Big Synth Leads

[Creativemind]

Hi!

Was wondering. I listen to some big synth leads made on Sylenth or Massive and they sound 'excuse the pun' massive. Big and fat. Thicker than what I can do myself in Reason.

Is it possible to do a big fat synth lead comparable to one in this tutorial in Reason:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m46iO-KX7Qo

If so, can anyone link me to a tutorial or explain how themselves.

What is it that giving a more big fat sound?

Thanks!

[SamBerson]

Really interested in this too. The Antidote RE has some really big sounds actually

[raymondh]

If you want big fat synth leads, I would start with Antidote. It can get massive sounds by stacking lots of voices.
If you want to add some more bite/aggression to the sound, then add a Scream on the end and add just enough distortion to have the sound really cut through.
Antidote has superb filters too so if you are writing a Trance track with the trance lead gradually being introduced by opening the LP filter, you will get some nice sounds.

That said, you can get some great results with Thor as well.

Now if by big fat leads, you're not just interested in Supersaws like the above example, then you will also want to have a look at Rob Papen Predator, which has dozens of excellent leads that will cut through any mix.

If you don't mind a bit of work, you can also get really excellent fat leads using Mono/Poly, Polysix, reDominator, etc. I'd call leads from these synths more "fat and warm" than "thick and bright".

Going back to your question, yes you can produce this stuff with Reason.

For Tutorials, I would download trials, find presets that you like, then play around with the parameters while in those presets. Start with Antidote, and see what happens when you increase oscillator/voice count and detune the oscillators, add a suboscillator or shift one oscillator by 12 semitones.

Also look on youtube for scream tutorials too.






 

[submonsterz]

I`ve sill yet to hear one single synth that can pull off the sounds people want from the bat in reason .
to get close or any where near its all layering layering layering  I`m afraid and plenty of effects and spreads, eq etc etc thrown in with any of the synths in reason.

[Benedict]

The thing is Reason was made to be low-level components that could ultimately be used to build anything. The VST world is full of one-trick-pony units that excel at making a certain sound (but sometimes little else).

If I use the usual VST names I often can't get the sound I want without some serious adjustment. What is more I can make a sound in an external synth and with a bit of different copying/thinking I can get the same sound from Subtractor or Thor (and other stock units in or out of a Combi).

The thing is that Massive etc are designed to sound like a certain thing so those sounds fall out easily, but with the right training Massive could make almost any sound from any synth and genre. If you want to take the easy route then use Massive. And when the fashion changes buy the next IT synth.

If you want to build your craft then it doesn't matter what synths you own as you can get them to do what you want them to do. Right now I am making a piece which started from emulating a sound from Pulverisateur from Audio Tool. I didn't keep that exact sound in the end sound but I have a massive pad sound using one Subtractor > CH-101 > RV-7 > Echo.

[Tincture]

Copy audio of synth. Pan one fully left, the other fully right. Adjust right tuning by 4 or 5 cents. Not big enough ? Add a few ms delay to the left ch... Etc etc. Oh and reverb.

[Gaja]

Well part of what you might want includes setting thor up to do true stereo synthesis, as is explained on its back.
Use a multi osc saw and pan left right, detune by up to 30 cents can sound acceptable (depending on the melody, maybe even more). Add two or more synths with sawtooth waves and pan tem to your liking. Now add some chorus and some reverb and you'll have yourself a starting point for massive patches.

[woozy]

Hi!

Was wondering. I listen to some big synth leads made on Sylenth or Massive and they sound 'excuse the pun' massive. Big and fat. Thicker than what I can do myself in Reason.

Is it possible to do a big fat synth lead comparable to one in this tutorial in Reason:-

yes it's possible but it not easy as in some RE or VST's because reason native instruments only has 1 voice when detuned in this case maelstrom sawtooth x16 and thor multi osc, because it's only has that function, that's why it lacks that thick sound that VSTs have. You can solve it by combining many instances of your preferred devices (the more the thicker sound will get) and carefully detune them, what i mean by careful is that some voices has to be micro detuned, that is smaller change then 1 cent (you can achieve that with thor programer), but that's optional you can achieve god sound without doing that, also equal number of voices must be detuned to + and - . To my experience thor analog OSC is best way to do supersaws because it won't retriger itself. The easy way is to do it with multi OSC just add lots of OSC make Global knob for all detune knobs in each OSC, Spead all the voices to L and R, and post process it with RV and DL your choice, and the easiest way of them all: use it Antidote. Good luck. 

