 10, im only on 9, is there much difference?
pps. i think they might also have some delay on theirs.
I'm using the lastest beta as I bought producer edition of FL, but I don't have Sytrus as it's in the signature bundle. I was trying it with Sytrus VSTi (just for testing purposes :-) and it does not have any portamento, the integrated slide/portamento on FL Channel works only in FL Sytrus in signature bundle (xxl) not in VSTi version. But I did this technique in Z3TA and Sylenth and it works nicely. I can't get that slow melody like in Morning Light or that free track above, but I did something else with this sound.
It can be two square waves, saw+square wave or two different saw waves+square etc. Portamento and soft overdrive/distortion (to make it loud and clear) are the most important things to get a simillar sound. It's also nice to have some filter cut off automation over the time to make it progress ...and FX (in this order) makes it blend nicely: EQ (cut low, boost some upper mid frequencies), delay (2 or 4 beats synced), reverb.
