Learn to build any sound you imagine on any synthesizer using four universal elements. The course covers subtractive synthesis in Reason and Ableton Live, plus FM synthesis, with a reverse-engineering approach that deconstructs existing patches to show how each part shapes the final sound.
Hey, everybody, welcome to the class. Welcome to Sound Design Fundamentals. Part one, Synthesis. There will be a part two after this where we'll focus on sampling, but in this one we're gonna focus on synthesis. Now, my goal for this class is for you to be able to look at any synthesizer, whether it's software or hardware, and be able to look at it on first glance and say, okay, I know what that does, I know what that does. I know what that does. I can make some sound on this thing. And to take it a step further, I have a sound in my head. I know how to make that on whatever synthesizer is available to me. I have this approach that I've been using in my in person classes forever, which is to kind of identify these four key elements that all synthesizers have and then learn those. And then whenever you see any synthesizer, no matter what software you're working in, or whether if you're in front of a big, huge, like analog synth, you'll be able to find these four things and that'll get you up and off the ground in a snap. So you've got to learn what those are and you've got to learn how to use them. And then we'll also look at some of the other things that make different synthesizers unique and why we have a ton of synthesizers. Because if it was just these four things, then we would always just have the same four things and everything would sound the same. So there is more than just these four things, but the four things are really important to getting our feet wet, to understanding, kind of a good grounding point for understanding how to use any different kind of synthesizer. So in this class I'm going to be using both Reason and Ableton Live, and I'll be demonstrating two main different kinds of synthesis. We'll be talking about subtractive synthesis, primarily in Reason, but we'll also look at subtractive synthesis in Ableton Live. And also we'll be looking at FM synthesis. And I'll be talking a little bit about different kinds of synthesis along the way, but those are the main two that we're going to work with in this class. And that'll be a great foundation for all the different kinds of synthesis that you'll encounter. If you understand how those two work, then I think if you encounter one of the other kinds of synthesis, you'll be able to wrap your head around them pretty quick and say, oh, okay, I get it, different kinds of synthesis as well. And we'll talk briefly about those other kinds of synthesis in this class. As well. So the goal is how to take a sound that you imagine in your head and create it in whatever tool you have available to you. So if you're using Ableton Live, you'll be great in this class. If you're using Reason, you'll be great in this class. If you're using any other piece of software, you'll be great in this class as long as it has synthesizers. This will show you how to use those synthesizers in this class. That is what you will learn. So let's dive in and start working on these four key elements, and then we'll start picking apart some patches. Throughout this class, what we're going to do is we'll load up a patch that makes a cool sound that we like, and then I'm going to start picking it apart and say, okay, let's look what this element's doing. Let's look at what that element's doing. Kind of a reverse engineering approach, but it works really great to learn these kinds of concepts. Okay, let's dive in.
