Creating synths and custom sounds

Before we dive fully into creating custom synth and patches, I want to tell you there are a few different ways to approach this. In my career, I have created both patches and layered synth sounds when experimenting with instrumentation development and signature sound frameworks, and recommend doing sound design via synths and melody sounds on a track-by-track basis. This may sound counterintuitive, but I’m going to explain why.

You certainly can spend hours, days, weeks, or longer creating custom synth patches by tweaking presets inside of FL Studio’s VST plugins if you desire – but remember, I’m giving you tips for being a Power User. In Chapter 1, we talked about having goals and taking action – RUTHLESS ACTION! Ruthless action is heading toward your high-level goals, so never confuse activity with accomplishment. Accomplishment is achieving your goals.

This means your end goal is to pump out hits, not overcomplicate your day-to-day in FL Studio as a sound designer specifically. Of course, if you end up going the route of just creating patches to sell online in third-party marketplaces, you can do that, but this is a guide to creating billboard-charting records, so for the sake of your workflow, get in the habit of learning how to create custom synths and patches on a track-by-track basis.

For example, you may never use all of the wonderful patches you create, for reasons such as them not working for the type of records you are making, them not being good, and no one liking your tracks because you keep using some weird sine synth with a flanger in it. The market will tell you what works – that’s just the reality of selling art. The reality is the best way to create a signature sound as it pertains to custom synth and melody sounds is to work through each track by first creating what the chord progression or melody top line is, and working backward to try and make it stand out and unique so that it doesn’t complicate the rest of your production.

Now, there are a few key components to creating interesting-sounding synths in your tracks. In your toolkit, you have access to multiple VSTs that generate synth and orchestral sounds, which you can layer, and you have mixing plugins, which you can add on top of those mixing channels to tweak or add flavor to the synth or instrumentation you may use in your production. For example, Fruity Flanger, Gross Beat, Fruity Reverb 2, and Fruity Delay 3 all work well for creative mixing and adding sonic uniqueness to a sound wave.

So, with this in mind, let’s load up a new project and add the FL Keys VST to the Channel Rack as a base work tool for creating a melody we can use as an example. Now let’s create a basic chord progression:

Figure 3.33: FL Keys | Piano Roll | chord progression

The framework I am using involves a similar formula to creating custom drum sounds for me – layering other VSTs over the note midi pattern created using FL Keys, experimenting with mixing plugins, and adding layers of additional VSTs.

When it comes to creating records, the general consensus on how you select certain VST preset sounds varies, but at a high level, certain types of synths and sounds work better for certain types of melodic patterns and chords. For chords, it’s best to use pads, arpeggios, and keys (including rhodes, synth keys, natural keys, and variations of these). For melody top lines, presets such as leads (synths and natural sounds, including horns, strings, pianos, saws, sines, bells, squares, etc.) work best when creating top-line melody frameworks.

Now that we have a basic chord progression, we are going to load one of FL Studio’s stock VST plugins, Sawer, into the Channel Rack in replacement of the FL Keys VST:

Figure 3.34: FL Keys | right-click | Replace | Sawer

Now, in Sawer, we are going to use a pad preset, FG Classic Mood, to play the chord progression:

Figure 3.35: Sawer | FG Classic Mood

Now we are going to add a layered VST following the same procedure as we did when creating drum sounds. We are going to add another Sawer VST to the Channel Rack and copy and paste the same chord progression into the second Sawer VST plugin in the Channel Rack as follows:

Figure 3.36: Channel Rack | Sawer # 2 | Chord progession copied and pasted

Now in the second Sawer VST preset selection, we are going to layer it with an additional pad preset, FG HUGE, as seen in Figure 3.37:

Figure 3.37: Sawer | FG HUGE

This is the basic framework for creating custom synth sounds in an attempt at sound design. From this point, you could follow up by adding additional VST layers with keys, synth sounds, and so on, but we have established the basic framework. A high-level simple point of view is simply layering different sound presets using the same chord progressions to add unique texture.

Now, let’s add both Sawer VSTs from the Channel Rack to the mixing channel:

Figure 3.38: Mixer | Sawer 1 | Sawer 2

For the first Sawer VST, let’s add Fruity Flanger, using the Bad Leslie preset:

Figure 3.39: Mixer | Sawer 1 | Fruity Flanger | Bad Leslie preset

Now, let’s add Fruity Stereo Spacer to the second-layer VST to give the second VST a wide stereo feel. We can do this by adding this plugin to the channel Mixer as follows:

Figure 3.40: Mixer | Sawer 2 | Fruity Stereo Shaper | Delay preset

Viola! We have now created a two-layer custom chord progression. This is a basic framework for how to add plugin effects while using layering for each VST. Each VST has its own input and output effects contained within the VST visual and you can experiment to add attack, delay, soften attack output, and more. I personally do not use these but rather focus more on layering and plugins to create the desired effects.

This basic framework now serves as your design theory when creating synths and sounds to output chords and melodies. Not complicated, and very “duh,” but trust me, the greatest secrets in life are usually the simplest – it’s not about overdoing it, or pulling your hair out to make something unique, so always follow the rule “keep it simple."

Now that we have walked through the basic framework of how we can leverage FL Studio’s stock VSTs and plugins to create unique melodies and chord progressions, let’s talk about creating a producer tag and how it relates to your sonic branding as a producer.