Okay – so you’ve made a synth effect that is awesome. There’s power, that sense of space, it hits hard – everything you want, but it’s missing that certain something…
Movement. Making a synth sound morph and warp as it plays is a brilliant way to make it more interesting to listen to. And if you are too busy to ride the modulator wheel, LFOs (low frequency oscillators) are the key!
Here are 5 examples of cool things you can make with the help of an LFO…
Make an awesome DnB Bassline
To add that “mmmmwwwwwwwoooaaaa” sound to your bassline, make a low bassy synth effect then add an LFO modulating a low-pass filter with a bit of resonance to really add the “B” of “DnB”!
LFO UFO!
On a high sine wave effect, use a fast LFO on the pitch to make the old school Sci Fi theremin effect whenever anything to do with Aliens is mentioned!
Who needs gating?
For a simple gating effect in those synths that lack them, harshly oscillate the volume with the LFO to cut the sound entirely and give an emulated gate!
More interesting attack!
Add some pitch or filter LFO to a synth effect with the “One Shot” turned on to add some character to the start of your effect!
Obscure computer noise
Use an LFO that has multi-level binary peaks and troughs with a pitch modulator to give a random, Sci Fi-esque computer sound!
Any other LFO-related ideas? Tell us them in a comment!
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Hows it goin? I have just done youre seven day tutorial for drum n bass using reason and it was excellent. Picked up loads of stuff mate. I have been toying around with reason for about 8 months but was never really sure of how to operate the compressors or any of the mastering hardware, and up until now I have not used thor very often so thanks for that. could you do a tutorial on editng samples in recycle.