So, after many years of learning to produce EDM I finally find myself with a good handle on the arrangement and composition aspects. However, the most troublesome area for me remains sound design. Sure, I might be bottlenecked almost entirely by the fact that I work exclusively on my PC with nowhere near top of the line gear, but I still believe I have so much room to improve before justifying a major upgrade.

Now it's not so much a matter of designing one sound in particular that's problematic, but rather the layering and mixing of various sounds together, and knowing in advance what will sound good with what. Maybe it's just an experience thing but I more often find myself messing around and spending hours trying different sounds together in desperate hopes of striking sonic gold than I do making progress and finishing something for once. The problem is, I think I overload myself with possibilities and mini sound experiments so much that I lose sight of what I was going for in the first place.

Now, I do listen to lots of reference material. I draw inspiration from many EDM genres and artists, most notably Sasha's Involver/Invol2ver, Burial, Flying Lotus, and even commercial trance here and there. I'm never glued to one style. However, I think listening to something like Involver is moreso discouraging on account of how out of my league it seems.

What do you recommend for getting past sound design difficulties? Do I just take the brute force approach and arrange it out anyways with what I have, despite not being entirely happy with the sound? Has that worked for anyone here before? Or maybe I should just take some reference material and try to copy the style for practice? I would really appreciate some feedback from those who've had this problem and found a way around it - I could use a fresh perspective.

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There are two secrets to success: 1. Never tell everything you know.

in my personal opinion you have two options:

1) will take you years to get over, analyzing each record over and over again, day and night. fortunately is free

2) get some tuition with a guy who knows, will take you a few months in total, unfortunately is not cheap at all.

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Mate this process you describe of struggling to get the right sounds, is just part n parcel of what we do.
I've read many times about a top notch pro taking weeks or months before they felt every sound in a track was right.

I can tell you last night that I made a decision that a snare I had been using in a track was not quite right and it took me a couple of hours to find a better one and get it sounding and sitting well.

You might want to think of the struggle an ambitious chef has to build a reputation. How can it be so hard - read the recipe, cook the dish, no!! NO. We have this show in the UK called Masterchef where people have spent years learning thier craft, completely immersed in it and yet still they struggle.

Music is just the same in my mind - all about an endless quest for the perfect sonic recipe.

Just enjoy every step and don't worry if each is a bit tortuous.

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Well if I am clueless on what sound to make and put in a mix, I start randomizing the parameters on my synths or browsing presets. Sometimes that sparks inspiration. The other thing is you can make sounds fit together with processing or resampling (and a healthy amount of EQ).

The other thing I do is I make only a loop of the climax of my song, I think about how I'm going to arrange it after I have a large pallet of sounds to paint my portrait with. Like an artist, they usually don't make a design for a painting in black and white, with an image of the colors in mind, then struggle to make those colors of paint. They make amazing art with what they have.

I hope you get satisfied with your work someday, cheers!

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quote:

Originally posted by skyhunter Well if I am clueless on what sound to make and put in a mix, I start randomizing the parameters on my synths or browsing presets. Sometimes that sparks inspiration. The other thing is you can make sounds fit together with processing or resampling (and a healthy amount of EQ).

This is part of my challenge - When I'm out of ideas this what I end up doing. But shouldn't "randomizing" be limited to some extent? I mean, you could have an abstract vision to begin with, but by the time you get done spending the hours trying random sounds and EQ'ing them, do you ever find you accidentally stumbled on what you want? Now, I will agree that this is has sparked inspiration, unfortunately though it's the kind that urges me to start anew on impulse only to fall into the same trap a little ways down the road.

I have lots of creative ideas and it doesn't take much for me to get a general direction. But getting what's in my head to match what I hear with my ears...That's the frustration factor for me.

Lol, I will say, though, that even for someone suffering from loop-itis...My loops have improved dramatically since I started.

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quote:

Originally posted by cl0ckw3rk This is part of my challenge - When I'm out of ideas this what I end up doing. But shouldn't "randomizing" be limited to some extent? I mean, you could have an abstract vision to begin with, but by the time you get done spending the hours trying random sounds and EQ'ing them, do you ever find you accidentally stumbled on what you want? Now, I will agree that this is has sparked inspiration, unfortunately though it's the kind that urges me to start anew on impulse only to fall into the same trap a little ways down the road. I have lots of creative ideas and it doesn't take much for me to get a general direction. But getting what's in my head to match what I hear with my ears...That's the frustration factor for me. Lol, I will say, though, that even for someone suffering from loop-itis...My loops have improved dramatically since I started.

Oh okay, so you struggle to make what sounds you hear in your head is what I'm getting? I thought you were talking about running out of ideas on what to make a synth sound like.

Knowing how to make a synth sound like the sound you want takes a lot of skill, but there are basic guidelines and such for attaining a certain type of sound.

Basic as they are, these videos helped me really grasp how to make a synth do what I want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm4Wfg52lU8
there is something about the way he explains it though, how he talks about each parameter, it just seems so clear

Given, I'm not a pro, but when I want to make a sound sound like something in my head, I generally can do that.

Sorry if I'm no help, ignore me in that case.

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Reach for the presets.

I'm not joking and before this gets frowned upon by the sound design purists, I can tell you first hand that several major composers just get sound designers to make presets for them so they can tweak.

