Synths 101: How Oscillators & Waveforms Work
Sine, square, triangle, sawtooth waves — we cover everything you ever need to know about how synths use oscillators to create tones.
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How to Make Your Synthesizer Fart. Yup.
Synthesists are notorious for their tapestries of bleeps, bloops, burps, and farts. From those original Moog modulators to the current craze in analog, it’s been a dogged critique of synthesists — that as non-instrumentalists, all they’re good for is making fart noises on your techno tracks. Oh, who are we kidding? We kinda do love creating…
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How to Make ‘Pew! Pew!’ Laser Sounds with a Synth
Learning to play music should be more of just that — playing! Why not make everything fun? With that in mind, here’s a new miniseries exploring how to make your synthesizer of choice do whatever you want: from burping and farting to shooting out lasers (sonically, of course)! Why? Because laser sounds are actually pretty ubiquitous in music today.…
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Two Sound Phenomena Explained: Sonic Boom and Acoustic Shadow
Settle down, class, and take your seats. Bobby, what did I say about chewing gum? Alright. Now that we’re all settled in, let’s talk about sound. Today we’re going to address concepts relating to sound traveling through, getting lost in, and accumulating within airspace. Much of how we perceive our surrounding environment is influenced by our…
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Every Single Thing You Need to Play the Synth Bass Part from Bruno Mars’ “24k Magic”
Bruno Mars has made a career off tribute after tribute to artists and sounds of the past. While his success is undeniable, his approach to utilizing classic sounds and stylings is often touted as merely that of a copycat. Still, he always manages to deliver party beats with a clever contemporary twist and a wink of…
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How to Create the Iconic Synth Sounds in “Gin and Juice” from Scratch
Here’s something I know you’re going to dig! Throughout our free Demystifying Synths series of courses, we explore how to recreate the iconic keyboard sounds from tons of our favorite songs. You may have read our recent in-depth article on how to create that unmistakeable keyboard sound from Radiohead’s song “Everything in Its Right Place” off of Kid A, through…
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The 10 Most Widely Influential Synths Ever
Get to know these 10 classic synths, and you’ll start recognizing their oscillating tones in all your favorite tracks.
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How to Create the Unmistakable Keyboard Sound in “Everything in Its Right Place”
Today we’re going to learn how to emulate that classic warm keyboard sound that starts Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” in just a couple of steps. A couple of notes: First, we’ll be working in the newly released version of Helm V0.6.1, an impressively powerful free digital synth plugin. Download the free version here to follow along,…
