Simulation of the human voice was one of the things that synthesizer makers and music producers tried to achieve since the beginning of the synthesizer era. The first attempts at synthesizing the human voice were made in Doctor Who episodes with Dalek voices. Later...
If you’re a fan of film and game music, you have probably heard a lot of these evolving drone sounds that carry suspense and tension over a scene or two. They are suitable for a lot of different moods: sad, contemplative, hopeful, angry. Some sound realistic, others...
Most Dubstep is characterized by wobbly, unstable bass timbres. The technique was made popular with the birth of subtractive synthesizers. However, it has evolved into something way more exotic. There are a number of ways to impose this sort of change. In...
Stacking is an arrangement technique that is often interchanged with the term layering. However, there is a distinction – at least for the purposes of this article. Stacking produces a composite sound made up of similar timbres. Additionally, the timbres are...
An Introduction to FM Synthesis Frequency Modulation synthesis (FM synthesis) is a method for sound creation that generates very complex and unique timbres containing many spectral components. As a matter of fact, the first FM algorithm was invented by John...
This week’s PATCH is a real tough bass. I made it in Massive, but you could make it in just about any synth with at least 3 oscillators that can generate complex waveforms. FX are really important on this one, especially compression and EQ. They help shape the...
