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Sound Design / Re: How To Trap (lol)
« on: February 05, 2016, 05:03:41 pm »
San Holo is really good, glad to see he has been getting more and more recognition lately. I would suggest not trying to sound too much like any one artist but if you want to start making trap, try both making your own kicks and samples, and using sample packs. Sample packs can often be a great quick starting point if you have an idea you want to get into your DAW right away but it's always good to layer your own samples with ones you found to sound more like yourself if that makes sense.
Anyways, making kicks is probably the easiest drum to synthesize imo so I'll give you a quick rundown. Basically a kick drum in its simplest form is a sine wave with a quick pitch envelope drop from really high frequency all the way down to sub bass frequency. The lowest frequency then becomes the fundamental. You'd be hard pressed not to find a synth that has this capability. My personal favorite is Serum because once your have your sine pitched down you can add real kick drum attacks via the noise oscillator. Then to get it grittier you can add distortion but apply it carefully otherwise you'll get a sort of hardstyle kick, unless that's the sound you're going for. If you want it to sound slightly more realistic you can add a light short reverb to the high end so it sounds like you recorded it in a room. I tend to do a lot of resampling in different layers of processing, including different compression and limiting to really get the transients right. Hope this helps!! If you have any questions on this or making other kinds of drums I'd be happy to help.
Anyways, making kicks is probably the easiest drum to synthesize imo so I'll give you a quick rundown. Basically a kick drum in its simplest form is a sine wave with a quick pitch envelope drop from really high frequency all the way down to sub bass frequency. The lowest frequency then becomes the fundamental. You'd be hard pressed not to find a synth that has this capability. My personal favorite is Serum because once your have your sine pitched down you can add real kick drum attacks via the noise oscillator. Then to get it grittier you can add distortion but apply it carefully otherwise you'll get a sort of hardstyle kick, unless that's the sound you're going for. If you want it to sound slightly more realistic you can add a light short reverb to the high end so it sounds like you recorded it in a room. I tend to do a lot of resampling in different layers of processing, including different compression and limiting to really get the transients right. Hope this helps!! If you have any questions on this or making other kinds of drums I'd be happy to help.