One way of learning to tweak a synth

Intro

The latest addition to my VST collection is Predator by Rob Papen, which I bought and downloaded this weekend. The synth comes with a vast collection of presets, and never have I been more impressed by the quality of a VTS’s factory presets than I was while browsing through Predators preset banks.

I’m not going to explain the Predator, as you can read this for yourself at www.robpapen.com
I will only briefly say that it comes with three oscillators, each offering 128 waveforms, 2 filters,  arpeggiator, effects, and more. It has all the sound design capabilities you need in order to create sounds ranging from old school/classic synth sounds to futuristic/avant-garde sounds.

Exercise

Don’t ask me why, but the first thing I did after getting Predator was to start replicating some of Predator’s presets in Zebra2. Suddenly Zebra2, which is offering even more synthesis methods than Predator, came to life and I learned ways of creating sounds I didn’t know before.

This is definitely a way to go forward for those who’s not trusting their capabilities in synth design: take a preset in synth A and replicate it in synth B.

The most important thing in such a context is that both synth A and B is offering the same waveforms. Most common waveforms are Sine, Saw, Triangle and Square waveforms, therefore if you have two different VST’s it’s a good chance that you can work with these waveforms in both synths.

Don’t be disappointed if synth A and B is not sounding the same in spite of identical settings. Let’s say you are using one Osc – a saw – in both synths. The filter settings, ADSR envelopes, etc are all identical, but still they don’t’ sound the same.  You are now infact discovering that the properties of each synth are different:remember that a LP filter in synth A might sound different from a LP filter in synth B, the envelopes in synth A might have a different response than the envelopes in synth B, etc.

NB! I recommend to start with all effects turned off.

Doing exercises like this is what expands one’s knowledge.