Creative Ways to make FX 🧨

As Alex (Human Synthetics) and I approach the final stages of our new atmospheric jungle sample pack, I thought this would be the perfect moment to write a blog post about my sound design process and some of the most effective techniques I’ve been using to create FX.

There are so many rules in music that get suck in our heads, from gain staging analog plugins at the correct level (-18dbfs) to mono compatibility & phasing issue. The more knowledge you have, the more it can stop you from being creatively free to just make music.

This is where sound design comes in really handy, it teaches you to throw out the rule book & focus purely on the outcomes. Whether it’s coming up with crazy plugin chains or finding glitches & bugs in programs, all that matters is what you’re left with when you come back to check your samples folder next day.

Resampling

Before we even dive into the techniques, I want to once again reiterate the importance of resampling. It’s such a key part of this process that without it, you’re like a fisherman trawling the ocean with a net full of holes. You could be making some of the best SFX of your life but without recording the process in the background, none of them get caught! 🎣

Twisted Wave is my go to audio editor for a number of reasons & I made a video a while ago if anyone is interested in the program https://youtu.be/Xj8ftgXlzkw?t=317

I actually contacted the owner and got a 20% discount code for everyone. Coupon code - GroovininG https://twistedwave.com/purchase#coupon=GroovininG

It has an amazing ‘Tab to Transient’ function amongst a whole host of other useful features like batch processing & split by markers.

I route the main output of my mixer (USB) to the input of Twisted Wave. If your audio interface has a loopback function, you can also route this to the input of Twisted Wave.

Rolling sampler is another great way to capture your recordings although it does have a max time limit before it starts recording over itself. https://www.birdsthings.com/

All you really need is a way to capture whatever you’re doing in the DAW into one long recording which can be sliced up later. ✂️

Favourite SFX Plugins

SoundToys Crystalliser, Sound Toys Effects Rack, Paul Stretch, Filterverse, Other Desert Cities, Valhalla FREQ Echo, Valhalla Supermassive, Valhalla Shimmer, Arturia Tape 201 Delay, FilterFreak 1 & 2, Trash 2, Pedalboard (Logic), ColdFire Distortion, Amigo, Raum.

Creative FX techniques

Now onto the techniques. I’m just about to start filming a YouTube video going over a lot of this material in more detail so if anything dosen’t make sense fear not!

Renoise Phrase FX - This is a pretty crazy one but it essentially involves re-triggering a midi note at a really fast resolution & then changing the pitch and resolution to generate the FX. https://youtu.be/IO120Ft2bdM?t=155

This is sort of emulating the granular method the old Akai S1000/950 hardware samplers would use to time-stretch sounds. It is possible in other DAWs like Logic but is much more flexible in Renoise.

Looping Pitch FX (Pitch Envelopes, Moving Loop Time, Loop Type) https://youtu.be/8GIYfdNk46g?t=654

This is my absolute favourite way to make FX & gives amazing results with almost any sound source. All you need is a forwards loop accompanied by a LFO or envelope modulating pitch.

Changing the loop size, envelope shape, LFO shape, pitch amount and of course sample selection gives you tonnes to play with before even adding any extra processing like delays and reverbs.

Looping Pitch Mod-Wheel FX

This is a similar variation to the technique above that uses the mod-wheel with really extreme values like +/-48 to manipulate the pitch.

Amigo VST is perfect for this technique -  https://youtu.be/LOlhU2tnho0?t=523

Freezing Reverbs & Paul Stretch

Paul Stretch is still a fantastic way to make epic soundscapes and atmospheres for your tracks. I often combine a few different stretched samples together with different filters to give the final sound a bit more life and movement.

https://youtu.be/r8xF4DAUz-I?t=454

Freezing Reverbs (Raum) can give you quite similar results and is great for drones & more dissonant ambiences.

Picking the right sounds for either of these techniques to work well is the key here, I love using: choirs, live piano recordings, Enya style vocals, record chops & percussion hits. Even loading full pop tracks into paul stretch of artists like Aurora can give amazing results.

Experimental Reverbs & Delays

This is more of a plugin specific technique but SoundToys Crystalliser & Other Desert Cities are my favourite to mess with here.

Also Valhalla Supermassive & Freq Echo

It’s all about experimenting with presets and manipulating patches whilst recording the whole time.

Resonant Filter FX

These sound amazing with a number of sound sources from distorted 808 bass to white noise. Band-Pass, Low-Pass and High-Pass filters all work fantastically for this as well as my favourite chebychev filter shape.

Crank the resonance and map filter frequency to the mod wheel. Then trigger the sample whilst modulating the cutoff.

https://youtu.be/x924rJcyJtU?t=391

Sample Chain FX

This is probably the most common of all these fx where you stack a whole bunch of plugins from distortion to delays, reverbs, bit-crush & filters. Then swap out the sample source running everything through the same chain.

The coolest part about this is you can run all of the previous FX techniques i’ve mentioned through a plugin chain like this for some really wild results

Stay tuned for the video coming sometime next week. 🏝️

Big ups everyone!

George ✌️