This Will Change Your Sound Design Forever 

FREE Guide - The Finisher Framework: pickyourself.com/framework

Folks that want to dive in but are still beginners / intermediate at sound design: focus on modulation. It's one the most important aspects of creating good synth sounds.

I make a living as a sound designer creating preset packs. Unfortunately I have little time for music production. Instead I spend time on each preset in a pack to inspire other music producers and save them time.

I realized very early on that I was spending hours scrolling presets when I could just take the time to learn to make my own sounds. So now, not only do I save time, but I have definitely had more fun.

Problem: you typically don’t get good enough at hearing and understanding mixing well enough until much later. So, even if you make your own, you won’t be well versed in what would make for a better patch than the presets. By the time you know that, you’ll probably already be making your own presets because your ears and mixing got good enough to where you realized you should. Conclusion? Don’t worry about it. Keep making music. Make a patch; use a preset… whatever you want. Having no one is gonna die if your mix isn’t amazing. Enjoy making music.

While in a perfect and time free world I would love to try this approach myself. At this moment I just can't as I use presets a lot for the writing stage. When I am writing I do not want to be carried away by trying to imagine how I would like a sound to sound. To then waste more of my time transforming my imagined sound into an actual synth. It's not that I don't understand substractive synthesis or lack the imagination to come up with sounds. The thing just is that it takes my focus away from writing the arrangement in the first place. For me writing and arranging are way more important compared to finding the absolute perfect sound for a synth. I'd rather build from something already in the ballpark of where I want to go, changing it along the way or replacing it all together after a while. Than to reinvent the wheel everytime I get into a creative session. By doing that I keep most of my focus with the writing, arranging and mixing of the song. Which for me does the job fine. And while I can point towards songs or demo's of me where I clearly missed some cohesion between the parts, I recently have improved a lot and there is always something that you can do to fix sounds that fall short. Either by tweaking a preset, creating a new one, doubling or the mix. I have nothing against presets and people using presets. Nor against people believing they should avoid presets at all cost. In the end it is about the way you put sounds together and write a story. And for the people firmly against presets I have no problem with giving you a list of some of the greatest musicians/composers of all time that had no problem at all using presets...

I love the way your ear gets better as you get better at picking up on the subtleties of certain changes. Theres so much at your fingertips with these synths, it’s insane. Awesome video, perfect for me as I’m beginning the deep dive into sound design.

Its a skill to make presets fit together. In my opinion, choosing the right sound plus maybe some ADSR gets you 99% of the way there. The key point is SOUND SELECTION. Just produce and listen and you will naturally develop a sense for what fits where. You will be surprised for how well the weirdest preset fits in certain parts of the mix. Thats why it is important to always mix and choose sounds in the context of the whole mix. Noone cares how your sound sounds on its own if it is never heard that way

Thanks Philip. This makes a lot of sense, especially the "sounding impressive on its own". I've notice that sometimes I can get really tunnel visioned into the sound of one particular instrument like the bass or keys (i.e., the trees), and lose the full scope of the forest (i.e., the entire track). Often times, the harmonics of instruments and their working together change the vibe in subtle ways that are hard to detect at first but you gain more clarity the more you experience. For example, something as simple as sidechain compression of the bass and kick can make the bass "feel more groovy", despite the notes remaining the same and the bass being a simple operator or analog device.

this video is awesome, been looking for advice like this for a long time, its basically a make your own presets tutorial

First 40 seconds : Yes, yes and also yes.. EDIT: Back after watching the whole thing. Very interesting workflow, differently going to try it out. Thank you

I like Vital because it's so visible. If and when I find a preset I like, Vital makes it easier to dissect and tweak things to my taste.

if my project doesn't sound full with no fx I scrap it and move on to the next until something sounds huge then and only then do I find it beneficial to go deeper into sound design a good place to get to is knowing your sketch up tools inside out and reiterating over and over kind of like a pencil and sketchbook, use your basic sine triangle square etc avoid wasting time on setting reverb to a project that isn't even arranged and don't waste time trying to save something that isn't already holding its own.

