FUNDAMENTALS IN SYNTH PAINTING - Part 4: 808 Synthesis in Serum with Lonneker
Added 2021-08-11 17:37:18 +0000 UTC
In this Lux Cache tutorial series, we dive into the essential components of synth painting, training the ability of being able to create the sounds that are in your head. In this tutorial, Dutch experimental pop producer and sound smith Lonneker explains how to create 808s using world renowned synth engine, Serum, as well as some tricks to give your 808 some more character. Along with this tutorial, Lonneker has provided the Serum presets walked through, as well as a sample pack featuring all the sounds created in this tutorial. This tutorial is available as both a Patreon text post and .pdf document format.
This tutorial is available as both a Patreon text post and .pdf document format. We ask you kindly to not share Lux Cache content outside of the Patreon, our contributors rely on your donations.
All preview sounds/clips mentioned in this tutorial can be found in this private SoundCloud playlist or this accompanying Google Drive folder.
- 6 Accompanying Serum presets by Lonneker are available to Premium Subscribers on the Lux Cache Patreon page.
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Contents
- The Base of the 808
- Serum FX
- Trick’s for 808s
- Post Processing Tricks
- Conclusion
For this tutorial we are going to be looking into 808 painting in serum. When making the 808’s for the little preset pack that is included, I saw a bit of a pattern of doing things when making an 808. So I think it would be most useful to talk about those things that I saw that I did regularly while making 808’s. It’s actually very similar to the kick tutorial I did previously so I will be a bit less detailed than last time.
So let’s get started with making the base of the 808, after we have made the base of the 808 we will go over things that might be cool to make your 808 more unique.
We will only be using serum to create 808s in this tutorial, no other audio processing on these sounds.
1. The base of the 808
1.1 Wavetable/OSC
For the base of the 808 we are going to be using the “Analog - Analog_BD_SIN” which is a sine wave that has harmonics when going through the wavetable positions. Honestly my most used wavetable in serum. I just love it for anything bass related. It just adds a bit more harmonics to the sounds that are very crisp, love the sound of it and makes it a bit more interesting already.
For now we just leave it as it is, but we do put the “RAND” on 0 so that we have a bit more consistency.
1.2. Envelope 1
For envelope 1 we turn down the sustain and put the decay a bit longer. Also turn the attack to 0.0 ms. This gives a little click which is going to be useful for the transient part of the 808. It’s not that noticeable when the start position isn’t random of the wavetable, but it does add a little bit.
1.3. LFO 1
For LFO 1 we make the shape like this which you will already probably see as a kick shape. We will be using this to make the transient of the 808 and we will be linking it to the coarse pitch of OSC 1 which will put at 60. There is not a huge reason why the LFO is based in the middle, it’s mostly because the standard setting when modulating is “bipolar” instead of “unipolar” so it goes both ways and so the middle is 0 in this case.
2. SERUM FX
Now the 808 is pretty much there, though it’s a bit boring so we want to add some effects to make it stand out a bit more and be more usable. The first effect that we will use is distortion.
2.1 Distortion
We want to give the 808 a bit more punch and a bit more aggressive and distortion does this.
For the distortion we are going to be using the “Asym” distortion mode. Before making this tutorial I would’ve use just the standard tube distortion mode, but when making the 808’s for the preset pack I tried some more modes and at the end I liked this mode more, the tube removes a lot of the lows of the 808 and this one’s not as much and it’s a bit heavier than the tube one.
We are going the put the drive at 32%.
2.2. Chorus
For the chorus we are going to be mostly using default settings, but we are going to put the LPF down to 350hz and add a LFO to the mix with the base being 53% and the modulation at -53%. I added the modulation because I didn’t want to have the chorus effect on the transient of the 808. Adding the chorus will make the 808 sound a bit fuller in the lows. It’s a trick that I actually saw from Kai Whiston when he posted a snippet of “Lockii” of the album “XYZ” on his insta and I haven’t stopped using it since then. It just really makes the 808 more full and adds some really nice lows to it.
2.3. Compressor
This is the last part of the base of most of the 808’s that I have made. This one does give a major difference to the 808. I honestly can’t go without the Serum FX compressor. I just love how it sounds which you can probably hear in my music (lmao). It makes it sound so much brighter and more detailed which is a thing that I really search for, so if you have a sound that’s a bit muffled or anything, try to put the serum fx on a sound and with the multiband compressor on. It will change the sounds a lot. We are going to change the attack, release, gain and switch on the multiband mode of the compressor. The attack will be all the way down and the release all the way up for this one, but you can play a bit with the release. It’s sometimes cooler to put it somewhere halfway. Lastly we are going to turn up the gain to around 13.5 dB to make the 808 a bit louder.
