This is a transcript from my video How to Make Synths so go watch that video if you prefer video content.
So I wanted to make a post about how to learn to make your own synths. So what can you be doing to make sure that you know how to make your own synth instruments and create those sounds yourself without having to rely on presets.
Presets can be great, but sometimes you want to be able to make your own. You might be listening to a song and hear a sound that you really like and you want to be able to recreate that. You don’t want to have to rely on presets to find what that sound is. So being able to make your own sounds, knowing how to synthesize music, and make your own synth instruments can be very useful.
I personally use Pro Tools and Reason so that’s what I’ll be referencing or thinking about when talking about how to make your own instruments, but these ideas can be used with whatever program you’re using. You can use them with most synthesizers.
Learn what different waveforms sound like
The first thing I would do when learning how to synthesize music especially using a wavetable synthesizer. That’s a synthesizer that uses specific waveforms. Get familiar with what those waveforms sound like. Can you picture in your head what a triangle wave sounds like? What about a square wave? Or a sine wave? Or a sawtooth wave?
Waveform examples
Make sure that you can hear all of those different sounds as being distinct so that you can try to pick apart what waveforms may be used in some other synth. You want to be able to audiate in your head what they sound like. Now the way I would do this is to find some type of distinguishing factor with all of them.
Sine wave
The way I think about it is, a sine wave if the purest. It’ll sound the cleanest of all of them.
Triangle wave
A triangle wave will be slightly harsher because it has more overtones.
Square wave
A square wave will sound like old=school video game music.
Sawtooth wave
And a sawtooth wave will sound the harshest and honestly to me it sounds a lot like Deadmau5’s music.
Learn about envelope and ADSR
Another thing is to learn about your envelope settings. That’s ADSR. What does that mean when you see that on a synthesizer? There are often knobs or levels/faders that you can adjust to change what those different parameters mean. And what do they sound like when they change the sound?
Envelope ADSR settings
“A” stands for Attack. So that’s how quickly the sound turns on or fades in. If it’s really low it’ll be immediate. If it’s really long it’ll take a long time for that sound to fade in. “D” stands for Decay. That’s the amount of time it takes to lower the sound to the level of “S”, which is Sustain. The “S” one is the level of the key when you hold it down. So if it’s all the way up it’ll be as loud as it can be. If it’s all the way down there’ll be no sustain.
So the last one is “R” which is Release. That’s how long it takes for the sound to go away once you lift the key up. If the release is really high then once you lift the key up there’ll be a long tail before the sound goes away. If it’s really low as soon as you lift the key up the sound stops.
ADSR has a curve that you can kind of picture in your head to help you visualize the sound. I’ll put a picture of it here so that you can see it.
ADSR curve
Try to picture that in your head and imagine changing those lines around, changing what that graph looks like. How does that change what the sound will sound like?
ADSR example 1
If you hear a sound try to imagine what the ADSR curve looks like. One way you can think of it is if you turn the attack all the way down, the decay all the way down, the sustain all the way up, and the release all the way down. As soon as you press down a key, the sound will sound as loud as it can. As soon as you lift it up, it’ll turn off. It’ll kind of be like an on/off switch for the sound.
ADSR example 2
If you want it to sound a little more gentle, a little more like a pad, turn up the attack a little bit and turn up the release a little bit. And maybe a little bit of decay and lower the sustain from the highest a tiny bit. It means the sound will fade in, lower in volume a little bit as you sustain the notes, and then once you lift your hand up from the keys it’ll tail out a little bit.
Learn how each effect sounds
So once you know waveforms and ADSR, I would learn what different effects sound like. Be able to imagine in your head how distortion will change the sound. How will flanger or chorus or phaser or reverb or delay? All of these things are different effects that you can add to your synthesizer. Being able to know what they sound like before you add them on your sound will help be able to more quickly and more easily be able to create your own sounds.
There are mainly three steps I would say to learning how to create your own synths. Get familiar with waveforms and what they all sound like. Get familiar with ADSR. How does that change the sound? And get familiar with your effects.
