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Sound Design COMPLETE course - EVERYTHING you need to know to craft any sound.

Woochia - Charly Sauret・130 minutes read

The video series "Sound Design Theory" delves into tools and techniques for sound design, exploring sound synthesis principles, envelopes, filters, and effects like saturation and modulation for creating unique sounds. Key topics include additive and subtractive synthesis, filter types, and the importance of envelopes in shaping sound characteristics and controlling parameters for enhanced sound design possibilities.

Insights

Understanding the impact of tools in sound design is vital for creating unique sounds, focusing on exploring various components like oscillators, filters, and envelopes.
Different types of synthesis, including additive, subtractive, AM, FM, wave shaping, and granular, offer diverse approaches to sound creation, with tools like Serum and Ableton providing extensive capabilities.
Filters play a crucial role in sound design, offering distinct functions like cutting frequencies, boosting specific bands, and mimicking vowel sounds through formant filters, essential for shaping sounds.
Envelopes are key modules in synthesis, controlling parameters like volume and cutoff frequency, with parameters like attack, decay, sustain, and release dictating the sound characteristics, allowing for creative sound manipulation.

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What is the focus of the "Sound Design Theory" video series?
Tools and exploration in sound design.

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Summary

00:00

"Sound Design Theory: Tools and Techniques"

The series of videos planned is called "Sound Design Theory," with this video serving as an introduction.
The focus is on exploring tools in sound design rather than providing specific sound recipes.
Understanding how each tool affects sound is crucial for creating unique sounds.
The plan includes exploring sound synthesis components like oscillators, filters, and envelopes.
Various effects like saturation, delay, and flanger will also be explored for sound manipulation.
The goal is to help viewers understand how effects and modules work to enhance sound creation.
The series will cover different sound synthesis types and techniques for musical or sound effect creation.
Examples will be demonstrated using Ableton Live, VCV Rack, and Serum for practical application.
The videos will be detailed, with timings provided for easy navigation and reference.
The fundamental principles of sound design, including harmonic and inharmonic overtones, will be explained to aid in creating diverse sounds.

15:34

"Modern Synths: Wavetables, Additive, Subtractive, FM, AM"

Higher frequencies are quieter for a smoother sound; modern synths like Serum use wavetables for multiple waveforms in one oscillator.
Serum allows drawing or importing wave shapes from audio files, expanding sound possibilities.
Sound sources can be samplers, allowing direct use of imported sounds like drums or live instruments.
Stacking oscillators is crucial in sound design, but two oscillators alone offer vast sound creation potential.
Additive synthesis involves adding harmonics using sine waves, altering waveforms and harmonics simultaneously.
Ableton's Operator and Serum offer tools for additive synthesis, allowing control over individual harmonics.
Subtractive synthesis starts with a harmonically rich sound, then filters remove specific harmonics for desired effects.
Serum and Ableton's wavetables offer multiple waveforms for morphing sounds, adding motion and organic feel.
Amplitude Modulation (AM) and Frequency Modulation (FM) syntheses involve carriers and modulators to control volume and pitch, respectively.
Wave shaping synthesis distorts simple waveforms for varied effects; Hardsync resets wave cycles for unique distortions; Granular synthesis uses audio samples sliced into grains for textured sounds, with tools like Ableton's Granulator 2 for experimentation.

33:47

Essential Filters in Audio Synthesis and Production

Audio synthesis types add harmonic content, often combined with filters to control richness.
Filters and EQs are essential in music production for mixing, mastering, sound design, and live performances.
Filters cut frequencies in sound design, crucial in subtractive synthesis for shaping sounds.
Different filter types like low pass, high pass, band pass, and notch filters have distinct functions.
Low pass filters cut higher frequencies progressively, with LP-12, LP-18, LP-24 indicating slope stiffness.
High pass filters cut lower frequencies, useful for thinning sounds or isolating high-end elements.
Band pass filters cut frequencies around a point while boosting those frequencies, ideal for specific effects like a telephone effect.
Notch filters cut a band of frequencies around a point, useful for removing unwanted sound parts.
Comb filters, including feed-forward and feedback types, cut or let through specific frequencies and harmonics.
Formant filters mimic vowel sounds by selecting specific frequencies, useful for creating vocal-like effects.

50:26

Understanding Envelopes: Key to Synthesizer Control

Envelopes in synthesis are modules that affect parameters but do not produce sound on their own.
The most common use of an envelope is to control the volume of an oscillator, known as the amp envelope.
An envelope typically has four parameters: attack, decay, sustain, and release, which dictate the sound's characteristics when a key is pressed.
The attack determines how quickly the note reaches full power, while the decay is the time between attack and sustain.
Sustain refers to the volume of the note when the key is held down, and release is the time it takes for the note to fade out after the key is released.
Adjusting these parameters can create different sounds, like percussive or pad-like tones.
Envelopes can also control other parameters like the cutoff of a filter, known as a filter envelope.
Filter envelopes can be used to shape the sound further by moving the cutoff frequency based on the envelope's settings.
Envelopes can be used creatively to control various parameters like pulse width or wavetable position, enhancing sound design possibilities.
MIDI controllers, sequencers, and arpeggiators are essential tools for controlling a synthesizer, providing gate, pitch, and velocity data to shape the notes and sounds produced.

