Original subtitles

have you ever wondered what

really draws you into good space ambient

music

is it the icy and ethereal quality of

those ambient drones

is it the thumping of that bass drum and

the glistening of those glitch

percussion sounds

well it very well could be but an often

overlooked and really important part of

space ambient music

is the lead sound or the space plucks as

we like to call them

and in today's video we're going to dive

straight into that topic and i'm going

to show you guys

one of my favorite patches of all time

and then

we're going to recreate that patch

inside of vital so hopefully

you guys are going to see how i create

my space plugs

and you'll learn something along the way

so as always before we start

smash that like button on the way in

make sure you guys subscribe to the

channel if you feel called to do so

and let's dive in all right here we are

inside of ableton live now i've got a

couple tracks set up including a little

demo here

that we will dive into in just a minute

but i want to draw some attention to

the three or four mini tracks that we

have over here on

the right hand side now this is a blank

instance of vital so we're gonna

design our patch here now as i told you

um the patch that i was referencing in

the intro

is one of my favorite patches it's you

can hear it heavily

on the first couple signs of life

records as well as the first

couple ascendant records uh it's the

most beautiful

sound and it's just a simple synth sound

and uh it's by my dear friend and one of

my favorite sound designers

uh love drum soren highville from

denmark and he has

been such a great mentor for me

um coming up the game and learning how

to design

sound he's always been there and even

when i was first starting out and we met

he was never discouraging he was always

completely

on board and told me to just keep going

and keep pushing myself and

eventually i can get there um with what

i was doing and

anyway regardless this is a very uh old

patch

off of i think it was luftrum9 uh

because it must have been

that old because it was on the first

science of life record and it's a patch

called save the forest and it's on

diva of course and i just want to kind

of like

play this patch so you guys can

experience what it's all about maybe

you'll recognize the sound immediately

[Music]

so you hear that sound and immediately

like i'm completely transported like as

soon as i was like oh my god there's the

sound right

and you know for years i used this sound

uh with of course like some slight

modifications but then

eventually i was like okay well this is

great and all

[Music]

but like diva is not an easy synthesizer

by any respect it's a beautiful sounding

synthesizer but i've never found it very

intuitive like i do with serum or vital

so to like recreate that sound

uh it was kind of important to me so

that's when i first started designing

sounds like okay well let's try to

recreate save the forest like that's

that's a classic right

so i got pretty close on

um ancient technology in serum my first

sound set

and i think i say by say close like it's

pretty close so let's take a listen this

is called

a patch called cobblestones again off of

ancient technology

you see like i mean that's pretty close

right like i

i spent hours on that just dialing in

that sound and also

dissecting um what makes save the force

so good so let's let's

actually go back to save the forest and

we'll dissect as best we could

can given the nature of diva so over

here in the oscillators we have

a triangle wave and combined with a

sawtooth wave and a sine wave

the mix is mostly it's basically

weighted towards the sine wave

and i think the most important part of

the patch is not only the um filter

envelope so we have a very heavy handed

filter envelope

with a low cut off and high resonance

okay that's kind of important

but the adsr over here is a very fast

attack

not really a long decay but there is

some sustain and release in there in

both the uh

envelopes one and two

okay and there's a really nice delay

going on here and a plate reverb so that

is

basically save the forest i mean if you

look at the uh the scope

here's kind of the shape that it makes

it's kind of sine wavy with a little bit

of

tilt to it i guess

but what i love about save the force is

as you get higher on the keys it's the

filter envelope starts to open up

um and

[Music]