Once you know those things you’ll be on your way to being able to create your own sounds and being able to imagine how a sound was created when you hear it in a song. Personally, one of my favorite things about knowing about music production and music synthesis is being able to hear a song on the radio and kind of pick it apart in my head. Especially if it has a lot of electronic instruments. Being able to understand how it was created and how you can make something like that yourself is one of my favorite things about understanding music production and music synthesis.
It also 100% helps for being able to create your own music especially if you’re making electronic music. It adds another level of gratification and satisfaction into making your own music because you know that all of the sounds that are in that song you made yourself. You didn’t rely on presets, even though presets can be great. You didn’t need to rely on them. You thought, what is the sound that I want? That’s what I’m going to make.
Thor
Malstrom
Subtractor
Reason synthesizers
The main thing is learning what your synths are and what they can do. If you’re learning Reason, like I am, learn the Thor synthesizer. Learn subtractor. Learn Malstrom. Once you know what those can all do and you’ve experimented, you’ll be on your way to being able to make your own sounds.
One fun activity that you can try and do is recreate sounds that you’ve heard in other songs. If you listen to a lot of Porter Robinson try to make a sound that sounds like a Porter Robinson sound. If you listen to a lot of deadmau5 try to create the “deamau5 pluck.” Whatever song it is, it doesn’t have to be either of those. Try to find a sound and recreate yourself. Or try to get as close to it as you can.
Depending on what you’re using you might not be able to get exactly there. Try and get as close as you can so that you can better understand what went into creating that sound.
That’s it for this post. I hope you found it useful. I hope you learned something about music. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter and as always thank you for watching. Peace.
I know, I know. The analogy of music as a language is incredibly old and cliché and overdone … but it can be useful.
Often music shares pieces of “language.” When I listen to music I try to hear those different pieces of language. I personally use tools like solfege and roman numeral analysis to figure out those different pieces of language, but you can use whatever tools you have.
Try to hear the pieces of language.
Use songs to help you with this. One common group of notes that are used are sol – mi – la or G – E – A. Those are the only notes that make up “Rain, Rain Go Away” and “Ring Around the Rosie.” Start with those. Then learn do – re – mi. That’s “Three Blind Mice”, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction and “Closer” by Chainsmokers. It’s so many different songs. Another common group of notes to be able to hear is do – re – mi – sol. Those are the first four notes of the pentatonic scale. They’re used in “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train and the traditional song “Going Home”. Learn to hear them and that’ll give you a good start.
Another example. The progression of notes of C E F G is in a bunch of different songs. But whenever I hear it, I hear it as do – mi – fa – sol and “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In.” I use that song to remember the sound of that piece of musical language.
The more you do this the easier it will get. You’ll have more pieces of language to reference when hearing music.
Here are some notes for what I learned from Hungarian Dance no. 1
It starts with this stepwise motif over a G minor chord (i minor). Then it moves to the iv chord (C minor) and later the V chord (D major).
It then repeats with a slightly different accompaniment.
That’s A.
The next section B has some fast 16th notes and runs that contrast the previous section. Then there are some constant or continuous 16th notes moving between G minor and C minor.
The next section C starts on the V chord (D major). It’s in 4 bar phrases with a repeat sign. The second half of this section starts on the bVII chord (F major) and now more ornaments are introduced. Most recordings I heard also had ritardandos at all the cadences.
Again this dotted eighth note + sixteenth note motif is played but bigger and formed into a longer melody. Maybe this is related to the dotted quarter + eighth note in the original theme at the beginning of the piece.
Now we’re back at the A and it’s the same as the first one.
The second half of this part is slightly different than [B] so we could call it B’ or B prime.
It has lots of sequences in all of the runs. I’ve never been good at writing with sequences, especially fast ones on piano.
Something I tell my students all the time is that practice makes permanent. NOT practice makes perfect. If you practice piano with poor technique, then you’ll play piano with poor technique, no matter how much you practice. So practice with good technique. That way when you perform you’ll be performing with good technique.
A great way to make sure that we do this is to practice slowly. Play so slowly that every single detail is correct. This might mean that you’re playing so slowly that you get bored. You might be playing slower than 1/4 speed. That’s fine.
