Unit 35: Sound Creation & Manipulation - Finished Track Write-Up

For my Sound Creation & Manipulation track I made several synth patches in ES2 and sampler instruments with EXS24 to make my track, and then complimented it with other software instruments to complete my track, which is in a  dance style. Firstly, I made three synth patches to simulate a kick drum, snare and closed hi-hat to begin my track. These play constantly through my track and were a framework to build upon. I made a drone piano in ES2 which also plays constantly providing a swirling deep tone, and I made a retro keyboard sound also in ES2, which I played several chords on and they layer up in the middle of the track. Finally I developed an ES2 bass synth which plays in the final section of my song, and this was developed from an existing bass patch which I tailored to the sound I wanted. Here are screenshots of these synths and more details about how I made them for their purpose.

Kick:
I made this kick drum patch much like the one in my video submission, so won't go into great detail on all the parameters of it, but to begin with I chose to use one oscillator and selected a sine wave. I had the filter and series and left the first filter open and second filter almost closed, meaning that in sequence these both had an effect on the sound. The most crucial change was the shape of the envelope with which I controlled cutoff 2, which was to shape the attack, decay, sustain and release to  shut quite quickly with only a little amount of resonance, creating the response of the thud of a kick drum, and also played this in the lower octaves of the keyboard, rather than putting resonance to full to make it pitch less.

Snare:
For my snare drum I started working with oscillator 3 on the noise setting and shaped the envelope to control the sound, giving it a longer resonance for the fizzling out of a snare rattle. I left the cutoff all the way to the right so only that side acted on the sound, but this was based purely on what sounded best as I was making it rather than following a theoretical method. I thought the sound initially lacked weight, so added the second oscillator with a simple sine wave and gradually added that to the noise of oscillator 3, by moving the control on the triangle diagram next to the oscillators, until enough weight was added without the snare sounded pitched to a certain musical note.

Closed hat:
For the closed hat, rather than beginning from a vanilla hat I instead decided to save my snare patch and make this from what I had there, as I thought the noise and other wave combination was already right to start making this sound, and it just needed tweaking to sound more metallic and higher in frequency. I again changed the shape of the envelope to this tim control cutoff 1, which I was using as  it gave me the hi pass option.

Drone Keys:
This was a soft drone keyboard that I wanted to play through my track, and be automated to slowly come in during the introduction. This was again mostly listening to the sounds and changing it to suit what I wanted the sound to be like, so I started by selecting a sine and triangle wave to give me some contrasting timbre in the sound, and added some resonance and frequency modulation to add character to the sound. The envelope for this is far more open than a drum as it needs to last for longer than a drum hit does, and also needs to have more than one voice multiple notes and chords can be played.

Retro Keys:
This was a keyboard sound I wanted to sound like an old rhodes keyboard. I started with the one sawtooth wave which sounds quite gritty and slightly distorted which I though suited the sound I was after, and then changed the cutoff and blend too, as I thought sounded better. Again this envelope has long sustain, but this time a slow attack and quick release which means the chord doesn't instantly play at full volume as its played on the keyboard, but slowly fades in and drops out quickly with the quick release.

Tonal Snare:
Finally I made a tonal snare drum to bring some interest to my percussion track. It serves a similar purpose to the usual snare, but I use it on off beats like calves or other block sounds to create an interesting rhythm.  I made this just how I made my snare patch, but added more tonality and pitch with the sine wave, and opening the sustain and not cutting off the high end allowed that tone to be more present in the sound than my other snare.

For sampler instruments in this track I decided I needed real acoustic drum sounds to play off my synthetic ones, so I made a drum sampler instrument containing a kick, snare and closed hat for the intro to my track and the middle section. Secondly I made a sampler instrument of different tambourine sounds from an audio file of a tambourine being played. This enabled me to make the different rhythmic phrases heard in the build up of my track. Here's a screenshot of both in EXS24.

Drum Kit:














Tambourine: