Single Cell Software

Rej opened up for endless possibilitys when he posted those waveforms and the convertion tool yesterday. I would like to add to that by revealing a nice technique I use a lot.

 

There are two presets uploaded for you so you can get along as we proceed. They are named 'TUT GIT 1' and 'TUT GIT 2' download those if you already haven't.

 

Now open up the first preset (TUT GIT  1) this is the unfinished preset that we're going to work with. Play a note and you can already hear it's potential. You can also open the waveform editor by longpressing the waveform icon. Just look how nice and smooth that waveform looks. I ripped that out from a nice jazzguitar sample, just as the string had saddled down to its sustain level.

Well even though it sounds good its not a guitar, we need to sculpt it a bit. A guitar comes in loud and fadeout to nothing unless the musician mutes the string. We can simulate that by going to the volume envelope, turn down sustain and turn up decay (about 4 aclock should do). Now the sound fades out as we want but it still doesn't sound like a guitar. That's because the timbre of the sound is static, but we can sculpt that to in the filter section. Turn on LowPass filter, turn the sustainknob to about 12 aclock and do the same with the decayknob. This will make the cutoff fall from full to the sustainlevel, the time it takes is controlled by the decay.

Those changes made a big difference, now our preset (kind of) sound like a guitar but the sound is a little bit dull and that 'pling' sound in the beginning is still missing. Well the waveform was ripped from the sustainlevel of the sound and that's where we want it, taking down the cutoff will just not do in this case. Seems like we reached the limits of the Subsynth, maybe we should load up some good samples in the Pcmsynth instead?

Nope we still have some more options, this synth really is amazing. Open up the waveform editor and prepare your self with a stylus (or the mouse if your on Windows). Now we will destroy that smoothness we so desperately want, take a look at the picture below...

 

 

Look at that sloppy drawing, makes you wanna hit the smoothbutton but don't this is the way we want it. Don't worry we will restore the smoothness but not with the smoothbutton. Now on the filer envelope turn down the decay fully and turn up the sustain. Listen to that sound, kind of edgy not bad actually but not what we trying to accomplish. Now turn down the cutoff, about 50% should do the trick. Do you hear what happened? We're back were we started but with one big difference, we now have plenty of cutoff to play with YEEEAH! Now turn up the cutoff to about 75%, turn up decay to about 9 aclock and turn down sustain to about 3 aclock (these settings depends on how edgy you made the waveform). Play around with the settings until you get the sound you want, cutoff sets the roof (from where the fading begins) sustain sets the floor (where the fading ends) and finally the decay controls the time it takes. When you get it right you will hear how that change improved the attack, you get that short 'pling' in the beginning of the sound.

We're almost done but we should do something about the volume envelope since decay doesn't sound natural. A real guitar comes in loud but stabilize rather quick at sustain level, it will stay there for a while and then fade out.

 

Well we can't simulate that with an ADSR envelope but we can do the first part and that's the most interesting part of the sound.

 

Ok keep the attack at zero, turn up the decay to about 12 aclock and do the same with sustain. Now we only have to turn up the release some to make a smooth end when the key is released.

 

I think that will do, you may want to add some LFO to give a realistic vibration to the sound and you can play around with other settings to but I think it's quite good as it is. Now save your preset and open 'TUT GIT 2'. This is the preset I made during the tutorial and you can compare your work with it if you want. With a little practice you will get there or even improve it.

 

You can use this technique for almost any percussive sound. For faster attacks you keep the filterdecay small even no decay at all will produce a short 'pling' in the beginning of the sound. 

 

Have fun and don't forget to post your presets here.