And you can do it yourself; there's thousands of people (many on here) who sell their own preset packs chocked full on new sounds for every soft synth you can think of.

I get it, you want to be able to do it yourself, but one of the best ways to start is by changing something that someone else already made.

Remember, (as per the social networking thread) the goal here is to make music, not to knob twiddle for eight hours to get a single bass sound.

You can then get to point you learn those synths and what the perameters do from those presets.

It also seriously helps you to work fast and learn what sounds go with each other quickly. That to me, is more important than being the grand master of sound design.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Reach for the presets. I'm not joking and before this gets frowned upon by the sound design purists, I can tell you first hand that several major composers just get sound designers to make presets for them so they can tweak. And you can do it yourself; there's thousands of people (many on here) who sell their own preset packs chocked full on new sounds for every soft synth you can think of. I get it, you want to be able to do it yourself, but one of the best ways to start is by changing something that someone else already made. Remember, (as per the social networking thread) the goal here is to make music, not to knob twiddle for eight hours to get a single bass sound. You can then get to point you learn those synths and what the perameters do from those presets. It also seriously helps you to work fast and learn what sounds go with each other quickly. That to me, is more important than being the grand master of sound design.

+1

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ RANN Reach for the presets. I'm not joking and before this gets frowned upon by the sound design purists, I can tell you first hand that several major composers just get sound designers to make presets for them so they can tweak. And you can do it yourself; there's thousands of people (many on here) who sell their own preset packs chocked full on new sounds for every soft synth you can think of. I get it, you want to be able to do it yourself, but one of the best ways to start is by changing something that someone else already made. Remember, (as per the social networking thread) the goal here is to make music, not to knob twiddle for eight hours to get a single bass sound. You can then get to point you learn those synths and what the perameters do from those presets. It also seriously helps you to work fast and learn what sounds go with each other quickly. That to me, is more important than being the grand master of sound design.

I appreciate this tip, as well as the rest of the feedback I've gotten from you guys. I'm gonna go ahead and just dive in and focus on making progress. I suppose part of the fun is looking back later and seeing how I've improved, so I'm gonna bite the bullet on the sound perfectionism and instead run with what I have and what I can obtain relatively quickly. I'll be much better off knowing I at least finished something.

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How to make a noise

How To Make A Noise is perhaps the most widely ready book about synthesizer sound programming. It is a comprehensive, practical guide to sound design and synthesizer programming techniques

It is now free and I recommend it, its a good read.

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My latest blog post deals with sound design:

http://fabianaldersey.blogspot.com/...-of-plucks.html

It's an approach between using presets and creating sounds entirely from scratch. It involves keeping the parts of the sound which work really well, and effectively "randomizing" the other parameters to come up with a bunch of different sounds, many of which should fit quite well (and which will be a "new" sound, rather than a straight-up preset).

here you can find probably the most complete guide to synthesis

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

It's a lot of reading (seriously, it's good to just print it on paper and read during some spare time) but eventually you'll gain more knowledge about overall synthesis aspect.

I also like this video (720p) - it's an In the studio session with Chris Lake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_r-...player_embedded

it's an analysis of his great (the best ?) track - If you knew. That that covers very wide range of frequencies so mixing it was quite a tough task. Chris analises every channel - very informative video and my personal best video from Future Music - In the studio series.

About layering - hmm it's pretty hard to give some hints but mine are:
1. Layer the sounds that cover different frequencies (ie. some Hi Pad and Low Pad)
2. Layer long release sounds (pads, strings) with short ones (ie. guitar plucks)
3. Layer sounds that cover same frequencies but prepare for compression, sometimes heavy EQing and overall results can be random.

Also, you can layer sounds that have similar frequencies but have different panorama (ie. one sound is mono, the other is stereo). Result ? Richer sound.

4. Layer sounds coming from different softsynth. Developers do some serious audio manipulations so most soft synths have their own character. Supersaw from synth A sounds different than supersaw from synth B - so at the end you may get sound that is more full, rich etc.

5. Ahh, when I layer sounds I disable their internal Reverb , Delay settings. I add reverb, delay (if I want too) at the "end of the chain" (after these two sounds are combined). Thanks to this, the sounds will be better glued.

Maybe not strictly related with trance but personally I love layering short sounds (plucks, bells, piano hits, guitar plucks) with long pads. Quite often it totally changes the character of the sound.

And probably the most general tip - EQ and Compressor are your biggest friends. You can use some tape saturation plugins (ie. freeware FerricTDS is pretty nice - it nicely smoothens the sound).

The tip with third party presets is also good. Personally I dont like to create presets during the arrangement. I can get quickly out of inspiration. That's why i think it's good to have personal database of presets (created BEFORE composing) you like. I like to create my own presets, well I sell them too, but I also buy quite a lot of third party presets. Why ? Well, I usually spend one, two evenings to scroll through every preset and pick those I like the most, and combine them into one big, personal favourites presets soundbank. Then I can focus on arrangement.

In my opinion finding the correct sound can be pretty tough (and time consuming task) task, that's why I don't like to navigate through hundreds of sounds. I prefer having favourite soundbank with 100-200 presets rather than factory soundbank of 1000 presets + additional 23452 third party presets

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