7
There's really no such thing as MIDI Synthesis.
Synthesis is the process by which sounds are 'synthesised' using various modulation and generation techniques.
MIDI is the "Musical Instrument Digital Interface" and is a protocol by which electronic music instruments can pass control and note information.
MIDI is only interested in sending and receiving ...
6
Your sine has come out a couple of octaves too low, for some reason. Indeed it's infrasound, 6.6 Hz to be precise, which rather explains why you don't hear anything.
A couple of ways you could have found this out:
Actually the sound is still "audible": over a decent subwoofer, you'll hear (or rather feel) a throbbing similar to a ship engine, and things in ...
5
One little technique you can try which is very quick and can yield surprisingly good results is converting random files into audio data. You can achieve this by downloading 'Soundhack'. It's an old, free bit of software that allows you to attach a wav. header to any file; be that a text file, movie, image etc. It mainly produces white noise but can ...
4
I don't know about audio books, but this is a pretty "neat" book regarding the topic: http://www.synthesizer-cookbook.com/
Plenty of examples with precise "recipes" that you can copy and see what they're composed of. Working out those should give a better idea of how different styles of subtractive sounds can be made.
Also, this video series: Intro To ...
4
You mentioned that you've been using sine waves so this may cover some already-tread ground, but the basic process can apply to lots of different source material. What you'll need is a base sound of some kind (ie. a tone generator, a synth tone, etc) running through a few basic plugins (ie. an amplitude modulator, a flanger, a chorus, etc) and outputting to ...
4
Beating will always be there whenever there are two or more signals close in frequency but there are a few things that may help, depending on the synthesizer. All options will make it sound different but that is a trade off you can't really get away from... The reason these sounds stick out is actually because of the beating.
More unison voices. The more ...
4
First, you should have some field recordings to use as a reference, at least. Depending on the verisimilitude you are looking for, you might need to really hone in on the exact type of forest that is going to appear on screen. For example, a tropical rain forest is very different from a northern coniferous forest.
If you take the wildlife out of the sounds ...
3
Ableton Live's M4L granular ensembles
MOTU MachFive has a granular module too
iZotope Iris, if you can stand the interface
For all three, press Record and start exploring.
Also, it's always a good time to challenge preconceptions of what "computer/tech sound" is.
3
Self-oscilation only works for analogue gear (because of the noise flow and constant active OSCs). Digital plug-ins can't self oscillate. But some programmers made algorithms that "imitate" self-oscillation to a certain degree. In NI Massive you can "imitate" self-osculation if you feed a bit to noise from the noise generator into the filter with a cranked ...
3
Not sure what you mean here by 'feeds into'? Beyond summing audio together there's convolution, or using one source to modulate another like FM or AM. You could check out Soundhack for convolution which can work with any sounds.
3
VST synths are not designed for this sort of thing, hence why Andy Farnell (I presume those are the tutorials you encountered) used PD.
Designing Sound is THE book for this, but I'm really questioning why you are planning to take this route when designing the sounds for a whole game; it's very interesting to discuss/consider procedural audio tech and its ...
3
This seems like an awful lot of work, and I think you would get better results from recording foley. However, I understand that want to try exploring another avenue within synthesis.
As has already been mentioned, Andy Farnell's Designing Sound is the best resource for this kind of sound design, and all of that is done within PD. If you want to get away ...
3
Some possibilities…
Some of these are old old tricks & may not be necessary with modern equipment & space to sample huge numbers of layers/velocities
Randomisation - of anything, so long as it's subtle
Velocity to pitch - louder is higher [very slight, of course]
velocity to filter - was always an old favourite, but we have more chance to have ...
3
All I know is it seems to be a reference to french house, the "french touch," which is a filtered-disco sound. Expect a prominent, musical filter, but I am not an expert on filter design so I can't separate out the marketing angle from the reality of what you will get. Examples of the kind of music being referenced:
http://thesearepowerfulhours.com/...