The main thing is that each detail is correct.
This is something that golfers and olympic athletes do. They practice slow enough to be able to think about each tiny movement that they need to be able to do. That way they can really make sure that they’re accurately and efficiently doing each movement.
Now quick disclaimer. If you really get into doing this and you go super deep with it you’ll be playing so slowly that it’ll almost be like you’re playing in slow motion. That’s fine. That’ll be helpful and incredibly beneficial to your playing. So do that if you can handle it. BUT. If you can’t and you get bored doing that, play a little faster. Fast enough where you’re still engaged in what you’re doing, but slow enough where you’re playing accurately. Maybe you can’t think about every single tiny little detail, but you can think about the important details. Do that.
When you practice this way you’re making sure that you remember exactly how to play everything perfectly. You’re ingraining in your brain how each movement should be done and it makes a difference.
I do this for basically anything that’s fast. Anything on guitar or piano that’s a fast run I do this with. And I notice a pretty big difference. If I can take just 5 minutes and play something through slowly and perfectly I’ll notice afterwards that I’m able to play it much faster and much more accurately because of that.
I’ve even demonstrate this with my students. I’ll demonstrate this practice technique with something that they’re learning and point out that even in the 5 minutes that I’ve spent doing it IN THE LESSON there’s a noticeable difference. I’m not playing it twice as fast, but I’m playing it much more accurately and a little faster and a little more easily than I was able to before.
So practice slowly. Then after you practice slowly for a few minutes try speeding it up.
Rather than slowly speeding passages up with a metronome, alternate speeds. Play it super slowly, then try it fast. Then go back to super slow, then back to fast. Almost like you’re testing your speed and accuracy, then going back to building it up.
Today I wanted to make a post talking about some piano practice tips that have been very useful for me and very useful for my students. I teach private piano lessons and I play piano for a youth theatre program. So I’ve played about 9 different musicals on piano and a whole bunch of other music on piano. So I’ve had to learn a few things about practicing and as a result I’ve got some tips.
Tip #1: Slow it down
Slow it down. Whatever you’re playing, whatever you’re trying to learn, play it slowly. If you can’t play it slowly you won’t be able to play it quickly. You want to be able to play it slowly because you want to be able to play it fast, but controlled and accurately. And if you can’t play it slowly you can’t play it fast.
Tip #2: Practice Hand Separately
This one is probably pretty obvious for most piano players, but a lot of the time I sometimes forget to do this. Especially if it’s something I’m trying to learn quickly I don’t practice hands separately even though I should. It might be something that’s a weird amount of coordination and if I just got it better in my left hand I’d be able to play it hands together a whole lot better.
Tip #3: Practice just rhythm
Third one is just practice the rhythm or tap it out. Take what the rhythm is in each hand and practice it just by itself. This is probably my favorite one to give my students. They always feel really goofy doing it, but it always helps a ton. So if you just take the rhythm as just the rhythm. No notes, no piano. And just sit and tap it on your legs or on a desk or on your chest or wherever you’re tapping it. Just tap out the rhythm between your hands. That can often help a ton because you’re getting used to just that weird coordination.
Tip #4: Loop it
Loop whatever you’re doing. If you’re learning something and there’s one measure that’s difficult, try to play that measure over and over and over again. Don’t practice anything else but that measure. It might take 10 times through looping it, but looping it makes it just a little bit more difficult than you’re going to have to do and you’re practicing it repeatedly. So it’ll get you used to that coordination or whatever is difficult about it faster.
I also do this if it’s multiple things. So I might not just loop one measure, but I might loop one measure. Then add a measure and loop two. Then add a measure and loop three. So I’m playing those three measure back to back to back. Then I add one more and I’m playing four measures back to back. Looping stuff can be super useful.
Maybe you only need to do it for two beats. Because then you’re practicing it a whole bunch of times in a very short mount of time.
