How many synths do you use in your productions

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Lost to the Void
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Lost to the Void »

I might give it a try.
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The_G
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by The_G »

Thanks for all the replies. Reason I ask is that I had forgotten I even owned a couple VST synths, which made me think about the fact that most of my production is done with a very small number of synths. Nothing wrong with that, or the opposite. It just got me thinking about whether people concentrate on a few synths or use a broader range. I used to use a broader range than I do now, even though I own more now :lol:

Planar
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Planar »

dubdub wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote:
TimBuys wrote:I have no hardware and don't plan to buy anything for a while as I want to get some decent speakers first. With that being said I use Serum and Massive mostly as I find both very easy to use and plenty of modulation options.
How are you finding serum?
Great synth. One of the most powerful and versatile wavetable synth out there. It's not one of those synths where it sounds amazing no matter what you do, the basic tone is quite modern and digital (not in a bad way necessarily, just very clean) but you can easily get some nice Waldorf-esque tones. Don't be put off by all the terrible presets and demos. It's got some nice default wavetables and like TimBuys says, you can import wavetables. The UI and related "user experience" is just ridiculous, best plugin i've ever used in that regard. I think it's very popular for teaching synthesis since it gives you visual feedback on almost everything. It's very flexible sound wise, nice modulation options and lots of options in the menus while keeping everything very accessible. Has some nice unique features like the chaos stuff and the whole moving through wavecycles stuff is really neat.

Just worth adding that there is a whole section for generating your own wavetables, you can input audio files, use formulae, images and resynthesise existing wavetables with modulation applied. You get an FX version with it and it's really well supported.

Serum is the tits. It's my bass machine.

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TimBuys
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by TimBuys »

Lost to the Void wrote:I might give it a try.
Give it a go sir, you will not regret it. Demo is free I believe.

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jordanneke
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by jordanneke »

The_G wrote:Thanks for all the replies. Reason I ask is that I had forgotten I even owned a couple VST synths, which made me think about the fact that most of my production is done with a very small number of synths. Nothing wrong with that, or the opposite. It just got me thinking about whether people concentrate on a few synths or use a broader range. I used to use a broader range than I do now, even though I own more now :lol:
I use only 2 nowadays. Aalto and Reaktor.

I way prefer to be the 'master' of a minimal amount of things. I like Hades quote a lot, but i'm too drunk to remember it

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by gedda »

Lost to the Void wrote:
TimBuys wrote:I have no hardware and don't plan to buy anything for a while as I want to get some decent speakers first. With that being said I use Serum and Massive mostly as I find both very easy to use and plenty of modulation options.
How are you finding serum?
I think Serum has the best UI for any VST out there, it crams a bunch of stuff into one place yet it feels intuitive. Sure you probably won't have as much control as FM8 for OSC shaping, but there are more than enough wavetables and waveforms to create literally any sound you can imagine. You can even import stuff from field recordings or whatever .wave files you have and it'll do its magic and turn it into an oscilator. It has many filter types and you can shape LFOs yourself.

The effects aren't bad either but I'd rather reach for what I have and am comfortable with, personally.

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Merah »

Usually at least two, i enjoy Operator a lot, i usually end up resampling a chord into simpler.
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Root
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Root »

two to four plus samples. somehow i fell ill with the gear acquisition syndrome last year xD ..what i learned is that most of the time it's not the hardware, when your variety of sound is limited. just change the ways of using your hardware.. i was amazed findig out how versatile some synthst, that i own, can be. i never thought of how they could sound like i've heard it, when other producers are using them. and then the trick is to focus and not to get lost.
:geek:

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by The_G »

jordanneke wrote:
The_G wrote:Thanks for all the replies. Reason I ask is that I had forgotten I even owned a couple VST synths, which made me think about the fact that most of my production is done with a very small number of synths. Nothing wrong with that, or the opposite. It just got me thinking about whether people concentrate on a few synths or use a broader range. I used to use a broader range than I do now, even though I own more now :lol:
I use only 2 nowadays. Aalto and Reaktor.

I way prefer to be the 'master' of a minimal amount of things. I like Hades quote a lot, but i'm too drunk to remember it
I have the CM version of Aalto, though I've not really used it much. Seems cool, though--Buchla inspired.

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Hades
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Hades »

jordanneke wrote:
I use only 2 nowadays. Aalto and Reaktor.

I way prefer to be the 'master' of a minimal amount of things. I like Hades quote a lot, but i'm too drunk to remember it
That's not only 2, Reaktor has hundreds of synths available, a lot of them for free. :)
You can do everything with just Reaktor because it's possibilities are endless.

and that quote is from Henri Matisse :

"Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium"

I saw it used at the beginning of a documentary about origami.
I try to honor it but I fail miserably, looking at all my gear, but yeah, I try to at least keep it in mind.
If I think in pure origami we really considered it as almost failure if we had to cut somewhere or glue stuff.
One piece of square paper, nothing else was allowed.
Really insane when you think about it.
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by arkos »

Hades wrote:
jordanneke wrote:
I use only 2 nowadays. Aalto and Reaktor.

I way prefer to be the 'master' of a minimal amount of things. I like Hades quote a lot, but i'm too drunk to remember it
That's not only 2, Reaktor has hundreds of synths available, a lot of them for free. :)
You can do everything with just Reaktor because it's possibilities are endless.

and that quote is from Henri Matisse :

"Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium"

I saw it used at the beginning of a documentary about origami.
I try to honor it but I fail miserably, looking at all my gear
I get the minimal stuff but I for one like feeling like I'm 8 again walking into toys'r'us for the first time when I open my Daw but that's just me :D

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by td3l »

Hades wrote: I don't have a dog, but I did try to annoy my neighbors with your textured, rhythmic and hypnotic music ! ;)

I actually remember checking out your SC page a while back.
Was fun to listen to some stuff again.
You know the art of making subtle music, and I salute you for that !
Ahh missed this post--cheers dude.