i again i tried to recreate that inside

of my patch

um so let's see what we can do inside of

vital now

when i approach a space plug it it's all

about

number one the oscillators and number

two the envelope okay

and we're gonna do this approach like i

said we're gonna do save the forest but

we're gonna put a little twist on it

and we're gonna do this one envelope to

rule them all

trick okay so i'm going to load up

the basic shapes patch over here and

we'll start with

that triangle wave so it's the one it's

the third one over

okay so we're gonna delete these and

then we're gonna select all these

keyframes we're gonna delete those now

we're left with just one keyframe here

okay so if i move the

wavetable frame thing it's not moving

now we just have a triangle wave okay

so let's also leave the default um

sawtooth wave here so that's our

triangle plus sawtooth

and then we'll put a sine wave here by

loading up the factory patch and the

basic shapes again

and then we'll go in here and we will

delete everything

else remove the keyframes now we're just

left with

three single cycle wave tables

uh a triangle a sawtooth and a sine wave

so let's

play that patch make sure i'm on the

right record here we're gonna play this

patch and you're gonna hear

okay well hold on let me turn off some

of that delay it's

that's basically it i mean like okay

that's a good start right like if you

can bit if you can dither down

the oscillators to exactly what that

patch is

uh by creating you know blending the

three

shapes there you go so let's now um

adjust the envelope so

as i said it has kind of some decay a

little bit of sustain and some release

right here okay

so this is envelope two we'll also do

the same with envelope

one so those two envelopes will sort of

match each other all right

and now we have that snappy poppy you

know plucky

envelope that everyone knows and loves

okay cool so these envelopes are

basically identical but what we're gonna

do this is the amp envelope and this is

one is we're gonna use this as the

filter envelope

let's um now add a filter and we're

gonna make sure that that filter covers

all three oscillators

and then we're going to drag the

modulation handle over to the filter

envelope so then

now we got that okay and the resonance

is key here

right so that resonance gives it that

bouncy that kind of like wow wow kind of

sound

cool i love that all right so that the

resonance is sweeping through

uh those frequencies and creating that

sort of plucky sound

okay cool great start all right so now

let's come over to the effects and we're

going to add

a compressor now i debated on giving it

a multi-brand or a single band

compressor but

eventually we're just going to go with

the multi-band okay

and then we're going to add some of that

delay and so

maybe we'll go with a ping pong delay

and i don't know if dotted is the

appropriate move here but

we'll give it a try anyway

let's go tempo we'll go tempo that's

fine

and then we'll ping pong delay that uh

feedback is at 42 and then we'll be

about like 60 percent around

give or take okay that's a little too

much we'll go

turn the view back down

there you go and now we're going to wash

the whole thing in reverb so let's cut

it out here and then we're going to

put a nice um

cool all right

nice nice okay

now what we're going to do is we're

going to take the velocity uh handle

over here i'm going to drag that over

here

and make sure it's kind of not like i

mean it's there

so as we get higher um

[Music]

we also can take the octave note or um

and we can take that and move it over

here so as it gets higher

it gets higher

all right that's good um

[Music]

that's pretty close right all right now

here's where we're gonna put our little

twist on it so now we have sort of

let's save the forest right let's start

adding some frames onto these wave

tables and see where we can take this

all right so let's add another frame

here at the end and we're going to do

the trick that i've gone over on this

channel several times

is adding some harmonics to each of your

waves and then you got

like this you can already hear right

away the wave is starting to change we

can add some of the change from the

phase and then we're going to switch the

blending mode to spectral blend

and now as you can see we have a

triangle morphing into this

whatever thing we have okay

what we're going to do is we're going to

attach envelope to like i said one

envelope to rule them all

so as we pluck the wavetable is now

moving all right

and you can apply this technique to like

all kinds of parameters

uh it doesn't just have to be limited to

the wave table frame itself so let's

also do that with the

uh sawtooth and the sawtooth is a little

harder to work with i find

uh so like we're gonna have to like

really mangle this thing

uh to do and then mess with that

you still have that straight line in the

middle whatever and then boom like this

[Music]

something that we like okay

and now we'll change the blending of the

spectral blend there we go and now we

can tie that envelope to it

here we go

[Music]

so that kind of gives us a little bit of

uh uh interest right when we every time

we pluck

now not only are we changing the filter

envelope we're also changing the wave

table frame

and it's giving us just that little bit

more dynamic range okay

so that's cool right so now we can also

tie an lfo let's tie lfo to sync and

we'll put it on sine wave

and um we will um

tie that to maybe the pan over here and

like make it kind of slow

like two over one ah one over one

and we'll make that bipolar so it goes

left to right

[Music]

all right that now this is sounding good

to me right so like

real simple plucks if you just add the

right delay the right reverb and then

sort of like pan them in the right

direction maybe we'll go here put this

one over here this one over here

now you have that kind of wide open

spacey pluck kind of sound now let's

play the demo track and we'll see what

we can

add to it all right so here we got just

like a

you know simple

like down and dirty signs beat right so

let's go okay so let's key in some notes

here we're playing the key of d minor

so let's grab a pencil and we're just

going to go

here we go hold shift

there we go all right and then

all right

there we go

there it is right there

boom

all right

so as you can see like space flux

now that move i mean the way that moves

that's cool that works for us even if

the temple was slower

oh that's even that's nasty

i love it you can adjust now the key

here is adjusting the filter envelope

oh that's very save the force like yeah

so the filter envelope control inside of

that envelope

is crucial and so if you dial that in

right you're going to get the sound that

you want

now another thing that we can do is we

can hit filter 2 and then have

that be covering or filtering filter one

and then you can use this

[Music]

to affect the overall sounds like

another master filter i love that effect

we can tie that to a sine wave put this

on sink

and we'll tie that to a sine wave

like this and then we'll pull this over

here

four over one

[Applause]

turn up the resonance ooh that's nice

see just like that all right

so hopefully you guys got something out

of this little mini tutorial today

uh if you guys have diva i highly

recommend that you buy

soaring sound sets for i mean there's so

many different synthesizers that he does

a lot of his

newer stuff is for omnisphere and

various synthesizers but i've always

been a fan

and thanks so much for all the

inspiration

soren you really uh changed my life for

the better here so

anyway back to your little space block

tutorial if you guys

found this useful make sure you guys

smash that like button and subscribe to

the channel

i will be back again with more tutorials

very soon

[Music]

in the meantime as always keep your

heads in the clouds and your feet

planted firmly on the ground my name is

science of life

and i'll see you all on the other side

peace

you