Tutorial - Supersaw Trance Lead

Hanley

Member

Recipe

Oscillators: 4 oscillators total
– Osc 1-3: Saw wave, 9 voice unison, with the unison detune amount turned up to where it juuuuust starts to sound a little out of tune. This detune amount will give you the aggression you’re looking for. Also max out the Unison width so we get a big wide sound. Then detune Osc 2’s overall Fine pitch down a bit, and Osc 3’s up a bit. Now you effectively have a giant 27-voice unison. FACE. MELTED. – Osc 4: White noise. Pitch it up 4 octaves and high pass it. We just want really high, hissy white noise. Also apply the same unison settings as Osc 1-3 to get a big wide sound. And dial up the volume so that it’s very audible, but blends into the other saw oscillators

Filter: High Pass, 12 dB slope. Turn up the cutoff just enough to take some of the frump off the bottom.

Amp Envelope: Bring the Sustain down pretty far, and make the Decay fast. Then bring the overall volume up to compensate for the volume lost with the low Sustain. Now we have strong attack transient.

Distortion: Dial in just a little bit of aggressive clip-style distortion. It’ll fight with the pulsating unison voices, and make it a bit angry. Don’t go over board here. Just a tad.

Reverb: Big size, pretty wet. Dampen it to remove some highs, so that only the body echos throughout the caverns.

Compression: Spire’s X-Comp knob is brilliantly simple. I just turned it up halfway and it squeezes the sound, making it even more aggressive. But any compressor will do. Just bring down the threshold until it starts to tighten up.
 
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