Lesson 7 - Chiptune Music with SunVox - How to create a song 3
Completion requirements
How to deal with chords and “pad” sounds. Introduction to Multisynth to drive
more synths at once.
more synths at once.
Lesson 7:
edu sharing object
Transcript
00:02 - Video 7. How to create a song, part 3 of 5.
00:07 - Hello, this tutorial will explain how to use multiple synths at the same time. I am going to show you how you can drive multiple synths at once and then how you can create chords. For our song we already created a prominent synth part - commonly called a “lead” - and then we created a drum part. Now we want to create a harmonic background. In electronic music this is often called a “Synth pad”, or simply “pad”. A “pad” is a sustained chord or tone generated by a synthesizer, often employed for background harmony and atmosphere in much the same fashion that a string section is often used in orchestral film scores.
00:51 - In the “Module view” let’s insert an “Amplifier” and connect it to the “Compressor”.
01:08 - Then we'll take two “Analog Generators”s and route their outputs into the “Amplifier”.
01:28 - Now we set a “Saw wave” for the first “Analog Generator” and a “Square wave” for the other one.
01:49 - Don’t forget to look at the display at the bottom of the parameters' panel to visualize the shapes of these waveforms and their envelopes. From the “Timeline”, we select the melody pattern and from the uppermost menu we choose “Pattern properties”, then we add two more “tracks”.
02:10 - The reason why I am doing this, is because I want to write my “pad” inside the same pattern of the melody since the chords we choose will relate to the melody profile.
02:22 - The first thing I am going to write in this track is a sort of bass line that we will then use it to build chords on. In this case I am also going to use “note off” events because I would also like to have pauses between different chords to create a more dynamic setting.
03:04 - Then I copy it three times to match the whole length of the melody.
00:51 - In the “Module view” let’s insert an “Amplifier” and connect it to the “Compressor”.
01:08 - Then we'll take two “Analog Generators”s and route their outputs into the “Amplifier”.
01:28 - Now we set a “Saw wave” for the first “Analog Generator” and a “Square wave” for the other one.
01:49 - Don’t forget to look at the display at the bottom of the parameters' panel to visualize the shapes of these waveforms and their envelopes. From the “Timeline”, we select the melody pattern and from the uppermost menu we choose “Pattern properties”, then we add two more “tracks”.
02:10 - The reason why I am doing this, is because I want to write my “pad” inside the same pattern of the melody since the chords we choose will relate to the melody profile.
02:22 - The first thing I am going to write in this track is a sort of bass line that we will then use it to build chords on. In this case I am also going to use “note off” events because I would also like to have pauses between different chords to create a more dynamic setting.
03:04 - Then I copy it three times to match the whole length of the melody.
03:32 - Now you could argue that it would be enough to copy and paste this line on the next track and use it to drive the second “Analog Generator”, but I want to show you a more efficient technique to achieve the same result. From the “Module view” we expose the menu and we choose “Multisynth” from the “Misc” (or miscellaneous) submenu. Then we connect it to both “Analog Generators”.
04:10 - “Multisynth” is not a real instrument, it is a sort of “driver” that allows us to command more than one instrument at the same time. At this point we need to assign what we wrote before to the “Multisynth” module. Instead of copying and pasting the content, we can do as follows.
04:30 - Be sure that the cursor in the “Tracker” is pointing the “track” we wrote before. From the menu choose “Select track” to select the whole “track”. Then choose “Remap”. The “Remap” command allows us to assign the content of a track to a different insrument. Look at the number of the “Multysinth” and in the section “To (module number)” set the number accordingly. The number of a module is always displayed on the top left of each module. By pressing “Select/Unselect all” from the menu two times, we can unselect the track.
05:12 - Let’s play what we have written.
05:25 - Before we move on, we need to tweak our two oscillators. Let’s select the Multisynth and “solo” it so we can better listen what’s going on.
05:40 - The first “Analog Generator” is definitely too loud, so I will decrease the volume. I would also like to have a smoother “attack”, so I will increase the “attack” time. This means that my oscillator reaches its maximum amplitude after this amount of milliseconds and not right at the beginning, smoothing out that harsh attack. I would even like to have a softer “release”, so I increase this paramenter as well. Let’s also filter our oscillator a little, I want to attenuate a part of the highest frequencies so I choose a “lowpass” filter. And then I edit its “cutoff frequency" and its “resonance”.
04:10 - “Multisynth” is not a real instrument, it is a sort of “driver” that allows us to command more than one instrument at the same time. At this point we need to assign what we wrote before to the “Multisynth” module. Instead of copying and pasting the content, we can do as follows.
04:30 - Be sure that the cursor in the “Tracker” is pointing the “track” we wrote before. From the menu choose “Select track” to select the whole “track”. Then choose “Remap”. The “Remap” command allows us to assign the content of a track to a different insrument. Look at the number of the “Multysinth” and in the section “To (module number)” set the number accordingly. The number of a module is always displayed on the top left of each module. By pressing “Select/Unselect all” from the menu two times, we can unselect the track.
05:12 - Let’s play what we have written.
05:25 - Before we move on, we need to tweak our two oscillators. Let’s select the Multisynth and “solo” it so we can better listen what’s going on.
05:40 - The first “Analog Generator” is definitely too loud, so I will decrease the volume. I would also like to have a smoother “attack”, so I will increase the “attack” time. This means that my oscillator reaches its maximum amplitude after this amount of milliseconds and not right at the beginning, smoothing out that harsh attack. I would even like to have a softer “release”, so I increase this paramenter as well. Let’s also filter our oscillator a little, I want to attenuate a part of the highest frequencies so I choose a “lowpass” filter. And then I edit its “cutoff frequency" and its “resonance”.
06:36 - I do more or less the same for the second oscillator.
07:00 - Then I unselect the “solo” button of the “Multisynth” to listen to all of the instruments.
07:13 - At this point we can transform this bass line in chords, adding the left notes. But before we do this we need to add more tracks to this pattern in order to play all of the notes.
07:00 - Then I unselect the “solo” button of the “Multisynth” to listen to all of the instruments.
07:13 - At this point we can transform this bass line in chords, adding the left notes. But before we do this we need to add more tracks to this pattern in order to play all of the notes.
10:46 - Let’s listen to the result.
11:03 - For the moment it’s fine but there is still some work to do to make this chords sound nicer, I’ll show you this in the next tutorial.
11:03 - For the moment it’s fine but there is still some work to do to make this chords sound nicer, I’ll show you this in the next tutorial.
Erratum
* 06:58: Because the patch between the amp and generator is the wrong way around, no changes can be heard when I tweak the 2nd oscillator.
Last modified: Wednesday, 13 September 2023, 4:41 PM