Detuning the synth bus=Awesomeness

I dont know if anyone ever talked about that here but anyway im so excited about this trick i had to talk about it with you guys cause i wish someone would have told me that before.

So two months ago i was making tracks,and i wasnt too happy with the synths you know?,it sounds too digital,too clinical not lush enough,it doesnt have that edge i was looking for,so i have this idea of putting every synth in a bus and detune everything.

And i could not believe it! Fucking EUREKA! This is it!!

It was like one of the greatest discovery i made on production.So simple but so effective! Try it! ,it makes the tracks sound 10X better!(especially if using softsynths or digital synths)

Basically you put every synth in a bus and detune everything DOWN(NOT UP) with the DAW pitcher(i use Reapitch in Reaper) in between 3 to 8 semitones plus some cents making sure not to be perfectly on pitch,so it doesnt hit the note exactly right.

You guys have to try it!!

Happy Producing!

Better:classic chorus 100% wet. Next modulate the depth and rate to taste with lfos or sidechain. Instant UK sound.

I don't understand. You are just tuning all your synths lower with Reapitch? By those numbers now everything is out of tune with the song... I guess this is genre specific (which wasn't mentioned in the OP). Wouldn't it be better to do this at the source with LFO, or modulation? I imagine you are enjoying it because when you pitch something down like that, it will sound fatter and lose some of it's attack.

I think the point is to send the whole track into tonal ambiguity and let posterity sort it all out m9.

  On 12/18/2015 at 10:54 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

 

  On 12/18/2015 at 10:31 AM, Haste said:

I don't understand. You are just tuning all your synths lower with Reapitch? By those numbers now everything is out of tune with the song... I guess this is genre specific (which wasn't mentioned in the OP). Wouldn't it be better to do this at the source with LFO, or modulation? I imagine you are enjoying it because when you pitch something down like that, it will sound fatter and lose some of it's attack.

you can get away with +/- 10 cents can't you?

 

Sure, but he was saying:

"...in between 3 to 8 semitones plus some cents making sure not to be perfectly on pitch,so it doesnt hit the note exactly right."

or am I just being dumb?

Yeah, I'm starting to think these are prodoction tops

  On 12/18/2015 at 11:20 AM, Gocab said:

Yeah, I'm starting to think these are prodoction tops

He just has differently trained ears that do not like equal temperament.

Right now im not home so i cant do it but when i come back im gonna render the tracks im posting here not detuned and show you guys the result.There is a difference.But still the track had to make sense in the first place but the detuning gives extra punch and tastiness to it.It takes the track to another level.Anyway in my opinion.

But i have to say that it seems to work better with softsynth than analog.Well im not really sure i have to make some more test but i tested this technique 1 times with the Mopho(sadly I broke my minibrute so i cant test with that,might make a test with the X0Xb0X) and it did not work as well than with softsynths.I dont know if its because analog is already a bit detune naturally,a bit instable in pitch so it doesnt change the sound a lot or something.

Here are two tracks i did with this technique.Im getting SERIOUS The Tuss vibes with this.And with software only!

https://soundcloud.com/fxbip/metaplus-4m2

https://soundcloud.com/fxbip/trokoloom-3

Im gonna try to post the not detuned renderings of the tracks on the december 19 or 20 when i get back home.Then you ll see what im talking about.

  On 12/18/2015 at 10:31 AM, Haste said:

I don't understand. You are just tuning all your synths lower with Reapitch? By those numbers now everything is out of tune with the song... I guess this is genre specific (which wasn't mentioned in the OP). Wouldn't it be better to do this at the source with LFO, or modulation? I imagine you are enjoying it because when you pitch something down like that, it will sound fatter and lose some of it's attack

What do you mean out of tune with song?You got to detuned ALL of the synths in a send bus,if they are all detuned by the same amount,there cannot be any difference between synths.Everything is tuned together.Not just a few synths.It have to be all of them.

  On 12/18/2015 at 10:03 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

what sort of detuner are you using? you could also just try turning the fine tune on your oscillators down a little.

Reapitch.Yeah well like i said the goal here is to detune ALL the synths by the same amount.So to make that manually with the oscillators is quite a pain in the ass.

http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/images/1/14/ReaPitch.PNG

you on reapitch you have the Shift control semi tones Full Range and cents Full Rangethats what i use to get that effect, you detune down lets say 3.76 or 5.34 semitones and you can also mess up a bit with the cents if you want.Usually i make it very randomly when i start a song.I set up a empty track,put reapitch on it and then send ALL (and it have to be ALL of them) the synth in it.NOT THE DRUMS.

But if you have vocal in the track i guess it would fuck everything up.So maybe not for vocal track.I dont know it might work if you send the vocal too but i doubt it(or maybe just detune a little not too much.)

Hope this helps.

When I use the MPC2kxl I usually do something similar, actually. Copy all (or most) of the samples to a computer, speed everything up 200% WITHOUT PITCH CORRECTION, copy the new one's back to the CF card, load them up in the MPC and pitch them dow an octave, so they play back at the original pitch and speed but with a lot of the transient smearing that comes with slowing something down. You're also effectively halving the sampling rate but it's a (subtly) different sound than just resampling. Plus you double your available sampling time. Similar to the old "sample 33 1/3 vinyl at 45 and tune it back down in the MPC" trick lots of 90s producers used to save RAM.

Just load 2 instances of your synth plugin and detune one, hard pan them by going into the channel i/o atop the reaper fx window.

That shit will be so fat you can paypal me a lil su'n no probs.

Makes cents

  On 12/23/2015 at 4:05 PM, skibby said:

Just load 2 instances of your synth plugin and detune one, hard pan them by going into the channel i/o atop the reaper fx window.

 

That shit will be so fat you can paypal me a lil su'n no probs.

Now that I can understand.

anyone ever like held two keys next to each other together before like instant reece man

lol

  On 12/24/2015 at 9:13 AM, fenton said:

anyone ever like held two keys next to each other together before like instant reece man

dang! my mouse only lets me click on one at a time, how do you do that if you don't have a midi controller?

Before I would start running everything through any sort of pitch bending of any sort, I would run each through a tuner pedal and see just how in tune they are.

I do not really see how this could make it sound better or anything in any way. I would bet that I could make something, and pitch it up, and play it for a friend, and then pitch it down, and he would go "woah!" when in all actuality I'm just playing him the original thing. Don't let things like this be anything more than something you try out. Not a good rule imho.

Of course all of this depends on your attitudes about pitch and what not. I like it when things sound fucked.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yeah I do not understand this thread at all. I've slowed down tracks before and they've sounded great, but not just pitch shifting random synths?

nah..

  On 12/16/2015 at 6:09 PM, fxbip said:

detune everything DOWN(NOT UP) with the DAW pitcher(i use Reapitch in Reaper) in between 3 to 8 semitones plus some cents

 

it's basically all about getting that detuned tuss sound out of softsynths as far as i can fathom.

Me too, thought it was supposed to be controlled by an LFO. Haha, that would suck. :)

yeah I mean I get it, but using a pitch shifter to detune things is going to introduce artifacts.. especially by 3-8 semitones!

One of my favourite reaper tricks is to change the track speed to .85; that seems to be the magic number for the synth music I record, because it makes everything slow and kinda lo-fi, by resampling rather than pitch shifting.

I've used detuning a lot lately, but I do it on the synth itself. I used to use an LFO (like Boards of Canada) but lately I'm into leaving it at one spot. I don't know about soft synths but most of the hardware I've used has one way or another of doing this.