3
Although it is a drone or single harmony, the timbre here is rich, and the depth comes from the range of harmonics. Further depth here seems to come from the tones of D5 chord (D + A). Drones like this are not often a single note, but quite an array of harmonics - which lends itself to the experimentation of blending fundamentally different notes for a rich ...
3
I would recommend using square and saw waves detuned with some unison. I recommend you start with massive but serum is better if you have it. Modulate the wavetables in bend+/- or bend plus or bend - if you don't know what this is, read the manual or google it. This will add movement I recommend to synch this modulation. Add an extra oscillator to taste for ...
3
Try 2 sawtooth oscillators on a mono synth with a small detune (perhaps just 1 cent) on one of the oscillators. Set a smooth but fairly quick attack and release for these oscillators. Send them through a low Pass filter around 3kHz or whatever sounds right, a slight envelope on the filter can sound good too. Also, set a portamento/glide of roughly 35ms. The ...
3
Actually, you can.
If you use the Pitch Envelope, you can set it to loop (or use one of the "Loop" presets). Turn off Pitch Envelope modulation for all the ops except the one you want to modulate. Set depth using the Amplitude knob on the pitch page.
3
The first thing that comes to mind is a tool like Matlab (from the Matthworks). You can download a free trial, but you would have to learn some prograsmming (or Matlabs language). But I believe it can create a .wav or .aiff file from a function that synthesizes a waveform or a complex signal.
3
The way to understand this is to break down the terminology. First one to look at is "Modulation" which is the term used to describe the encoding of a "carrier" signal with another "source" signal.
In the case of "amplitude modulation", the "amplitude" of a carrier wave is "modulated" with a source signal in a transmitting circuit. The "receiving" circuit ...
2
@Ross-
There's a lot of ways to approach this, but for me it depends on the 'era' of computer you're going for and what's unique, cool or important about this particular computer? Then research the technology that may have been available in the era.
Now you've got it narrowed down a bit....and you can start looking at ways to build the sound into the ...
2
S-Layer (and Reaktor)
(http://twistedtools.com/shop/reaktor/s-layer/)
Metaphysical Function, Skanner (also for Reaktor)
GRM Tools
SoundMagic Spectral
Metasynth
Camel Audio Alchemy ("the best sampler there is")
Perhaps even NI FM8 or Sytrus.
Too many ways to approach "computer sounds".
2
Why can't you get a recording of a tesla coil? Or just get something that resembles enough of the sound that you're looking for.
Of course you can then stick the sample to a granular synthesizer, for example, to start with. Or just combine it with other fitting sounds, add effects etc.
2
Andy Farnell has done lots of research in this area:
http://obiwannabe.co.uk/tutorials/html/tutorial_footsteps.html
http://obiwannabe.co.uk/html/papers/pdcon2007/PDCON-2007-FARNELL.pdf
Depends how far you want to go with it! I agree that most commercial synths are not capable of doing this well. They are not designed to add in the random variations in ...
2
Synths can be great for this stuff, although depending on which program is used, I have at times had difficulty getting the sound to not feel "synthy". I think I mentioned this in a thread a while back, but I'm a pretty big fan of taking other recorded sounds and processing them with different plugins like GRM and Sound Toys to get the results I want. Often ...
2
One of things I am learning now is the Doepfer A100 analog modular synthesizer. Mostly used for making electronic music, I believe it has a lotta scope for creating various sci-fi sounds. Ofcourse, it is not possible for everyone to own one, or find one very easily to work on, but you can literally create the synthesizer using the Nord Modular G2. Its a free ...
2
Textual languages are less popular these days as graphical audio programming environments (such as Max or Pd) are more approachable. Nonetheless a couple that you may like to look at are Csound (The Csound Book: Perspectives in Software Synthesis, Sound Design, Signal Processing and Programming, Richard Boulanger), which is a C based language so if you have ...
2
There are several factors here, and not all may apply to your situation.
ReBirth is a really good simulation of 808s, 909s, and 303s, but they are a simulation of ideal versions of them. Your hardware setup is going to invariably differ to some degree. You do state that when you match the settings in ReBirth with your hardware, it sounds "good". This would ...
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