[Creativemind]

So what does 'voice' mean in synthesis terms? I've heard this before (and know a fair bit about synthesis) but never heard of what this means. I first heard of it several months ago with the Korg Polysix having 6 voices. What does it mean?

[Raveshaper]

To the best of my knowledge, "voice" refers to a unique wave, such as sine. 16 voices would be 16 different independent waves running at once.

[JoshuaPhilgarlic]

So what does 'voice' mean in synthesis terms? I've heard this before (and know a fair bit about synthesis) but never heard of what this means. I first heard of it several months ago with the Korg Polysix having 6 voices. What does it mean?

There are two ways the term "voice" is used.

1) The classical way: You mentioned Polysix with its 6 voices. This means that Polysix can play 6 different notes at a time. if you play more notes, the first few will disappear. That's caused by the technical limitations in those days: each voice (= note you play) had to be built in analog hardware, so it was a price decision how many voices a synth provided. Later when digital synths came up it was still a question, but this time based on CPU speed.

2.) Nowadays "voice" can also mean how many (probably detuned) oscillators are used for one single note. The default setting of Antidote is 2 of course (Osc 1+2), but you can use up to 12 - plus 12 more in an interval - for each one of them! That's a total of 48 oscillators per note!! I think with Antidote it should be pretty easy to get this Massive sound .

[raymondh]

So what does 'voice' mean in synthesis terms? I've heard this before (and know a fair bit about synthesis) but never heard of what this means. I first heard of it several months ago with the Korg Polysix having 6 voices. What does it mean?

A voice is generally one playable independent synthesizer unit.
6 voice polyphonic means you can play 6 notes at a time, or you can play three notes and then when you play a different three notes it doesn't cut off the reverb tails to reuse those voices. 

A monophonic synth has one voice.

A voice is generally made up of all the building blocks to make a sound. A voice might have one oscillator, one filter, one amplifier. Or a voice might have 2 oscillators, multiple envelopes that can be assigned to different things.

There are plenty of variations. You might have a 32 oscillator synth that is only 8 note polyphonic (has 8 voices) because you have 1, 2,3 or 4 oscillators per voice. 
You might have other synth architectures that have a floating pool of oscillators across voices, giving better polyphony etc.
You have other synths that don't have a separate VCF per voice, they have one VCF shared across the voices (e.g. Korg Poly 800). Some synths have separate LFOs per voice, some have one LFO shared by all voices etc.



 

[Benedict]

Don't forget Parsec. Sure it isn't part of the stock Reason synths but is designed to handle Unison and Spread duties and is a really powerful (and unique) instrument. I'd say this was about the equal of something like Massive.

[Creativemind]

Well part of what you might want includes setting thor up to do true stereo synthesis, as is explained on its back.
Use a multi osc saw and pan left right, detune by up to 30 cents can sound acceptable (depending on the melody, maybe even more). Add two or more synths with sawtooth waves and pan tem to your liking. Now add some chorus and some reverb and you'll have yourself a starting point for massive patches.

I need to invest in some powerful synth Re's it seems. Predator, Antodote and Parsec.

I'm guessing to get the sound I want, I'll need a combinator with a 6:2 mixer and perhaps 3 of the above synths and an RV7000 as well?

Anyway, onto this true synthesis.

I looked on the back of the Thor and that was great mate thanks for that. Very interesting. Sounded awesome. So is Thor mono usually, can't be can it? I know the Subtractor is.

Thanks!

[Gaja]

Thor is Mono (that is left and right channels get the same signal) unless you spread like explained on te back. The chorus does a bit of stereo spread too iirc.
Actually I'm not too sure whether you need to invest heavily. You might be able to achieve what you need from Reason alone, with careful layering and programming. If you invest, you might want to invest in FX (like chorus or unison) because you can get really nice raw synth sounds out of vanilla Reason, if you spend the time.

[esselfortium]

I put together a Thor patch based on the Massive video in your first post.
http://essel.spork-chan.net/music/patch ... r.thor.zip

Here's a demo mp3, with just the Thor as the only device in the rack (plugged directly into the Hardware Interface outputs): http://essel.spork-chan.net/music/wips/ ... w-demo.mp3

The demo video adds some reverb as well, which you can easily add to my patch, but I felt like keeping everything contained within the one device here

[BombsandBottles]

This video goes over what you want -