Oh, and as last turn the 808 voicing to mono.
Okay so now we have the base of most of my 808’s. Now it’s time to experiment and play around with all the sick features serum has.
3. TRICKS FOR 808’s
NOTE: For every section I use the base 808 we made in this tutorial as the starting point (unless said otherwise).
3.1 Remap
When I want to make the 808 more crispy and more rough I use this a lot. I just add (most of the time) an extra saw wave OSC and put the warp mode to “REMAP1” and edit it to look like the picture that’s underneath this text. With the remap on it almost acts like there is a high pass on top of the synth without using any of the filters, which gives me more room for the filters. I do put the level way down because I only want to add a bit more texture to it.
When we have added this to the 808 it sounds something like this.
3.2 Resonance Distortion
For this, we change the distortion a little bit. Turning up the drive to 82%, turning on the distortion filter and basically pushing the resonance to max. This gives it a really crispy distortion and kind of adds an extra OSC to the 808, which in this instance doesn’t change notes and just stays at one note, but I think you could actually make some sort of resonance based synth using the “NOTE” modulator.
~~Resonances Distortion 808.wav~~
3.3. Wavetables
I don’t really have something to show for this, but some of my favorite wavetables that serum has that you must try for sure are: ICanHasKick, Analog_Bd_Sin, Reesey Mess 3 and honestly the default saw wave. These 4 are almost 90% of all my serum stuff, I am not even joking. Perhaps I should look into more wavetables, but these just always give what I want when sound design in serum.
3.4. FM WARP MODE
For this section we have to do a little bit more stuff, but it will be worth it. We are going to be adding a new OSC, but will only be using it for FM to try and add some more detail to the 808. This is a really nice and safe way to build upon your 808 since you can go fully insane with it, but if you don’t like it you can just turn off the OSC.
First we will be setting up a new LFO. It’s a pretty basic shape, but you can also just go ham with it if you want.
This LFO we will be linking to the wavetable position of OSC A and the Warp mode of OSC A which has the base set to 19% and the linked LFO to 21%. The warp mode will be set to FM (FROM B).
For OSC B, we are going to set the wavetable to Analog_BD_SIN (SHOCKER😉), turn the level all the way down and the wavetable position all the way up. There is no modulation to this one.
And last, we also, for this 808, turn the drive all the way up.
With this we have made a pretty aggressive 808.
3.5. Delay
I also love to add some very short ping pong delay, which makes the 808 a bit wider sounding. It’s very basic. Turn the feedback all the way down, the speed of delays very high, turn ping pong on and that’s it. I do like to sometimes modulate the mix since I don’t always want to have the kick to be as wide as the rest, you will see this trick in almost all of the presets that are in the serum 808 pack.
4. Some Small Post Processing Tricks
So for this tutorial it was fully done within serum with no additional effects just to see how much you can already squeeze out of it before adding post-effects to it. If you would like to add audio effects to these, then effects like Saturator, Corpus and other types of distortion plugins could be a good starting point.
For me the first thing that I would add to start my audio processing of the 808’s is the Corpus + Saturator setup. It’s very simple; pretty much a Corpus preset and pretty much the stock Saturator.
Just to show it real quick what it does we will use the serum “LONNEKER_LC_808_TUTORIAL_BASE” preset.
So first we are going to add corpus and we are going to use the “Kick Tight” preset. Turn the Dry/Wet all the way back to around 12% and we will also turn on the Midi input and set frequency on so that it follows the lows (for this it doesn’t really matter since we won’t be playing chords or multiple notes at the same time anyways).
Adding that you will notice a big difference in the lows making it sound fuller. Here is a little sample, first corpus off and then on.
For the Saturator, we are going to just use the default preset and turn up the drive, but we will also turn down the output a tiny bit. Otherwise the 808 would clip in this instance. You could also instead turn on the Soft Clip. For this example, it won’t make a big difference between those two.
With this and the corpus combined it makes the 808 fuller and have so much more presence without making the transient much louder, this is pretty much my setup on all my 808’s for at least the base of it. Here is the sample of it with first both effects off and then on.
~~Saturator + Corpus off on.wav~~
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Lonneker is a Netherlands based music producer and sound artist. Her recent remix of, 067eoin - Saline, is available on Soundcloud. You can follow her on Twitter @Lonneker_ and Instagram @lonneker_music
