Yes!! That's exactly what I was looking for!
I would be so glad if you can do that for me.
Thanks!
Perfect! So right off the bat, a lot of this sound's power is in the processing. The initial source signal isn't as important! You need something with some natural width and lots of harmonics.
I'll include some
REASONING behind the why of each step, and explain how each step changes the sound!
Source Signal (Sylenth1):- Use only one oscillator. (REASON: You don't want to overcomplicate the source as it might lose its precision/sharpness. You don't have to follow this, maybe you can get a better sounding one with several oscillators)
- Set the shape of the wave to Saw, Square, HPulse, or QPulse. (REASON: Harmonics! We need something that can be solidly processed through a filter. Any of these shapes should be fine, but I personally find Square to give a nice, rich, organic sound)
- Turn Retrig OFF! (REASON: For width and non-detune-weirdness)
- No need for detune, optional (REASON: It could over-complicate the sound, but it probably wouldn't hurt it much either! You could add some extra width through this, let your ears tell you what sounds good)
**Filter Settings:**- Use a bandpass filter (REASON: This will sound bad at first but it's the key to getting that glittery sound, as you will see at the end)
- Turn the resonance pretty high. My value is set to 7.76 (REASON: This will also sound bad at first but it's another key to getting the glittery sound. We'll put this into effect at the end of this mini-tutorial)
Effects (in Sylenth1):- Turn on distortion, set the Type to OverDrive, and put both of the knobs in the node to the middle position (12 o'clock) (REASON: I don't have a purely scientific reason for this. Here's the notion though - this sound is supposed to sound glimmery more than electronic, so the distortion adds some rawness to it. It's good sometimes to throw in some calculated imperfections.)
- Turn on Chorus, mess around with the settings a little. (REASON: This will help take the edge off the sound and make it sound more natural)
- Turn on Delay, mess around with these settings too. (REASON: This adds a bit of randomness to the sound, which gives off the impression of it sounding more alive and powerful)
Alright, now we've got our source sound completely made. There's still some more processing to do:
Effects (processing out of Sylenth1):- Reverb (REASON: This gives your sound the space it needs, and can also polish the glimmer sound you are looking for)
- Set the parameters to your liking but keep it mostly wet
- Set the pre-delay to instantaneous
- Set the decay to something long, mine is at around 12 seconds
- Equalizer (REASON: Use EQ to bring out the highs, cut some lower end stuff, etc. EQ can have a huge impact on the impact of your sound.)
That is it as far as the processing goes, now all that's left is actually putting this sound to use.
Putting this sound to use:All you need to do now to use this sound are the following two things:
- Have some midi for the sound to play
- **IMPORTANT**: Automate the cutoff of the filter randomly, all over the place, always. This is why the filter I had you make was important. You can achieve this randomness in two different ways:
- IN SYLENTH: In the LFO section, change the waveshape to randomized (the crazy looking one, the last option). Change the rate, gain, and offset to your liking. Choose the parameter that the LFO affects to be "Cutoff A". PROS: You don't have to manually set a bunch of automation. CONS: You can miss out on some of the precision that manual automation gets you, like certain flairs and glimmers on certain notes at specific times.
- MANUAL AUTOMATION: Make an automation clip of Filter A's cutoff knob (the small one, not the huge one). Manually edit the points to get it sounding as good to you as possible. PROS: More control over specific variances in the sound. CONS: It's annoying and time consuming (but worth it)!
