A Keyboardist’s Guide to Creating Great Sounds in your DAW

Date:2020/2/13 22:10:16 Hits:

One of the primary roles of modern keyboard players is creating great sounds. For most keyboardist, not only must you have chops as a player, but you also need to be able to build great sounds — whether it’s imitating a sound from an original recording or knowing how to shape a pad sound when someone calls for “pad on the bridge.”

If you’re a worship leader who writes and records your own songs, you need to be able to form the unique sounds you envision in your head. Knowing how to create great sounds will serve you well.

Let’s take a look at a few tips that will help you learn to create great sounds, no matter which DAW you’re using. For the sake of this article, I’ll be using Ableton Live, but every concept I discuss can be applied to any DAW software.

Learn to Listen
Before you open your DAW to create sounds, one of the most practical ways to learn to create great sounds is to learn how to listen. Go beyond just casually listening to music and actually study it. Study it the same way great jazz musicians learn how to play by transcribing classic solos, by picking apart songs and performances. Even if you don’t know how the sound was created, start by learning to listen.

Not sure what type of synth is being used to create the sound? That’s okay. Start by learning to hear the sound and use non-musical terms to describe the type of sound you hear. It’s “airy, warm, but brightens up as the song progresses.”

As you continue your sound-design journey, you will learn to associate sounds with what was used to create them. Don’t worry at this point so much what the sound is, just notice it. Describe the sound you hear and try to find it again. In no time, your ear will be tuned to hearing the common sounds you find in music.

Reengineer Sounds
Now that you’re hearing sounds, how do you know what they are? You will quickly want to learn what the sound you are hearing is. One of the best ways to do this is to reengineer sounds you find in your DAW.

Software and plug-ins ship with incredible presets. One of my favorite things to do is to play through all the included presets. Once I find a sound I really enjoy, or that sticks out, I dive in to figure out how it was created.

In Ableton Live, I expand the Instrument Racks of sounds I like, and then I work through each instrument and effect included. Try to figure out what settings they used as you dig into the preset. What’s the base sound they’re using to create this? Turn on/off effects to see what impact they have on the overall sound.

Now that you’ve walked through the patch, try to re-create it from scratch. This is like a jazz guitarist trying to play the Wes Montgomery lick they just dissected. You know the notes, now apply them. See how close you can get to the original sound.

Next, start to associate the sounds you discovered with the tools used to create them. “That’s a Juno-style pad drenched in reverb,” or “That’s a Moog bass.” One of my favorite resources for learning how a sound was created is the Beat Academy YouTube channel run by my pal ill Factor. Each week he creates a new tutorial showing you how to re-create a popular song in your DAW. It’s another great opportunity to learn how to associate the sounds you’re now hearing with the tools used to create them.

Now let’s sit down at our DAW and get to creating sounds. Here are three very simple tips and tricks that will help you create great sounds in your DAW.

Learn your instrument
You can’t be an incredible guitar player unless you learn your instrument. If you want to create sounds using your DAW, then that is your instrument. It may not have six strings, but it’s an instrument. If your DAW has multiple synths included in it, learn what each synth is and what type of sounds each creates. This will help you fashion the sound you’re looking for faster.

For instance, let’s look at a few instruments in Ableton Live Suite and what types of sounds they’re good for. Again, if you don’t use Ableton, that’s fine. The point here is to learn what types of sounds the synths included with your program can create.

Collision
Collision is a synthesizer that simulates mallet percussion instruments. Collision is one of my go-to synths for very bell-like ambient sounds, and I love using it to create ambiences.

Electric
Electric is a synthesizer that uses physical modeling to re-create classic electric piano sounds. It’s the best choice when you’re looking for classic keys-style sounds, like Rhodes or Wurlitzer. It’s my go-to when I’m looking for a Rhodes or Wurli sound.

Tension
Tension is a synthesizer that emulates stringed instruments. Think of harps and guitars. It’s my go-to when I’m looking for synth leads that have a guitar-like character to them.

Wavetable
Wavetable is a synthesizer that uses wavetable-based synthesis to create expressive and rich sounds. It’s my go-to for pads, basses, and lead sounds.

