tips to making warm pads and strings on synths

[man-009]

any tips on making warm pads and strings? or does it depend on the synth being used? i have a waldorf blofeld kb.

[garranimal]

Strings....
- Two sawtooth waves slightly de-tuned, whether using osc fine pitch or small amount of bipolar lfo modulation (positive mod osc1, neg mod osc2) to pitch for chorusing effect.
- Lowpass Filter: around 75% or higher for brighter strings.
- Amp Envelope: 50-60% slow attack, decay/sustain on full, 50-60% slow release
- if a small amount of tremolo pleases then add another lfo source to amplitude, set lfo for delayed onset or controlled from mod wheel or aftertouch. Same trick could be used to achieve vibrato by assigning lfo to the overall pitch.

[man-009]

very cool thanks...!

[V301H]

If your synth has the capability you can get a bowed effect at the beginning of a String sound by slightly modulating the pitch of one of the oscillators with an Envelope or Ramp Generator. Also, instead of a Sawtooth wave on both Oscillators try a slow Pulse Width Modulated Square Wave on one of the Oscillators to give the sound some motion for a Chorus-like effect.

[man-009]

wow..souds good. will try that thanks!

[CS_TBL]

I'd mimic what happens with a real string ensemble: different players doing different things. One oscillator (a wee filtered saw, in most cases), a delicate random slewed LFO (also known as Analogue Feel in the Roland JV series) and a regular LFO on pitch, an envelope with a short attack on amplitude.

All this: 8 times, with different speeds for all LFO rates and envelope attacks. I did this exact thing on my Supernova2r (a performance made from 8 programs) and it sounds very convincing. Naturally, for pads: things don't need to be this realistic, but stacking randomly detuned oscillators with vastly different LFO rates and depths, panning positions and perhaps even tiny oscillator differences (sync?) is still key. You may have enough thickness stacking it 4 times..

[man-009]

another good idea. thanks guys! will try some today!

[man-009]

i really try not to use presets. it's like cheating to me. and if i do, i always change it up a bit to make it my own.

[cornutt]

A lot of pad patches benefit from a slow-moving chorus effect (1 cycle per 4 seconds or slower). Also, keep the cutoff frequency down. To further warm them up, you might want to try a graphic EQ, with a bit of emphasis in the 500 Hz area and roll off everything above 4K.