Advanced Music Making Techniques - Sound Envelopes

By: Greg Hoffman

Lets assume that you start off at full blast and you stay there, then you let go of the key and your patch disappears. Implying no envelope involved. They're the important element for sound articulation. It's as a result of the envelopes that you could be creative and express dynamic sounds via your synthesizer. You'll study about them briefly, although they're rather tough to understand. Think of the average envelope being as 4 primary entities.

Entity 1:

If you require good string sounds then do the following. Set it moderately high where the sound will gradually decline. If you set to nothing then the sound would immediately be at full tilt. So you want to attack meaning the sound is rising up to its maximum level.

Entity 2:

When the attack brings the sound up and stays at the level how long it stays there is known as the decay. If you set it at max. level then it will stay there permanently which means the sustain stage is of no value.

Entity three:

Once the decay stage has ended it'll be at the sustain level where it stays. In various cases reckoning on your synthesiser you would have a dedicated sustain time setting, which means it'll decay the sustain stage after an adjusted time period.

Entity four:

The sustain level takes a period of time to decline to silence. This is the release, and its nearly like reverb at the sound ending. If you want it to be instant then set the release level of the vst reverb plug-in to nothing.

Get a picture in your head of the envelopes then with practising the programming of the envelopes you would master it. Think of every entity on graph paper where you are dedicating higher to lower points as it goes through the various entities and the sound changes. Picture the sound increasing through the attack, decreasing through the decay, remaining in the determined level of the sustain, then eventually it disappears through the release when you let go.

To articulate the filter it wants a filter envelope. You should be able to see a dedicated knob for the filter frequency. Youre going to programme the filter envelope simply as you will whatsoever average envelope after you turn down the normal cut off filter, and turn the filter envelope cut-off higher.

It'll take a little getting used to. To hear something impressive turn the sustain on the filter envelope off, forget about the release and attack. Then make the decay short and turn up the release. What youre doing here is using the envelope to cut-off the frequency, thus youre not changing the volume. Say you increase the attack on the filter envelope, you'll create brass sounds.

Now you can use all these techniques with VST plugins. But how easy are VST plugins? Simply stated, it is a drop-dead easy-to-use method to start churning out music tracks so YOU can start rolling out these beats, loops and samples effortlessly even if you're doing them for the first time.

It is as easy as PUSH-BUTTON. Just run and vst audio software and load the plugins and effects and it'll all come together and work for you.

No matter if you're a beginner in music software production or a seasoned pro, you will be delighted with the arsenal of effects and plugins available to you. You no longer have to fiddle with complex synthesizers or software settings. All the hard work has already been done for you!

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Advanced Music Making Techniques