Here’s the sound of Wavetable.

This is only a sampling of the instruments in Suite, but having an idea of what types of sound each instrument can create helps me know where to go when I’m looking for that type of sound.

One final note here — pay attention to which instruments in your DAW use synthesis vs. samples to create their sounds. For instance, if you open Collision in Live and you’re hoping for a realistic piano, you’ll walk away very disappointed. But if you open a sampled piano loaded into Ableton’s Sampler, you’re much more likely to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Combine complementary sounds
When you’re looking to create great sounds, don’t be afraid to combine multiple sounds to create a cohesive-sounding instrument. Here are a few tips I’ve learned in doing this.

Let’s start with this pad sound (fig. 1) I’ve created in Ableton’s Wavetable. It’s a warm, ambient-style pad built with a filter and some reverb. While I want it to keep primarily a warm ambient pad, I’d love to have a bright chimey element to the sound.

I group my wavetable and effects into an Instrument Rack. I select both devices and use the Command G on Mac (Control G on PC) shortcut to place them both in an instrument rack (fig. 2).

Knowing that I can create bright, bell-like tones with Collision, I’m going to load in Collision (fig. 3) and tweak some parameters and add some effects until I’m happy with the blend of the two sounds.

With these two sounds layered and some effects added, I’m happy with the sound I have. There’s no real science to this, but try combining sounds and see if you like the result.

If your starting sound is dark, try adding something bright.
If your starting sound is ambient, try adding a dry sound.

The best way to figure this out is by experimenting. Combine sounds until you find something you like. Once you find something you like, save the combined sounds as a new preset that you can reference later when you’re looking for that type of sound again.

Use effects
I already gave away my secret in the section above, but I use effects generously when creating sounds. It’s a bit like cooking. Any food can be delicious with enough butter and salt. Don’t be afraid of using effects.

What has helped me with working with effects is learning what type of sound the effect creates. While most effects can be used (and abused) to create almost any type of sound, what is the general feeling this effect evokes? I try to associate that sound with an emotion or feeling. For instance, let’s add a few effects to a grand piano preset to see how we can transform it.

Piano sound with no effects:
When I want to make a sound airy or ambient, I add reverb (fig. 4). In the case of my piano sound, the reverb adds ambience and space to the piano sound. In this case, it very appropriately matches the emotion of the part I played.

Piano sound with reverb:
When I want to darken a sound, or make it feel more emotional, I use a filter to remove the high frequencies (fig. 5). This is commonly known as a lowpass or high-cut setting. I cut the highs and let the lows pass through. I know adding this to that same piano part will darken the sound, and it will add to the emotional quality of it.

Piano sound with filter:
When I want the sound to have more impact, to sound more powerful, I add a compressor (fig. 6). Now a compressor can serve many purposes in mixing and sound design, but in this case, I want to “squash” the sound. It will give me a very poppy, well-rounded-sounding piano. To create the squashed sound, I decrease the threshold pretty drastically (so it is compressing a lot), shorten the attack (so it starts compressing quickly), and increase the release time (so the compressor releases slowly). I use the makeup knob to add back any gain reduction.

Piano sound with compressor:
Now if I combine all three effects (fig. 7), I can create a vastly different sound from where I started. Go back and listen to our original sound and compare it with the end result we have now.

Piano sound with all effects:
Another fun bit of working with effects is adjusting the sequence of the effects. The order will shape the tone in a completely different way. Once you find effects you like, try rearranging the order and even doing it “wrong” to see what results you get. You might land on a trick that can become your signature sound.

I firmly believe that sound design is simple and should be fun. If you can learn to listen and then reengineer sounds, you’ll be able to notice and create the sounds you hear in your head. And when you sit down to your DAW, if you know the instruments you have at your disposal and try combining sounds and adding effects, you will be creating great sounds in no time!

Prev:Apogee Symphony MkII SYM2-8X8S2

Next:Presonus FaderPort

Leave a message

Message List

Comments Loading...

Products Category

Products Tags

Fmuser Sites

A Keyboardist’s Guide to Creating Great Sounds in your DAW

Leave a message

Message List