Oneshots: Volume 1

Since launching Symplesound, my focus has been to create intuitive instruments and presets that make it easy for producers to create their own sounds – without having to be an expert at synthesizers.

Because of that, I decided to redesign all of the instruments on this blog and collect them into one pack, making everything much easier to use. The pack also includes tutorials, integrated effects and MIDI clips for inspiration.

They're still 100% free – because I want to continue supporting synth fans everywhere – and they're now available at the Symplesound shop, along with more free downloads and goodies.

Hope you enjoy these updates! Download them here.

The Haunting

So... Last week, I released my latest single on Audiophile Deep - "A Night At The Opera" - which is a dark track that's ideal for Halloween sets. At the time of this writing, it's still climbing the Traxsource tech house chart, so I'm stoked for that :)

There's a full preview at the bottom of this post and you can pick it up at Traxsource here.

But that's not the sole purpose for this post. In addition to making tracks and designing presets, I've been working on a different approach to sound itself that I hope you'll dig.

The idea is simple: Recreate real-world soundscapes as accurately as possible using synthesis – in this case, Ableton's Operator softsynth – so that the result is a virtual environment that sounds real, but was created entirely in Live.

In keeping with all of this Halloween spookiness, my first work in this medium is called "The Haunting" and it's a two-minute composition inspired by the classic haunted house meme.

Below is a Soundcloud audio preview. I'm also including the entire Ableton project file so people with Live and Operator (or Suite) can check out each sound and explore how it was created. And yes, you can use it in commercial projects - as long as you please credit me and send a courtesy notification. I'm easy that way.

This is completely new territory for me as an artist, so I hope it inspires people to delve deeper into sound design. I definitely have more projects like these and I plan to give them away on this blog as a way to teach producers that there's more you can do with synths besides make them beep.

(And if you appreciate what I'm doing here and want to show some love, please buy "A Night At The Opera" on Traxsource.)

You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook too, for more music tech info :)

Download The Haunting [Requires Ableton Live 9.2 and Operator]

Less Cowbell Operator Patch

Back in 2009, I released a track on Different Pieces/Armada called Less Cowbell

Earlier this month, I rebooted the track with updated drums and used it in my May podcast. [Update: I've since posted the full reboot as a free download.]

The core sound in Less Cowbell is based on an custom Ableton Live Operator patch that deconstructs the original TR-808 analog cowbell sound.

To commemorate the original release in 2009, Peter Kirn's Create Digital Music blog posted a piece on the making of the track - along with a downloadable version of the Operator patch - so producers could see how it was done and tinker with the sound itself.

I was going to post a link to the original article here, but I've since made a few revisions to the info and download, so I'm posting a new Live Set that includes the patch - and a sequence to get you started with the macros.

The set is compatible with Live 7.0.18 or higher - and requires Operator (but it will still work in demo mode, even if you don't own this little wündersynth).

Ableton Preset: Tuvanism

One of this season's trends in EDM tracks is a focus on voice-like synth sounds. Pleasurekraft's 2010 hit "Tarantula" is one of the main influences for this synthesis technique.

Whenever a new sound hits the clubland zeitgeist, I'll find myself spending spare time analyzing the timbres and textures and reverse-engineering the techniques for future reference. For this particular trend, I've found myself experimenting with vocoders and formant filters.

What's a formant filter?

Ableton Preset: Gillette

This month's preset is an homage to my favorite new softsynth, NI's RAZOR.

Yeah, yeah, I've been going on about RAZOR incessantly since it came out, but savvy readers know that I just don't gush unless a synth is incredible - and RAZOR is truly incredible.

So I got to thinking... How do I capture some of that magic in an Ableton preset that's compatible with Live, without using Operator as its core?

The result is a simple additive instrument called "Gillette".

For starters, I created four single-cycle waves: fundamental (1st harmonic), odd harmonics, even harmonics, and prime-numbered harmonics. Then I placed each in its own Simpler and placed those Simplers inside an Instrument Rack.

From there, I added the following macros:

Super Secret Roland Project

A lot of people have been asking about the top secret programming gig I recently did for Roland.

Here's a hint ;)