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ORGANIC SOUND DESIGN MASTERCLASS : Part 3: Natural Synthesis & Physical Modelling with sv1

Added 2020-12-02 20:17:07 +0000 UTC

In this Lux Cache tutorial series, Texas producer and resident sound design god sv1 shows us a peek into achieving the hyper-organic synthesis methods and sound processing he is so known for in his productions. This three-part series has a huge focus on how to approach left-field sound design in an expressive and abstract way, creating the mindset to generate detailed sonics you intended and the beautiful ones you didn't.

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.

In the final part of the Organic Sound Design Masterclass, I’m going to be going over the basics of physical modelling, devices that we can use to achieve these methods, and some more techniques that can add acoustic flair to your sound. Combining these techniques with those provided in the previous two parts can allow otherwise static sounds to have new life and invoke environmental texture into them.

Here’s a list of concepts I’m going to go over with this lesson:

-PHYSICAL MODELLING INTRODUCTION

-CORPUS

-COLLISION

-SMALL ROOM REVERB

-LAYERING AND SAMPLING PT 2.

-A LIST OF PHYSICAL MODELLING DEVICES I USE

What is Physical Modelling

Physical Modelling is an approach to synthesis that aims to replicate or mimic the behaviour of real physical sounds such as mallets, strings, or drums. The rival approach to these methods that may yield similar results would be to use sample libraries like Kontakt or Labs, but sometimes the barrier to entry on really nice and rich sounding libraries can be a bit steep monetarily, so at least for me, that’s why I’ve leaned towards physmod techniques and tools. Although that is one reason to use these tools and techniques, physmod is a great way to create rich and expressive sounds with natural essence (or unnatural if you prefer).

Exciting and Resonating

A lot of devices that are physmod related can be a bit complicated when approaching them at first, so some basics to understand going into this lesson is that for anything ‘real world’ to produce sound there must be two elements, an exciter, and a resonator. A resonator is an object that’s going to be producing sound and an exciter is what we are going to hit or ‘excite’ the resonator with for it to produce sound. So for example,

Guitar: Your fingers or pick is the exciter and the string is the resonator

Xylophone: The mallet is the exciter, the keys are the resonator

Flute: Your mouth/The air is the exciter, the pipe is the resonator

General Warnings

A lot of the devices we will be working with are by definition resonators. Naturally, if we hit a note or frequency that is a ‘resonant’ frequency, we’re going to experience a spike in volume. So it’s generally a good rule of thumb to slap a limiter on your master or work quietly when using these devices just to protect your ears. Instruments like Ableton Collision or Tension love to explode randomly, so please be careful when working with these synths and effects as they can be a bit volatile.

Corpus

For a while, I thought this plugin was an Ableton-only device, but Applied Acoustics also has this device available as VST. So before I get into this section of the tutorial, Objeq Delay is a great alternative to Corpus if you’re not on Ableton and often it has a richer sound and better presets. I’ve linked this one down below.

(Corpus Effect)

Corpus is a physical modeling resonator plugin. To describe like above, the audio we feed it acts as the exciter and Corpus acts as the resonator. Here is a list of resonator types it can act as:

Beam - Similar to a Marimba bar, but just imagine a literal metal bar being hit

Marimba - Like a beam, but concavity on the bottom that determines it’s tuning, slightly different tonality

String - Exactly what it sounds like

Membrane - Similar to the material that’s stretched over a literal snare drum

Plate - Similar hitting a sheet of metal

Pipe - A Tube with both ends open, similar to a flute

Tube - One end is closed, similar to a bottle

(Resonator Type Drop Down Menu)

(Resonator Types, Image Courtesy of Ableton)

Without getting too deep into the math and theory of it, these resonators are made up of a series of partials (tones) that form the resonator type being selected. We can choose how many partials this resonance is made up of by selecting from the ‘quality’ tab. My first thought was “why do we want to use anything but ‘full’”, so naturally I would always set that option to full, but as it turns out, using a lower quality can result in some interesting sounds. Higher quality generally equals a brighter and richer sound, and lower quality results in a duller sound, although can still be rich depending on the source material. Please experiment with all of these!

(Corpus ‘Quality’ Menu)

Corpus: Other Parameters

Corpus’ Resonator panel features six other parameters that are used to describe features of the resonator: Inharmonics, Opening, Material, Radius, Brightness, and Hit. Note that when in pipe or tube mode Inharmonics and Material change to Opening and Radius respectively.

(Corpus Resonator Panel)

Inharmonics: Increases or Decreases the harmonics of the resonator

Material: Lower % sounds like damped objects like rubber or wood, Higher % sounds like metallic or glass materials

Brightness: Exactly what it says, higher % results in a brighter sound or vice versa

Hit: Controls where the object is hit, higher % is closer to the edge, lower % is closer to the center

Opening: Only available in ‘Pipe’ mode, at 0% the pipe is closed on one end, at 100% the pipe is open

Radius: Higher radius results in a higher pitch and vice versa.

Corpus: Tuning and Midi Sidechain

Since Corpus is a resonator, it must have a pitch. We can control that pitch with the ‘tune’ knob. This may seem like a fairly mundane parameter but combined with the different resonator types it can have quite a large effect. For instance, if we set the resonator to ‘pipe’ mode, and turn the tuning all the way down to around 10-30, we can pretty much make anything into an 808. Below I have a sample of the source sound being played and then with the affected sound following.

