Programming Synths to come up with your own sound

[TBA]

Hey all,
I recently bought Reason 6 and want to start getting into creating my own "sounds".
I am learning all the different parts of what a synthesizer does like what an oscillator is, ADSR, filters etc etc and I know all that will help me figure out how certain sounds are made BUT my main question is where do I start?!

EX. I am a big fan of Dada Life. I love that phat, thick bass that use in all their tracks.
Where would I start to try and mimic that specific sound with Reason?
Would I start completely from scratch and just twist and turn knobs until I get something similar or should I find a patch that sounds similar and try and tweak it, to mimic Dada Life's?

Also, Lucky Date has a ton of Youtube videos where he shows you how to program a sound. How does he figure them out?!

I know i'm rambling so I'll sum it up:
HOW do YOU make your own sound/figure out how to make another person's sound?
Start from scratch? Build off stock patches?
Whats a good place for a beginner to start?

THANKS!

[electronomist]

A good tip for seeing how a particular sound is made is to reverse engineer an existing preset that you like. Just work backwards tweaking each parameter to see how it affects the sound, eventually you'll see how you can make it from scratch, and maybe make your own variations along the way.

Once you know your synth well you should be able to hear a sound and do a good job of recreating it from scratch

[Hygro]

EX. I am a big fan of Dada Life. I love that phat, thick bass that use in all their tracks.

Why, there's only one answer for this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHFzfZl6NQQ)

[Giran]

For fat and thick basslines, especially in Reason, it's useful to layer 2-4 layers of synths.
Start off with a combinator and a mixer inside. Wire up the following synths:

Use the subtractor. You can use a sine tone for the sub, and another saw/sqr with a low cut off for the low-mid end. For these two sounds, you will want to use a low pass filter to cut off everything over 500hz.

From there you can use maelstrom/thor (usually saw osc x3) for the mid/high basslines, depending on which you type of sound you're after. Insert a high pass filter around 300hz to cut all the low end (prevents muddiness/phasing etc) and then apply some nasty saturation. Scream 4 always works a treat. :)

From the output of the mixer, you might want to stick a compressor to "glue" these synths to form that one big bassline, with a stereo imager making any frequency below 60-80hz dead central. :tup:

Furthermore, this is just a rough guide to making a bassline. The basslines you hear in Dada Life's tracks have been heavily processed with either some extreme compression (limiting), bitcrusher and/or multiband distortion. You'll never get it to sound 100% like it, but you can come pretty close. :)

[Jason Cerna]

read up on subtractive synthesis. that will give you the basics for everything

[TBA]

thanks for all the help/tips!
rep for all!
I will try to post some stuff once I get the ball rolling

[thehadgi]

Good luck :tup:

[Michael.Anthony]

read up on subtractive synthesis. that will give you the basics for everything

Exactly what Jason said! :tup:

I'm still new to producing and sound design is extremely hard for me but this article made me understand it a bit better

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1351

[drop1]

A little on the techy side but I learned a metric shit ton from these.


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

[ezelkow1]

also these, a nicer organized version of all the SoS articles
http://synth.tk/