http://soundcloud.com/superiormarmalade/you-and-what-army-into-your
Unfortunately my screen capture software isn't working so I will have to use a text tutorial. The thing I will do a tut about is the guitar-esque synth in my remix and how I vary it from an ambient synth to a heavy bass. Now this synth was designed to sound like a fake guitar so don't expect super-realistic emulations. I will be making it with only default plugins that come with Ableton Live but I'll try keep it as general as possible.
To begin with, open up an analog and route both oscillators to the filter 1 and send the output of filter 1 into the input of filter 2, what this does is it makes it possible to use the filter to shape the actually sound as well as making filter sweeps possible. Now in the envelopes for both oscillators, turn the release down to 0 and leave the rest of the controls where they are. In the filters turn the attack and release down to 0 and the decay and sustain to max.
Put both oscillators to the pulse wave mode and turn their width down to about 30% so they are very thin pulse waves, I'm not sure why but this sounds the most guitar like of all the waves. Turn both oscilators down an octave and tune one up by 7 semitones to get a thick bassy tone.
In the first filter, turn the freq down to about 850hz and the resonance up to about a third of the way up (you should fiddle with these a bit as they can shape the tone a lot). In the second filter turn the freq to the maximum and the resonance to 0, we will automate this later on to build up to the drop.
This is all you'll really need to do in analog, you can put on some unison to make it have a bit more motion and sound a bit wider but that make the synth a bit less powerful.
Next load up an instance of Amp, or whatever distortion unit you have, and switch the type to "heavy" (I normally only use Blues and Bass but for this synth Heavy is the best) and turn up the gain a bit. The settings on here are mostly up to you but I boosted the bass, cut the mids a bit and boosted the presence. This made the sound tighter and cut through the mix a bit better.
After the distortion create a eq. Cut out all of the low end below about 100hz to make room for the sub and boost about 200hz. Scoop out more mids around 500hz to get rid of some of the more muddy tones. You should use this eq to really shape your synth, make the best bits of it shine and remove the less pleasant parts of the sound.
At this point you can add any effects you like, phasers, flangers, chorus, I like to add a small room type reverb after this just to make it sit better in the mix and a notch filter with the frequency automated.
Next create a filter and set it to high pass mode and take the frequency so you can just about hear the guitar by cutting out all the bass and most of the mids. After this add a reverb with quite a high dry/wet and a delay with about 30% dry/wet and a high feedback. Hold shift and click on these three devices, when they are all selected you need to right click on one of them and press group to group them to an audio effect rack. Now you can automate the on button on the rack to switch the heavy guitar to an ambient space-y synth.
Hope this wasn't too hard to follow and you can understand it.
Pokey