**Tuning and Midi Sidechain - 808.wav**

We can also make metal percussion if we turn the tuning about halfway to around 60-80%, I prefer making my percussion on ‘plate’ mode, but feel free to experiment.

**Tuning and Midi Sidechain - Basic Metal Percussion.wav**

Even more interestingly, Corpus has a handy MIDI sidechain feature that allows us to receive incoming *monophonic* MIDI information. We can use this to keep Corpus’s tuning in key or following a melody or pattern that we tell it. A really interesting way to add an acoustic and tonal texture to sounds. Below I’ve provided a video on how we can turn a simple zap sound into a kick, a snare, a high hat using all the above techniques

**Tuning and Midi Sidechain - example.mkv** (SOUND ON)

(Corpus Tuning Section)

Corpus: Subtlety

Corpus can be a very over the top plugin, but some of the most interesting results come from applying it subtly. This subtlety for me often happens when I’m working at around 10-20% Dry/Wet, and generally a low decay, around 50ms to 1.5s. Just barely applying a metal seasoning on top of pre-existing sounds. Give it a try, whether that be with your drums, your 808s, even melodies. Below I’ve provided an example of this.

**Corpus 808 with metal seasoning.wav**

This plugin requires a lot of finesse and fine-tuning, as well as just good sample selection/audio input. In previous tutorials, I’ve provided some presets for some techniques I use, but unfortunately, I don’t have many recipes other than the ones already given. Instead here are a few samples I’ve cooked up that might provide a bit of inspo on how to use this device more. Also, who doesn’t like a few extra snares lol.

**Examples - Corpus Metal Snare.wav **

**Examples - Corpus Metal Snare 2.wav **

**Examples - Corpus Subtle Metal Percussion.wav**

**Examples - Corpus Subtle Metal Percussion 2.wav**

Collision

Now that we’ve gone over what Corpus is, I want to talk about its big sibling: Collision. Collision is a full instrument with the corpus resonator attached. Since we’ve already gone over Corpus, I want to go over 2 major sections of this instrument: Excitation and Structure. At the very end of this article, I’ve provided plenty of alternatives for this in other daws and also as third party plugins.

(Collision Instrument)

Collision: Excitation

Like we were discussing prior, corpus was acting as the resonator, and the audio input was acting like the exciter. The exciter in collision is just noise featured in the excitation tab. However, we can control how the noise excites the resonator.

By tweaking the filter we can control what frequencies of noise excite the resonator. Note that at high frequencies, resonance can get pretty harsh, so remember to work quietly and put a limiter on after collision when you are patching.

Also, the envelope can control how the noise behaves, a high attack will result in punchier sounds and a low attack will result in smoother sounds like wind.

I’ve provided two patches I like to use, one demonstrating a windy pad-like sound and the other demonstrating a mallet-like sound.

**sv1 - collision rave stab.adg**

**Examples - sv1 - collision rave stab.wav**

**sv1 - natural plates.adv**

**Examples - sv1 - natural plates.wav**

(Collision Exciter Panel)

Collision: Structure

Finally, I want to go over Collision’s structure and signal flow. On the far right of Collision, we can see a section that says ‘structure’. What this does is determine how our resonators interact with one another. In ‘1>2’ mode, the resonators are flowing into one another, as in, the sound from resonator 1 is going into resonator 2. In ‘1+2’ mode, the resonators are in parallel, meaning that the output from both of them is going straight to output.

(Collision Resonator Structure)

(Collision Signal Flow, Image Courtesy of Ableton)

Small Space Reverb

Related to resonators, a great way to get a metallic decay on any sound is to layer it with some sort of small room reverb. This effect is very similar to a technique I demonstrated in part 1 of this series, recalling the high feedback, short delay technique. In a small room, the reflections are very short, and there is a lot of feedback as a result of close walls, so naturally, the reverberations sound metallic. Higher decay will result in not only a long tone but a more emphasized metallic tone. Admittedly I haven’t quite figured out how to achieve this with Ableton’s stock reverb, however, I like to use a free M4L reverb I’ve linked down below called ‘Verbotron’. Most reverb’s have a ‘room size’ knob, setting this to a low setting generally results in a metallic-like reverb. Here are some examples of the Verbotron reverb.

(M4L Verbotron, Small Room Settings)

**Examples - Small Room Reverb Snare.wav**

**Examples - Small Room Reverb Snare 2.wav**

**Examples - Small Room Reverb Snare 3 - Higher Room Size.wav**

Layering/Sampling Pt. 2:

Finally to reiterate from part 1: A great way to achieve physically modeled / acoustic results, is to layer up your sounds natural and acoustic sounds.

For example, here I’ve started with a Collision preset, and layered it up with a Koto to enhance the tone. I’ve also then added in a rock scrape in the beginning to give my instrument a natural attack.

**Examples - Instrument Layering.wav**

Finally, to go full circle from Part 1, here’s another example of how we can layer a snare. First I start with a snare we created earlier, then I’ve layered it with a bit of a rattle to give it some interesting body, and finally, I’ve layered it with a bit of a splash to make it a bit interesting.

**Examples - Percussion Layering.wav**

One last little bit I’d like to add is that when layering with dynamic sounds, like water, if we were to copy and paste that over and over as one does when arranging drums, we’ll probably catch the little water swish. This can be a bit repetitive. So to combat that, we can always find multiple water samples and layer up each drum hit a bit differently. Even further, we can automate the delay time of a reverb if we have one placed on it, just to keep varying up every hit. Should look something like this, if variance is the goal:

**Examples - Percussion Layering Variance.wav**