How I recreated the synth sound from "Strobe" by Deadmau5.

The song Strobe by producer Deadmau5 is one of my favourite songs of all time. In order to better my understanding of synthesis, I have decided to create the main synth sound using Xfer Serum, a third party, wavetable synthesizer.

Wavetable synthesis is described by Alessandro Cipriani and Maurizio Giri in their book “Electronic Music and Sound Design 1 – Max 7” as synth that: “involves dynamically modifying a complex waveform in realtime by evolving multiple wavetables (in a manner similar to vector synthesis)” (Cipriani & Giri, 2016) (Mantione, 2017)

To put this in a more applicable definition, wavetable synthesis allows users to construct sounds based off of samples, specifically a single cycle waveform of a sample. For instance, instead of the commonly used subtractive synthesis where users can pick from a limited waveforms such as saw, square or triangle (etc.) waves, you can instead model synths based off of waveforms of existing sounds such as lets say a guitar or vocal. ("What is Wavetable Synthesis? - Wavetable Synthesis Explained!", n.d.)

Oscillators are an important part to almost every synth, the are devices that create a vibration of hundreds to thousands of times per second. This vibration leads us to hear a ‘pitch’ or ‘note’, which can then be used to play the synth like an instrument. The different waveforms that are used in the creation of synths are what give the sound it’s timbre.

Often times the waveform is just looped at a rate which creates the pitch corresponding to the key you are playing, however, with synths such as Serum, we can use wavetable editing to evolve the sound over time. Instead of a beeping sound that you often here when playing a note on a subtractive synth, we can emulate the sounds that real instruments have as they are naturally evolving waveforms where as a synth is a static loop.

("What is Wavetable Synthesis? - Wavetable Synthesis Explained!", n.d.)

Xfer Serum is my personal favourite VST synth as it seems to be a hybrid of many different types of synths. Though it is based off of wavetable synths, classic subtractive waveforms can also be loaded, then they can be applied with effects that can only be found on wavetable synths, and so on. Since Serum has all of these options to choose from, it's usually always my go to synth for recreating any sound, whether subtractive or not. For instance, the synth sound that I created from Strobe could be done in a subtractive synth, however with the number of effects Serum has to offer, I can easily achieve the sound, as well as emulate potential processing effects all within the synth itself.

Some elements of subtractive synthesis that are important to note as they translate over into Serum as well.

Attack Decay Sustain and Release are 4 Envelope Controls which are very commonly found on many types of synths. These controls can be applied to various parts of the synth to control the timing of said part. Traditionally in classic subtractive synthesis, these are used to effect the amplitude of a sound. The Attack control is how long it takes for the sound to reach its full volume, for instance it may be turned to a very short attack time where the synth plays almost immediately, whereas if it has an attack of let's say 1 second, the sound would “fade in” in amplitude. The next of these controls is the Decay, which ‘controls how long it takes for the sound’s volume to decay to a sustained level’. That then leads to the sustain, which controls how long you want the note to sustain for before releasing, in which the release control alters how long it takes for the sound to then fade out.

("A Beginner's Guide to Subtractive Synthesis - Roland Australia", n.d.)

To explain this more practically, some examples of how this can be used are things such as - let's say we a bowed string sound such as a violin, instead of the sound directly appearing at full volume straight away we can hear that it gradually fades in and fades out. On the other hand, if we were to pluck a violin string, we get an example of an emphasis on decay, we’d hear a sharp peak in volume before reaching a sustained level which slowly releases. By having this understanding, we can emulate particular characteristics of different instruments, such as synth Pad sounds, which are often just synth equivalent of string, or a synthesised kick drum, which can be made by focusing on the decay control (as kicks have a sharp, punchy sound to them).

Nowadays we can apply often more than one instance of ADSR controls and route them to various parts of a synth, such as the filter (which is another feature on many synths which essentially is a low, band or high pass eq on the sound) to give the sound different characteristics. ("A Beginner's Guide to Subtractive Synthesis - Roland Australia", n.d.) ("What is Subtractive Synthesis? - The Only Explanation You'll Need", n.d.)

Now, how does all of this tie into how I create my synth patches??

I decided for demonstrative purposes to recreate the synth sound from Strobe by Deadmau5, as I’ve always found it to be been such a simple yet effective sound. And instance where we can hear the full modulation and evolution of the synth is at 5:40 in the track as we hear the filter cutoff and the effect it has on the sound, which is a big part of it.

First off, heres a screenshot of the synth patch so we can get a visual idea of the process I went about through creating this. I chose Serum’s Basic shapes wavetable, which essentially has all of the shapes that can be found on common synthesizers. That being said, the ‘strobe’ synth does not need to be created through a wavetable synthesizer and can be recreated in many synthesizers, however due to the flexibility of serum it is always my go to synth.

I noticed that the sound in strobe is a Saw wave. I know this mainly through experience as I have had quite some practice working with synthesizers to the point where i can many times pick out which sound wave that has a timbre like the one i’m trying to replicate, just by listening to it. I find that the more you work with synthesizers, the easier it becomes to analyse a synth sound and recreate it, although when in doubt, I can always just trial and error what I think it may be.

This sound is very basic, it's just a plain saw wave, no detune, and only 1 voice is necessary (although it has four on my patch screenshot as an example of me trial and error-ing sounds). I’ve left the amplitude envelope of the sound as it is, however I have instead routed the ADSR envelopes to the filter cutoff.

We can see that the decay control is an essential part of this sound, and I’ve used 0 sustain at all. This is what i was referring to earlier as a pluck sound on a violin as we hear the sound in strobe starts as a synth pluck. I have routed this so that the decay is controlling the filter cutoff in an upwards position, the decay allows a small amount of the higher frequencies of the sound to come in to the sound. The more we turn the cut off up, the higher the frequencies the decay can push the cutoff up. The filter cutoff, although still being effected by the decay for a pluck sound, will open the sound more and more until it becomes a plain saw synth sound.

In Serum, there are 3 envelopes which you can drag and drop to effect almost any parameter.

I then used serums built in FX page to add a ping pong delay effect. I selected two different rates for the left and right of the stereo mix to give the synth a sound that bounces left and right.

I then automated the synth with a MIDI recreation of strobe to give an example of how the sound builds.

Heres a preview of what my synth patch sounds like:

I would say I have a sound that sounds really close to the synth used in Strobe. It's interesting to me how this can be such a great track yet the synth was so simple to create. I'd love to continue practicing my sound design in the future to create more unique sounds.

References A Beginner's Guide to Subtractive Synthesis - Roland Australia. Retrieved from https://www.rolandcorp.com.au/blog/beginners-guide-subtractive-synthesis

Cipriani, A., & Giri, M. (2016). Electronic music and sound design, vol. 1. ConTempoNet.

Mantione, P. (2017). The Basics of Wavetable Synthesis — Pro Audio Files. Retrieved from https://theproaudiofiles.com/what-is-wavetable-synthesis/

What is Subtractive Synthesis? - The Only Explanation You'll Need. Retrieved from https://musicproductionnerds.com/what-is-subtractive-synthesis

What is Wavetable Synthesis? - Wavetable Synthesis Explained!. Retrieved from https://musicproductionnerds.com/what-is-wavetable-synthesis