Tip #5: Improvise with it
Number five, improvise with it. So let’s say there’s some hard left hand rhythm that you’re trying to do or some weird left hand pattern. It’s this tricky left hand part that you’re trying to get and it’s hard to play the other stuff on top of it in your right hand. Once you can get that stuff in your right hand, try and improvise something while doing that same left hand part. It’ll make it so much easier to do and it’s often so much more fun than just repeating the same thing over and over and over again. And it kind of gets you past the level that you kneed. The level you need is playing that specific thing, but if you can improvise on top of it you can play it in multiple contexts other than just the song that you’re learning
6. Simplify it and add on
Last one, which is six. Simplify it and add onto it. Maybe you’re learning a song that has, not just octaves in the right hand, but it has chords block chords and octaves of the melody in the right hand. Before you can do that you need to be able to play the melody just by itself. Then you need to be able to play the melody in octaves. Then you can add the chords.
So you’re doing a couple things when you do that. You’re simplifying so that you don’t have to tackle this one really difficult task all at once. You’re breaking it into small pieces so that you can learn them separately. It can often be very overwhelming to learn a piece of music that has something that’s significantly past your level. And I think personally it’s much more enjoyable to be able to play something, even if it is simpler, at my level. Than struggle for a year to play something that’s way past my level.
I’d rather in a month be able to play something. Then two months after that play something more difficult and then maybe a couple months after that you can add on and keep adding onto that same thing.
So you see this all the time with method books for guitar or piano or whatever instrument. It has a simplified version of the song. You can get books that are called “easy piano” and if you look at those let’s say for “Claire de Lune” or something the piece is going to significantly simpler than the original one, but it’ll still sound like the melody and it’ll still sound like the chords for the most part.
So think about it like that. Strip down stuff that you don’t really need right away. Practice the stuff you can. Then add something. Once you get good at that add something else. Once you get good at that add another thing.
Now I know a lot of these kind of run together and they’re kind of similar, but thinking specifically about using one practice technique when you need it can be very useful. If you’re whatever you’re struggling with thinking, “what is the best way to learn this in the shortest amount of time?” Try to think “How can I learn this in five minutes? How can I be able to play this measure in five minutes of practice?” That’ll often get you really good results because you’re crunching all the time you need into one very specific practice method.
That’s all for this post. I hope you found it useful. I hope you learned something about music and as always thank you for reading. See you next time. Peace.
If you’re into writing electronic music then you should learn what the different waveforms sound like. Can you imagine a sine wave? What about a triangle wave? A square wave? A sawtooth wave? What specifically makes those waveforms distinct from one another. That’s something to learn if you want to be able to design your own synth sounds.
A lot of synth sounds come from some combination of those. Being able to identify what each different waveform sounds like will add a whole other level to your music production process.
It’ll allow you to start thinking of music in your head and more easily get those ideas into your DAW because you’ll be able to identify right away how to make the different sounds you’re imagining.
It might take a while, but it’s definitely worth it to be able to hear the differences between those. Think of it like ear training for electronic musicians. You don’t necessarily need to be able to hear all the different harmonic progressions of jazz, but being able to hear the difference between a sawtooth wave and a square wave will help.
You can also practice it by listening to songs you already know.
Try to figure out how your favorite producers made their sounds. Can you pick apart what went into making a specific sound?
You can test yourself with this by trying to recreate sounds from songs you like. It’ll add a lot to your music production and music composition process. It’ll open lots of possibilities to making music and producing electronic sounds.
The first version I heard of this song was by Hugh Laurie. All of the stuff in this post is stuff I could hear, so it won’t be a complete analysis, but it’ll have some type of analysis.
Harmony
There aren’t a ton of different chords. It mostly focuses on I7, IV7, and V7 with some other stuff added in there as passing chords.
One thing I really like about the blues is that it uses passing chords a whole lot. Groups of notes (chords) aren’t just sat on, but they’re also used as a way to make a melody. You can hear this at the beginning and end of the song. At the beginning right after the short guitar riff there’s a series of descending chords played in passing. They have a “function”, but the main function is to descend down to the I7 chord. The same idea is played at the end of the song.
