Synth concepts are a universal language - Logic Pro Tutorial

- [Scott] To the aspiring synth user, the abbreviations and names of the parameters and the functions they perform can sometimes feel cryptic and esoteric. In this movie, I'll begin to help you crack the code by pointing out that most basic synth controls are quite universal, and they're shared by most of the popular synths you'll encounter. The first common synth parameter we'll discover is the oscillator. And as we'll come to see, oscillators are typically a main source of our sound in the synthesis. As we'll come to see, oscillators are typically a main source of our sound in synthesis. They're really where it all begins. Here in Logic's Retro instrument, we have our two oscillators here and here. In Ableton's analog synth here, we have our oscillators here. Oscillator one and oscillator two. And to show you one more example, I'm going to open up Arturia's Mini V Moog Mini emulator. This is a classic synthesizer that's been emulated by Arturia. And you can see, this one actually has three oscillators. Oscillator one, controlled here. Oscillator two, controlled here. Oscillator three. Once we we've got our oscillators making their sounds, we'll get into another set of parameters called filters. These carve out the frequencies of our sound further. All synths will contain at least one filter section. In the Moog Mini, our filter section is here, where we see cut-off frequency, where we see cutoff frequency and filter emphasis in the amount of contour. To show you where the filters are in Retro, I'll open up Retro, and we can see that we have our filter section here. We have a whole menu of different types of filters we can apply to our oscillators. In Ableton Live in the analog instrument, we have two filters. Abbreviated Fil 1 and Fil 2. Another important way we'll use to manipulate our sound is using something called an envelope. And this controls how our sound develops over time. All synths will have various envelope controls and to know them, you can look for the abbreviations A, D, S, and R, or the attack, decay, sustain and release controls. When you see that, you know you're working in an envelope. Currently, we're looking at the envelope section of the amplifier. So this controls the envelope of the analog synth's main output. We also have an envelope here for the filter section. You can see our attack, decay, sustain, and release controls. Hopping over to the retro synth, we can see our amplifier envelope here and our filter envelope here. You notice we have our A, D, S, and R controls which stand again for attack, decay, sustain, and release. So it should be clear just from briefly perusing these there basic synth controls, oscillators, filters, and envelopes, different synth instruments really are alike in a lot of ways. The only tricky part is seeing how each different synth names and implements the parameters. And don't worry, we're going to get deeper into what these parameters do throughout this course. As we begin to learn conceptually, what they do, you'll see that the language of synthesis is universal and it can transcend any platform you work in. And that's my goal. It's to get you comfortable programming any synth you encounter without having to relearn each one.