- A Basic Guide to Subtractive Synthesis – Part 1
- A Basic Guide to Subtractive Synthesis – Part 2
This screencast is the first tutorial in a series on synthesis. This first installment shows a basic guided tour of Subtractor in Reason and covers oscillators, filters and envelopes.
This is really aimed at the beginner who is relatively new to subtractive synths or people just starting to program their own patches. I’ve tried to keep the videos a little shorter than previous offerings but I have to apologise for any heavy breathing you might hear in the later stages – my boxer Alfie decided to come and sleep in my studio!
Don’t worry if you don’t own Reason as I have constructed the same sound in a couple of other synths: FAW’s Circle and Logic’s ES2. Hopefully this will allow the majority of people to follow the series.
Screencast
The Patch in FAW Circle
Here is the patch in Subtractor and also recreated using Future Audio Workshop’s excellent ‘Circle’ synth. While these recreations won’t sound identical, they should give most of you a chance to load the patch up.
You can download a fully functional demo of Circle here.
The patches for each of these are available for download in the play pack below.
The original patch in Subtractor.
The patch recreated in FAW Circle.
The Patch in Logic Pro 9′s ES2
Here is the same patch, but this time in Logic’s ES2 synth.
The patch recreated in Logic’s ES2.
Download the Play Pack for this tutorial (98 KB)
Contents
- Reason’s Subtractor patch
- FAW Circle patch
- Logic ES2 patch
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By Mo Volans
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Very nice. Didn’t notice any heavy breathing though. :)
“If you wanna play some big chords” Sixteen note chords surely are some big chords Mo.
A few more of these and I’ll lay down my guitar and start using my keyboard some more.
actually you would be surprised. by the time you have programmed a a chord sequence with several notes playing at once and then add large amounts of release … you may easily have this many notes playing with the overlap etc ;)
This was a great post…even though I’m no longer a synth n00b, it was still a nice refresher. It’s easy to get caught up in all the fanciness of some of these software synthesizers and forget about the basics!
…the basics that often are MORE than enough to get the job done and allow you to continue working without getting bogged down in all the bells and whistles!
Thank so much for this. Really well explained. 10points !
You explain great Mo, thanks for that!!!
tho i’d like to see (hear) you get more into the guts of subtractive synth.
like the X’es Minuses and Circles over on the Subtractor.
got to go back to synth 101 now and then..
Please, more tutorials like this. Tutorials showing how to make certain patchs are almost as good if not better than tutorials showing how to make a complete song.
glad your into this guys. planning to do more in this style and get deeper into synthesis ;)
Great tutorial. Reason’s Subtractor is one of the most straightforward subtractive soft synths out there and is an excellent starting point for someone who is learning synthesis for the first time.
Hi
Very educational
I’m a beginner to synths, i own a Prophet 8 Dave Smith
I’d like to learn to create my own patches & fat sounds
Please create more work for beginners
Keep up the good work
Thanks
gret tutorial Mo!
especially when you explain the filter envelope :D
awesome tute got I’m a newbie to synthesis and this really helped!!!
Wonderful tutorial, thanks!
AWESOME explanation.
The thing I liked about it the best was that you actually explained what words like Oscillater/Filter/Envelope actually mean as well as what they contribute to a sound. I’m completely new to synthesis (I work as a full-time composer for slot gaming) and it comes up in my work just about every day, and with most tutorials they just tell you what things do and not necessarily how they exist on their own. Tutorials like this are exactly what I need, thank you very much.