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Hey I was looking for a good synth for padding under a vocal.. looking for a lush ambient waves like on GarageBand.. found luscious synth strings but still looking for that perfect sound.. anybody know where a lush ambient waves is or one that’s killer.. thanks & I appreciate ur time
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Create a software instrument track and in the Library, navigate to Synthesizer > Pad, and try out all the choices in that category?

 

Also insert Alchemy in the instrument slot, and inside Alchemy, search for "pad", "ambient" or "lush", or any other keyword that comes to your mind, try the resulting patches?

 

Also insert the ES2 and make sure the blue triangle points from the Library to the ES2 plug-in on the left channel strip in the inspector and look in the "02 Synth Pads" category.

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You're welcome! Once you find something that's close enough you should be able to tweak it a bit if necessary to get even closer to what you're looking for. A lot of those factory patches are a little too much, like they're trying to show off what the synth can do, and need a bit of taming, like turning effects off for starter.
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"Factory patches," first of all, "make the Factory look good." Then, they "get along with everything else from the Factory." So that, if the user has simply dropped them into the project and has done nothing else, "it will sound good [enough]." All patches are great, professionally-designed, "starting points." But you can always dive into the details of how any one of them were made. Logic keeps no secrets.

 

Every "factory patch" is not only "the original sound," but an entire, sometimes very-elaborate, downstream treatment of that sound. "Which can be an education unto itself." Drop a library-sound into your project, then flip over to the Mixer to see exactly "how the trick was done."

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Yes pretty much what Mike just said. I often start by turning off all the plug-ins in the Audio FX section. Then I may realize that one or two of those plug-ins are actually an intrinsic part of the sound I liked so I need to actually keep those and turn them back on, leaving the others off. Then I open the synth plug-in and start turning things off and on: effects, filters, oscillators... to try to quickly gain a better understanding of what makes the sound what it is, what creates the qualities I like, and what creates artifacts I don't want for the current task, and here again decide what to keep and what to do away with.

 

For example I may really like the gnarly timbre of a lead synth and its legato behavior, but not want the over-the-top reverb, the crazy twirling chorus, and the resonant diving auto-wah envelope-controlled filter cutoff slide that come along with it.

 

In general, my rule of thumb is, the more complex the orchestration of my arrangement (the more tracks I have), the simpler I like each sound to be, and the simple the orchestration (the less tracks I have), the more complex and detailed each sound can become.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Seriously – it can be a very good not-so exercise to, every now and then, "select a Factory Patch and see exactly what makes it tick." Create a project with one track, play some notes, then flip over to the Mixer. Depending on the patch, it can be "rather impressive" to see how Logic "did it." Okay – now just "start messin' with it." Turn things on and off. Fiddle with knobs. If there's any "mixing or sends" going on, start tearing them apart.

 

This is – not just "a synthesizer," but "a synthesizer *in a professional studio!"*

 

"After all, you can't hurt anything ...!" Worst case – delete the track and start over, then find something else to whack-a-mole. In fact, "you can trash the place," and no one will ever know! But you're getting a really good glimpse into the final work-product of an extremely experienced sound designer. Without paying a(nother) single dime for admission. You bought it. It's yours.

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