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Boost = goose.

That's a really fun sound and a cool technique. Glad to hear you get to go home soon. I hope your recovery goes well!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad it could help!

Open source does have some nice advantages. They've been able to pack a lot of nice features in there, for sure!

Glad it was helpful! There are definitely a lot of features in there that were a surprise to me. It's amazing what you can learn when you start doing a deeper dive into these synths.

@@idlethoughtsmusic yes i find the fm on surge waaaaay easier to use than dexed for example!

Yeah, Dexed is definitely more challenging to do FM in, but it is pretty powerful. Synths like Surge XT, Vital, and Serum use an easier (but more limited) FM implementation. A lot of the time, that's exactly what you need, and the ease of use makes a huge difference (and lets you add FM to more things)!

That would be Voxengo Span - another free plugin!

That could be due to a few reasons... If you were to replace it with another plugin, do you get sound (is it a DAW or speaker issue)? Is anything muted in surge? Are the volume levels up? Anything bypassed? Have you tried putting a spectrum analyzer on the output to verify that it's not a weird frequency issue?

@@idlethoughtsmusic I just started making music and I don’t know what any of that is, where do you reckon a should start to learn all this because I downloaded arminator2 and it won’t even open it’s just in my browser, I’m struggling with plugins and vst stuff rn

Welcome to music production! The first step is to find a DAW (digital audio workstation) - this is the software where you'll do most of your work. Start with something inexpensive or free, or with a trial of a paid one (Ableton live, FL Studio, ...). You may already have one (Garage Band if on a Mac). Then, find some tutorials or online classes on how to use your DAW. TH-cam has lots of good videos to help you get started, and if you want a more organized class, Udemy has some really good cheap classes (only buy when on the frequent sales). Once you learn your DAW's basics, then you'll find that plugins like Surge XT or arminator2 will be easier to work with. It takes a little bit of work to learn, but it's worth it, so don't get discouraged!

@@idlethoughtsmusic thx u man I appreciate it.

No problem! Glad you like them!

Drums and guitars make everything better!

No problem! Glad you found it useful. I like including preset demos; I find them useful when learning about new plugins. This is good for growls, but you're right, there's a lot more you can do with it!

You about summed it up! It's also very CPU efficient. People should definitely give it a try!

It's pretty useful! I have a few favorites as well. Dig around in there and you'll find some inspiring presets in there!

Great idea! I'll look into that and see if I can figure it out. That's a great sound, and I've always loved The Doors.

Totally agree, that's one of its best features! It's a great synth and I'm surprised it isn't more well known.

Glad you enjoyed them! I do plan on making more videos, but haven't had as much time lately. I'm hoping to get back into it soon!

I appreciate it! I find tutorials to be more useful when they explain the "why" instead of just the "how", so I try to do that where I can. I haven't had as much time lately to put together videos, which is probably the biggest thing slowing my channel's growth. I'm hoping to get back into it soon and see if I can get it growing faster. I'd like to put together some more vital, surge, and other tutorials soon. I've also been getting into blacksmithing lately so that would be a cool second channel, but it would be a long time before I'd become skilled enough to be able to put together a channel... There are lots of amazing channels on that topic, by the way.

That's a good idea. I'll add it to my list of video ideas and see if I can put something together on this at some point. I think its interesting to compare how each synth sounds and compare how clean or dirty each synth's oscillators are. Both styles have their uses...

Good idea! I'll see if I can look into that.

@@idlethoughtsmusic Thanks:)

Thanks, hope it helps!

Yeah, you can make some amazing sounds with it! I'm always learning something new too and know there's a lot more there just waiting to be used. Glad you found this useful. Have fun making some awesome sounds!

Not a problem! Hope it helps!

Glad you're enjoying it!

Yeah, I get that a lot. No, that's actually my real voice. Maybe I should start doing impressions.

Yeah, it's hard to find a sine wave that's super pure. If that's what you're going for, pay attention to your waveform selection (and filter selection), and of course, any effects you add on it. Even your speakers and especially room acoustics will have an effect. A lot of the time, people go for an impure sine on purpose because of the extra color or analog style sound it gives. Just depends on what you want to use it for. Know what you have and how your processing affects it, and get the sound you want for your music! If it sounds good...

You're welcome! Happy to help.

Glad you liked it!

That's the idea! I'm hoping to make it easier to get started and help people learn how to personalize it for their music.

Glad it was helpful!

No problem! Glad to help!

There's a few ways you could use them. First, they're nice for "static" adjustment of the sound. For example you could load a preset and tweak it. You could also draw in some automation to "mechanically" adjust it over time. You can also record in automation by using a controller and your daw, but not in a live setting. And yeah, you can use it in a live setting where you map your controller sliders, knobs, etc to the macros and then "play" them. They're a great way to add expressiveness and individually to your music!