This sound reminds me a bit of the bells in Altes Kamuffel from PK

For the sub layer, you could just use the Instrument Rack by selecting the instrument and effects and group them by pressing Ctrl+G, then duplicate the chain, remove the effects in the duplicated chain and do the rest. It's also important to name the chains so that you don't have to guess what's the main sound or the sub layer.

if what he says in the first paragraph is true then simply turn off the fx section of the preset, keep the osc settings and tweak any modulation/lfo settings to your liking; should fix the issue...

I like this video but I just can't get it in my head how so many, if not all people doing these tutorials on RU-vid keep duplicating their channels. It really drives me mad. Racks are a thing and Ableton has them for ages now. They are made EXACTLY for something like what you're doing at the end and are easy to use. Duplicating your channels is like hammering in a nail with a brick while there's a hammer right next to you. With chains, you can still individually control the volume of the main chain and sub chain, you can still EQ them independently, and you can still display them in the mixer as if they were individual channels. There are no disadvantages compared to duplicating channels, just advantages. At least in this case, that sound is one unit and should play the same notes anyway. When you use racks, Ableton automatically makes sure both instruments get the same notes. Without racks, that's an extra step. Since the two sounds form one unit, it also makes total sense to let Ableton display them as one channel instead of unnecessarily cluttering up your UI with more and more channels on the top level. Since the two sounds form one unit, it might also make sense to set the volume and EQ them also as a group after you did it individually. If you don't do that, you might already have found the correct volume relation for the two channels, but when you later want to change the volume in the context of the whole project, you have to change the volume of two channels. With a rack, you just change one single fader. Duplicating channels and then grouping them, gives you some of the advantages of racks, but not all of them. Groups are for a different use-case. Use them when you want to just visually group channels or process their sum when they're actually playing something different. Let's say you have some channels you're using just for mixing and you want to hide them by closing the group or you want to group all you different drum channels to process them as a group (for the case you're not already using a drum rack (there are valid reasons not to)).

For an audio engineer your voice audio leaves a lot to be desired. I get that you're traveling and the room is not treated at all, but a lot can be done in terms of post-processing to improve a voice recording, remove echo and excessive lows

yay. i love your enthusiasm. thanks, youtube algorithm, and thank you, phillip-

Great stuff! Would like to see tutorials on making darker, more abrasive stuff if possible 🤟🏻

I totally agree.. really good video.

Your videos are so amazing and inspiring - keep going with this stuff !

delay+verb crushes my cpu tho, so i'm almost always saving that stuff for the end even though it makes sense to do it earlier for sure

Man what a great video, right when im getting interested in how to make sound design

Awesome! This definitely will help me. You always have great advice, yiu should be bigger!

Very nice one Philip!

Excellent, really clear an informative. Thank you :)

I've recently added Vital, but unfortunately I'm without presets. So it's bad news - good news. I'm also enjoying the "WickedTinker" with the Odin II modular synth ...

Nice video AND track! Keep going! All the best

awesome video! love how you went over the core tenets of good and effective synthesis

Fantastic video. Very well explained. I’ve definitely been guilty of tweaking presets to make it fit the track. This approach improves your sound design skills. Cool stuff

well that was simply awesome!

You're right, the effects in soft synths are often not that great. However, they CAN have one advantage. Depending on how the soft synth is programmed, the effects might be part of the individual voices. That's not the case when the effects are after the summing of the different voices, but with built-in effects, at least it's possible to put them in the right spot. It definitely is always impossible when you just add effects after the synth. Those effects will always just get a stereo signal with all voices. Having polyphonic effects is interesting when you play chords and modulate some effect parameters with something like the played note or velocity. It gets even more interesting when you play the synth with an MPE controller and have more polyphonic modulation sources. Also just a random value per note can be great to separate the different voices from each other. If you want to try this, every true polyphonic synth has at least one polyphonic effect. The filter. Some synth have polyphonic LFOs. Create enough overtones with the oscillator, modulate the filter cutoff with the polyphonic LFO, modulate the polyphonic LFO's speed with the key, and play a chord.