Texture
I really like the texture in this song. It’s really busy, but I like how busy it is. During the verses (around 0:34) when Sister Rosetta Tharpe is singing “it rained forty days. It rained forty nights. There was no land nowhere in sight”, she’s also playing these chromatic and pentatonic lines on the guitar almost as if it’s a guitar solo. It creates this interesting type of counterpoint where these two lines both work over the harmony, yet they may not have been super carefully thought out to be played together. I really like that type of counterpoint as opposed to some of the counterpoint in older classical music. I like the sort of chaotic sound it creates.
The same type of counterpoint can be heard (around 0:57) in what I’d call the pre-chorus. There are two voices together along with the piano now playing some type of lines over the harmony.
This contrasting with almost all of the instruments playing the same rhythm at the beginning of the chorus (around 1:06) where Sister Rosetta Tharpe sings “didn’t it rain, rain, rain children” makes it more interesting. You then have these two different ideas in the song. The first idea is different lines and different rhythms creating a busier and more chaotic sound. The second being this very uniform and similar rhythm with everyone playing together.
It almost becomes a type of tension and release because it gets more chaotic with the two voices right before the chorus. Then when the chorus starts all the instruments come together to play the same thing. So the chaos and busy-ness of the previous texture is resolved in the chorus.
Another interesting thing this song has is that it’s got a call and response in it. That basically means you have two different voices or instruments playing off of each other. It ends up sounding like a musical conversation.
In the chorus we have these lyrics that almost form a conversation:
Voice 1: “Didn’t it?”
Voice 2: “Yes.”
Voice 1: “Didn’t it?”
Voice 2: “You know it did.”
Voice 1: “Didn’t it?”
Voice 1 and 2 together: “Oh oh my lord didn’t it rain.”
So this conversation is back and forth and ends with both of those voices singing together.
Melody
The melody for this song is pretty clear because there’s a singer. It can get a little harder to distinguish the melody later because there’s multiple singers, but for the most part there’s a clear melody.
One thing to notice when listening to blues and jazz is improvisation. If we listen to two different choruses, they aren’t entirely identical. Sometimes one of the singers sings a little higher than the last time. Sometimes the rhythm is changed a little bit, but it’s still mostly the same melodic shape.
This is probably most obvious in the “conversation” or call and response that we went through earlier. The call stays the same. The words, melody, and rhythm all stay the same every time we hear it throughout the song. But the responses change. The words are always the same, but sometimes the exact notes change and sometimes the rhythm is extended or stretched out.
The final response of “oh oh my lord didn’t it rain”, always stays the same. Again this helps resolve some tension created by the call and response.
Rhythm/Meter
The song stays pretty consistently in 4/4 the entire song. There’s a constant drumbeat throughout the song keeping time.
In the chorus when the singers come together to sing “oh oh my lord didn’t it rain”, there’s almost a polyrhythm played. for a few beats there’s a 3 over 2 polyrhythm because the rhythm of those words accent some off beats. We can visualize this.
1—&—2—&—3—&—4—&—1—&—2—&—3—&—4—&—1
oh oh my lord didn’t it rain
So the melody and instruments are accenting every three 8th notes which in a duple meter like 4/4 creates a polyrhythm of 3 over 2. It doesn’t last very long and is resolved by accenting the last few beats of the measure and ending heavily on the downbeat, resolving the tension created by that polyrhythm. This makes it sound like the end of that call and response is almost jumping to the end.
That’s all I’ve got from listening to that song. It does take a few listens to really figure all that stuff out, but it’s got lots of interesting musical ideas in it.
There’s a quote by, I think, Miles Davis about how the space between the notes is just as important as the notes themselves. Brian Eno’s music reminds me how true that really is.
This song has so few notes and so few sounds, but it still expresses lots of emotion.
The electric piano is alone at times, but never lonely. Maybe it’s the softness of the synth or the line cliché. Maybe it’s the sustained notes in the background.
I often get in my head when thinking about music or composing. Trying to find some really new, innovative, or hip idea can be exhausting.
Brian Eno’s music reminds me you don’t always need to do that.
One simple, yet interesting, idea is all you need to make music.
It depends how you use that idea, but not all music needs to impress academics or fans of jazz or classical music.
Not all of the music you make needs to have a lot of notes.
Sometimes fewer notes expresses much more than anything else.
Also some well placed sustains can add space without having silence.