Glad you enjoyed it! I hope they'll help you in your sound design journey!

I'm considering going from ableton 11 to 12. I really like some of the features they added in 11 - even minor stuff like the scales feature is pretty convenient. It wasn't hard to program in a reference scale in 10, but it's super convenient to not have to and much easier to see when you go out of key (on purpose). There are a lot of other cool features and I'm still discovering new tricks. But there are a few annoying bugs I wish they would fix - like when I move the play head and it starts and then wants to jump back after a moment. You can always do a trial and see if it's worth it for you. I'll be looking into 12 soon and see if it's worth upgrading for me or if I want to wait.

That's very true! I haven't had a chance to dig into Vital's source code yet (I have a little into surge xt), but that's a great way to learn about it if you know a bit of DSP. Fortunately JUCE isn't hard to understand, the DSP is the real work. I've considered doing this, but just haven't had the time yet. It would be fun to know.

That could be a number of reasons. Are you trying to turn the morph knob (and will the knob turn if you try to turn it yourself or is it disabled)? Have you set a path for the filter to move? Iif not the knob will be disabled. Is your automation lane attached to the parameter you're trying to automate? Is the automation active (in ableton, it will be greyed out if disabled, and that happens when you adjust it manually once you've set the automation). If it isn't working for a custom made filter, have you tried a preset to see if it's something in your filter settings?

Thanks for your response! Morph knob is not disabled. (I'm using Logic Pro). Tried the presets. Tried on different audio and midi tracks. I'm sure I'm missing something simple, but I'm stumped! @@idlethoughtsmusic

That's a tough one! I've not used logic pro so I haven't run into this problem yet. If the morph knob has an effect when you manually change it, maybe it's something with the automation interface to logic pro? I'm assuming the same automation technique you're using works with other plug-ins?

Not a problem! Hope it was helpful.

@idlethoughtsmusic I am sure it is. This synth isn't exactly intuitive. It's hard to figure out anything by myself. Without instructions I am lost.

Yeah, there's definitely a learning curve to most synths. Once you figure out the basics, it's not too bad. I learn better when there's a quick tutorial to get me started, so I tried to make a few...

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! 😁

Actually, you're not the first one to ask this question. It's a good question! I'm not sure if you can set the phase directly, but the oscillator's Retrigger button (located between the waveform display and the octave buttons) cause all voices of the oscillator to always start at the same phase position (or all oscillators using a right click option). This is like setting the random phase knob down to 0 in Serum or setting the phase randomness to 0 in Vital. This doesn't let you control the amount of randomness of the phase or set the exact value like you can in Serum or Vital, but allows you to disable randomness in your starting phase, which is nice for sounds that need to sound the exact same every time.

@@idlethoughtsmusicYour videos are great . Thanks for the explanation. But it would be a nice feature to have.

It would be useful. You can always go to the surge xt discord group and ask the developers about adding it. They're pretty responsive to questions.

@@idlethoughtsmusic Ok cool I will

I haven't had a chance to try that out yet. It looks pretty awesome!

@@idlethoughtsmusic they are some of the slickest, best thought out, most useful modules in the library. SurgeXT ftw

I'm not sure if you can set the phase directly, but the oscillator's Retrigger button (located between the waveform display and the octave buttons) cause all voices of the oscillator to always start at the same phase position (or all oscillators using a right click option). This is like setting the random phase knob down to 0 in Serum or setting the phase randomness to 0 in Vital. This doesn't let you control the amount of randomness of the phase or set the exact value like you can in Serum or Vital, but allows you to disable randomness in your starting phase, which is nice for sounds that need to sound the exact same every time.

Glad it was helpful for you!

Thanks for pointing that out, I'll have to check it out. It's a really useful feature!

@@idlethoughtsmusic check out TDR Prism too, it's also free with a multitrack (up to 4 tracks), it's much easier to set up

That looks cool, I'll have to check that out!

I don't suppose you can post a link for the VST2 version? On the Voxengo site they only have the most recent version available for free.

@@sgg6927 on the official website, the installer includes vst (vst = vst2), select vst 64 bit in the checkbox

Glad it helped! Span is pretty awesome and there's lots of useful features in it!

@@idlethoughtsmusic Exactly 💯, my workflow and music quality has improved a lot since I started using span vst

Glad you found it helpful! Thanks for checking it out.

Thanks, glad you found it useful!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.

Good idea. I have a couple of videos that I'm working on right now first... I'll add it to the list!

It's pretty good at FM, and you can't beat the price!