Welcome back! Thanks for joining us in another sound design tutorial for Massive. Today’s focus will be creating a synth similar to that used in one of Skrillex’s hit – Breakin’ A Sweat. This is a popular sound used by many artists, so it’s a good one to have in your arsenal.
Take a listen to the sound we’ll create:
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Getting Started…
Step 1 – Set up your Oscillator
All we need is Osc 1 in this case. Raise your Pitch an octave (+12). Max out your Wt-Position and Amp. Set your Intensity to about 2 o’clock.
Step 2 – Tweak your Amp Envelope
Set your Attack Level to about 2 o’clcok. Max out your Decay Level.
Step 3 – Set up your Filter.
Choose a Scream filter. Raise your Cutoff considerably. Set your Resonance to about 2 o’clock.
Adjust your filtering type so that it favors Parallel slightly.
Step 4 – Adjust your voicing parameters.
Set your Voicing to Monphon and activate your Pan Position. Tweak your Pan Positioning to give your synth a bit of width by moving it just past Mono.
Step 5 – Tweak LFO 5.
Max out the Rate of your LFO and route it to the Pitch of Osc 1. Detune it slightly.
Step 6 – Add some glide.
Click on your Osc tab to add some glide. Set your Time to about 11 o’clock.
Step 7 – Polish off with effects.
Add a touch of tube saturation and a Dimension Expander to give your sound more size and bite.
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Summary
Keep in mind that Skrillex uses a good bit of automation and pitch bending to really make this sound come to life. If you have a MIDI keyboard you can easily use Massive’s MIDI learn feature to make automating easier. You can also resample this synth sound to take it even further.
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