This is awesome, thank you so much! ! ;DI bought the J3PO Prophet Rev 2 Patches and really wanted to learn how the sounds were made! Can you give me some advice on learning these presets? For a hardware synthesizer beginner.
I was in your position as well some time ago. Instead of Serum, I was using Arturia and relying heavily on presets and just small tweaks. I totally feel you when you are on your own and you are not so sure what you are looking for. Since you got the J3PO sounds ( very good ones), I would try to do 2 main exercises:
- Pick up some of the sounds from this library. An easy one I remember it was a kind of Rhodes piano there, I think it was called Synth EP MKII, then from there start to check with the misc button every parameter and play with it. Start from the effects, then turn it off; then switch into the lfo's and play a bit, after a while turn them off; then move into the filter and the envelope and play with it and turn it of; check the options for VCA envelope but don't turn them off. Otherwise you won't have any sound
. At the end you will have only the basic waveform. This is giving you an idea of what is going on for every step. This technique is called reverse engineering. Afterwards, try to recreate the sound (or a kind of sound) on your own. Do not use the same values, guide yourself with your instinct of what you learnt - This is basically more fun but more difficult. Pick up some sounds that you like from the internet and try to recreate them. I would go for easy choices or the ones that you can find in which direction should go for any synth, like everything in its right place from Radiohead, or some of the most iconic sounds from Thriller. Feel free to pick up 80's songs because they tend to be less complex. You can increase the complexity later on with more modern ones. Basically cause most of the modern sounds have multiple effects and Prophet Rev will let you just pick up 1 in-built FX
Those 2 techniques are a good start, but there's 1 critical part that you must play as well and understand slowly: The mod slots. This is crucial for shaping the sounds. I would really recommend you here just to pick up a preset or a sound from the library you bought, check the mod slots and start to tweak them positive and negative. Try to understand them because this is one of the most powerful parts that defines a sound. Some small examples from the mod slot:
- Set an envelope from the low pass filter as you like it, and then turn the envelope to 0. Go to the mod slot and select source ENV LPF and destination as a Cutoff. The more amount you put in, the more the envelope will open. You just recreated the envelope but in the mod slot instead of the knob itself
- Now, instead of cutoff, change the destination to LFO 1 Frequency, Notice how your sound will do a pitch sound, but following the ADSR concepts, this is really cool because if it wasn't by the mod slots, you couldn't have a way to have this weird pitch modulation that you can set
- Try different destinations, check the result, and play with it. Once you feel comfortable and you understand this source(ENV LPF), try to move to another source and do the same process as described above. With time and messing around you will understand each source and each possible destination with it
Once you have an idea of the mod slots, it is time to check them in the reverse engineering technique as well, you will be surprised that almost all of them has like 3 or 4 slots used. As I said, this is one of the most crucial parts. You give movement to your sound and doesn't need to be rhythmic constant like the LFO's.
With that, you will cover the basics and a huge palette of sounds. You can go really far away with it. I wouldn't worry for more until I got under control of these commands. Once you get it, then check how can you play with the 3rd envelope extra, then the gate sequencer( if mod slots give movement, a gate sequencer can let you go even further with it), and last but not least the multi-layer A+B ( leave it for the last one because it doesn't make sense to do multilayer if you don't understand the basics for a single layer). At some point, you can even check how to do some basic FM synth with Prophet, since you can set up a Carrier and Modulator for your waveforms.
This has been( and it's still) my learnings with the prophet. I learn every time I just turn it off and mess around. In the beginning, it took me a long time to visualize sounds from scratch for my music, but slowly I am learning some patterns for what I am looking for( I want a pad: slow attack, full sustain or high decay and slow sustain, probably tons of reverbs, etc; I want a piano: no attack, high decay and 0 sustain, soft shapes like triangle or triangle+saw, etc..). Within time you will get faster making your own sounds.
I hope this helps
4 Replies
660 Views