01:04:50

"Exploring Audio Effects in Sound Design"

Audio effects like distortion and saturation are crucial in defining the nature of sound.
Sound can be defined by harmonics or waveform, with additive synthesis focusing on harmonics.
Directly affecting waveform can be done using tools like wavetable synths or wave shapers.
Wave shapers alter waveform shape based on a function, changing the sound's characteristics.
Saturation boosts signal amplitude, leading to distortion when exceeding the maximal range.
Different types of saturation, from analog warmth to digital clipping, offer varying levels of distortion.
Asymmetrical distortion can be achieved by distorting upper and lower signal parts differently.
Wave folding, like the sign fold function, creates harsh metallic tones by folding waveform.
Layering different distortion effects with filters can create unique sound textures.
Wave shapers are found in tools like Ableton Live, Serum, and VCV Rack, allowing for curve customization.

01:21:09

Mastering Compressor Settings for Sound Enhancement

Compressor settings include attack, release, and threshold, affecting how quickly the compressor kicks in and falls back after the signal passes the threshold.
Adjusting attack and release allows the transient of a sound to pass through before compression, preserving the sound's energy.
To hear the compressor's effect clearly, exaggerate it by cranking up the ratio and turning down the threshold before fine-tuning the settings.
Compressing a sound can make it appear thicker by balancing quiet and loud elements, helping it cut through a mix without increasing volume.
Different compressor types, like parallel compressors or multiband compressors, offer various ways to control and enhance sound.
Using compressors on groups of tracks can help tie instruments together and highlight frequency issues, known as glue compressors.
The OTT preset, popular for its intense compression, can be used to reveal textures in sound but should be used judiciously to avoid a cluttered mix.
Sidechain compression, often used in electronic music, involves using an external signal to trigger compression, creating a pumping effect.
Compressors can also function as de-essers to reduce sibilant sounds in vocals by compressing specific frequency ranges.
Limiters, a type of compressor with an infinite ratio, prevent sounds from exceeding a set level and are commonly used on master tracks to avoid clipping.

01:37:48

Metallic Spring Reverb: Creating Unique Sound Depths

Sound traveling in metal speeds up, reducing time between echoes, creating denser and more consistent reverb.
Metallic coil can create spring reverb for guitars, with sound bouncing back and forth to create rapid echoes.
Spring reverb's bouncy quality comes from the distance sound travels in the spring, affecting frequency response.
Softwares offer two reverb types: algorithmic and convolution reverbs, each with unique features and accuracy levels.
Convolution reverbs use impulse response files to accurately replicate real-world reverb, offering versatility in sound creation.
Ableton's free Convolution Reverb in Max for Live Essential Pack provides various impulse responses for experimentation.
Key reverb parameters include dry/wet mix, decay time, stereo width, room size, pre-delay, reflect, and diffusion knobs.
EQ before reverb helps manage frequencies, while parallel reverb tracks allow separate processing for dry and wet signals.
Using pre-delay synced to tempo can create rhythmic effects, while adjusting feedback and delay time can alter textures and sounds.
Delay effects repeat sounds with parameters like delay time and feedback, offering rhythmic elements and space enhancement in music production.

01:54:54

Enhancing Sound with Delay Effects in Ableton

Ping-pong mode in delay in Ableton creates a different effect.
Setting feedback very low results in only one echo.
A short delay time creates a slap-back delay, useful in mixing vocals or guitars.
Shortening the delay further blends the dry signal and echo, creating a doubling effect.
Care must be taken with phase cancellation when blending dry signal and echo.
Adjusting the delay can create a wider stereo effect by separating dry and echo signals.
Increasing feedback with a short delay time can create a robot voice effect.
Resonating notes with delays can be resampled but may require retuning.
Tape delays distort sound with saturation, compression, and pitch fluctuations.
Creating composite delays by layering effects and using feedback loops can enhance sound textures.

02:13:06

"Phaser, Flanger, and Bit Crusher Effects Explained"

Phasor effect involves frequency and feedback knobs to adjust cuts and strength, along with an LFO for modulation.
A phaser may have a pole or stage parameter to control the number of filters used.
Flanger, chorus, and phaser all utilize short delay times and LFO for modulation.
In sound design, using phaser effects without LFO can provide a static texture.
Fast LFO speeds can lead to distortion, akin to FM synthesis.
Bit crusher lowers audio quality by reducing sample rate and bit depth.
Sample rate determines the number of slices per second, crucial for recording frequencies accurately.
Bit depth affects waveform shape, introducing stepping and changing harmonic content.
Lowering bit depth can reduce dynamic range and introduce quantization noise.
Bit crusher can create lo-fi effects reminiscent of old gaming consoles, altering sound quality significantly.

02:30:18

Enhancing Drum Sounds with Vocoder Mode

Vocoder mode can be applied to drum sounds, particularly enhancing transients by adjusting the envelope and using band EQ to isolate the high end.
Carrier mode offers options to use the modulator as its own carrier for sound design purposes, creating a re-synthesized version of the same sound.
Pitch tracker mode allows the pitch to be determined by the modulator instead of the carrier, with parameters to specify where to search for the pitch to track.
Auto-Tune effect corrects pitch by analyzing frequencies and offering options to match notes of a selected scale, with settings like key selection, instrument type, and speed of pitch correction.

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