Pro tip for genres with WOUBWOUB noises: Make the jskknsk noises in a different project. Helps with lag if you have an LQ computer or tablet

Very helpfull the explanation is clear and precise! thank you so much.

Great video! I totally agree that using the synths on board efx can be difficult in the context of a track and control overall. I would like to learn more about when, how and what type of noise can be used in sound design. Also I noticed you have a pad in the track for the video. Would like to learn more about pads and when / not to include. Thank you. Thanks as always for these tips!!!

Thanks for the video bro

This is great 👍

I love bloopy sine waves. I could use only sine waves for everything and be happy.

Bravo! So, you've showed what I always say: Nobody needs every fancy synth or plugin to create unique and great music. With Meld and Roar, the synth manufacturer like XFer have a problem to explain why their products cost extra money. Nice video where you show what you can do with all the stock plugins. And especially Roar is my new favorite as it can be used to completely damage your sound or transform it to a new level. If you haven't already, I recommend using the Multiband Mode of Roar. It is real fun to fiddle around with the new possibilities. Ah, and for your bonus tip: You can also group Meld and use the 2nd one one octave lower. Overall, thank you for this video.

nice and informative video! but take a drink everytime a separate video is plugged

Amazing content!

What headphones you have? Do u can get good results with them without monitors at all? Levels, depth?

viva Valencia! Ahi estamos!!!!

I would NOT include delay/reverb in sound design at all! It is in both cases - overall & sound - the last step. One reason: you may want use sounds multiple times, and in different constallations. And then first on sounds, because you can move sounds in the stereo field by this.

So many presets come with effects and these have to be adjusted to the context

DUUUUDE 20 second unskippable add followed by minute long unskippable add.. WTF. Great video btw!

Wait I thought every daw process start with tweaking your sound then arrange it.

Is it really so difficult for someone to understand how this or that synthesizer works that they watch such tutorials? Is it so difficult to turn the knobs and logically understand how it works?

Wenn du in Valencia bist, bienvenidos, wir koennen gerne mal ne caña trinken gehen!

Which headphones are you wearing in the video?

wy not group melt and then duplicate ?

Do you actually use meld and roar in your productions or do you just make tutorials with them so that anyone with Ableton can follow along? I am asking because the lead sound you ended up with sounded rather digital and different from the rest of your mix.

Ich mache lieber meine eigenen presets. Wenn ich presets nehme um schnell arbeiten zu können mache ich die reverbs immer aus und mixe meine eigenen send verbs darauf.

Sag mal, warst du nicht der Sänger von Punchers Plant?

fe2 type beat

This did not change my sound design forever, easy on the click baity titles. Preset designers don't make 'mistakes' as you put it, they are demonstrating the capabilities and features of a particular piece of hardware / software, it's up to producers/writers to decide how and where to utilise and modify these sounds, and understanding synthesis and sound design will go a long way here. Your room needs some treatment, or maybe do something in post, the voice over is quite unpleasant to listen to.

no offence, but what were the ffirst 2 words of the video? Please consider a 1 sec space before starting the vid. I restarted the playback times and I just managed to make out the latter half of what I assume was "presets"

meaby you're using pressets wrong.. thank you for your video.

Ok.

❤❤❤❤❤

Why you got hockey pucks on your ears?

Presets are awful. Every preset pack I have used has super impractical sounds that don’t fit in anything

This is like the exact opposite of what four tet does

why are you wearing the waffle iron on your ears?

ja weil leute wie Chris Avence das vorgemacht haben und jetzt alle noch fetter und lauter sein wollen. versteht mich nicht falsch, die sounds sind geil aber die "szene" ist derzeit völlig überladen damit. ich bleib bei meinem klassischen synthy. manchmal kann weniger tatsächlich mehr sein.

tja channal wäre interresant wenn es den auf deutsch gibt, aber so sorry nein danke.

😂😂😂

Bs....there are literally billions of presets out here...no need to do them from scratch everytime.

bro dont like cat video🤣🤣🤣🤣

Boring soft musicians.