The Modular Synth You Never Knew You Had...

For people getting started in electronic music, it is oftentimes frustrating when your synth sounds don't sound as huge and complex as those of some of your favorite bands. Many times, the temptation is to say, "Well, they have lots of expensive gear, surely that must be why their stuff sounds so good while my synths sound like a cell phone having an aneurysm."


The truth is, however, even if all you have are a few softsynths and a DAW with some free plug-ins, you essentially have a monsterous modular synth set up at your disposal that can open a whole new world of timbres you might not have realized you could attain.


The key here is to change your thinking about what a synth sound is. For most people, they fire up a synth, select a preset or home-made sound, and that's what they consider to be their final sound. Maybe they put a little reverb or delay here and there, but for the most part, they think of this as the end result. I would enourage you to instead think of this as just the first step.


Instead of seeing a synth sound as being an end in itself, approach that sound as if it were a single oscillator in a synthesizer... the 'raw' waveform, if you will. If you've got a healthy plug-in folder, you likely have tons of effects that serve some of the very same functions that modules on a modular synth do. You've got filters, choruses, pitch-shifters, amp modelers, distortions, waveshapers, stereo spreaders, ring modulators, envelope followers and tons of other sound mangling options at your disposal that, used properly, can act essentially as additional modules to your synths 'raw oscillator'. Taken one step further, just as on a synth, you can make more complex sounds by adding additional oscillators. So fire up another softsynth and layer it with the first (and copy the MIDI parts from that first track so they play as one part). Now you have your second 'oscillator' that can have its own completely different complex chain of effects to change the sound. And since most DAWs these days allow these effects to be automated, you can really roll your sleeves up and create some complex modulations.


There's really no limit to how far you can take this, although practically speaking, sooner or later it will blur into audio mud without careful EQ, but just this simple change in the way you think about your synth sounds can lead you down the path to much more complex, interesting, and professional sounding synth sounds.

Here is an example of this technique in action. This synth line is from the song "Old" () from my most recent album. It started life as a preset from reFX's Vanguard softsynth, but after being bitcrushed, filtered, pitch shifted, guitar amped, and fed through some reverb, its unrecognizable...