And yeah, Silent Season is one of my favorite labels and it's a real honor to be supported by them. If I ever get around to making a full-length, it'll be for them.

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Belka
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Belka »

I own some Software Synths, ACE from UHe, Serum and Waves Codex. Using Serum most of the time, it actually replaced Codex.
ACE is another thing, need a little bit more time to route the shit the way u want it and understand some values (most shit is in hertz and cents whats confusing the shit out of me when iam looking for a normal LFO shake of 1/4 or 1bar or something like this).
Was demoing some synths and looked for intuitiv workflows i.e. how easy it is to add an lfo to the Cutoff or Envelope modulations without using a youtube lesson or the manual. Failed at Synthmaster, they hiding the lfo routing under some stupid modulation name, was little bit sad, Synthmaster is full of nice features and really cheap but i was not able to attache the lfo on a source without youtube. Turned on Serum, heared about the drag and drop style and tried some things out and it worked quite nice from the beginning.
In the future i plan on Zebra2 or maybe 3 when its finished and Repro1 or 5. Was a hard race between Zebra and Serum, love the MSEG a lot. I think thats absolutly enough for every sound i like to create.
Sometimes iam using Bitwigs Stock Polysynth (not that often) and the Organ (for Sine Waves to layer under other Sounds).
To be honest to myself i also took an eye on Softubes Modular .... because it looks nice :/

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by PatrickHughes »

3 - Massive, Serum and Transistor bass. And if I had to break it down I'd say 70% massive, 25% serum and 5% transistor bass. I've had massive the longest so I suppose I use it most because I'm most comfortable with it. I'm debating on getting reaktor 6 just because I want to mess around with the blocks feature. I like the idea of experimenting with the whole modular thing without spending thousands of dollars so that's probably next on my list.

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by The_G »

Belka wrote: In the future i plan on Zebra2 or maybe 3 when its finished and Repro1 or 5.
Zebra2 is a very deep synth. I don't own it, but I did demo it and was impressed. I had to decide between that and Diva and chose Diva because it's more useful for my other style of music (synthwave). But I did really like Zebra, and actually use the CM version quite a bit.

Repro-5 is an autobuy for me. I love Repro-1. Love, love, love.

MattAltmanMusic
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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by MattAltmanMusic »

I use only software... I had a Maschine, but I sold it. I tend to use 2-3 synths depending on the track. Operator, Spire, and Massive. I wanna learn FM8 though

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by Aureliano »

I always end up using Reaktor and then one or two other synths in my productions. The main reason I use Reaktor is that I can make what I want quickly...there's nothing worse than opening up a VST I've barely used and, confused by the UI, start flicking through presets to hear the character of the synth... doing it drives me mad and I lose my creative spark fast.

The west coast modules in Reaktor Blocks (modelled on Make Noise's DPO, LPG, Rene and Maths) are incredible for making textured, percussive sounds. It can take a little while to find a sweet spot, but once you get there and put small modulations around that spot it can be instant techno. Anything that goes into a low pass gate and then a delay sounds good to me. The sound mangling of the DPO's timbre output with its wavefolding and FM interaction sounds electric too.


When I first started producing I used to use D16's Phoscyon 303 plugin all the time, for everything: for bass, the leads, ambient clave beeps, input for crazy processing chains.. The mileage I got out of that single plugin was insane. And it also kept me very productive. If I had an idea I'd just open that, start riffing, and start searching for the direction of the track without having to faff around thinking about which other synth might get the job done better. Pretty much common knowledge here but I recommend learning a synth inside out and then limiting yourself to its output and developing the sound design further by post-processing instead of synth-knob twiddling.

A few months ago I got a Waldorf Pulse v1. It's alright, sounds meaty enough although the filter is a bit weak, but the menu diving, man... I found a Max4Live device to do it in the box but its a bit buggy. Too much hassle for me. Around the same time I got that I got my hands on a Cyclone TT-30. The Cyclone TT-303 sounds more like a real TB-303 than Phoscyon, it filter resonance sounds really nice and gritty, but at the end of the day I always get a bit frustrated at how 'limited' the Cyclone is compared to Phoscyon. I can make the Phoscyon sound like anything, but the Cyclone TT can only sound like a 303.

Not quite sure what my point with all this is exactly, but you don't need a million different synths and I can attest to increased creativity when I limit myself. I quite like it when tinkering with synths to try and get it to do something you don't expect it to. Sometimes I think a synth's character reveals itself when it's pushed to its edges, and your job starts to become reining in the wildness and harnessing it in a creative, musical way. This is the conundrum I face with Reaktor as its essentially open, but I'm far enough down the road learning synthesis to turn it into an advantage.

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Re: How many synths do you use in your productions

Post by gtsm »

A very long time lurker and first time poster here. Hello everyone :)

When it comes to synths, I the best beginner synth for me is Arturia Modular. Yes, it's huge and may be daunting at first but really it is as simple or as complex as you make it to be. It's very easy to create simple patches like sine sub basses etc. as it takes seconds. And of course you can get lost for hours in modulation options if you want. But the best thing about it is that it makes you learn synthesis and actually understand how a sound is made, how the chain works and so on. And the filters are amazing.


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