@@straighttalk2069 VItal is good, but Surge is a competely different beast. With all its weird oscs, filters, waveshapers, effects, routing options it provides so much character.
Very informative, no blabbering and not trying to make yourself the more interesting content. I like that. What I find very remarkable about Surge is its frugal use of CPU power. On my system Surge rarely exceeds 1%. My original thought was to use some synths like Synth 1 or one from Fullbucket for the simpler stuff and Surge for the more sophisticated sounds. But after doing some very unscientific comparisons with the help of the task manager I can't see a reason to not use Surge for everything. Btw, Vital on my system: 15-20%, when minimized at around 7%...
Glad you found it useful. Sometimes it's best to get straight to the point. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, Surge is pretty remarkable for its low CPU usage. It's hard to beat!
love this synth. it’s also possible to import audio wavs as wavetables but breaking with initial time and pitch restrictions using the window option. you can even assign key tracking to formant in the modulation setup, then adjust it so that each key doesn’t formant shift. better synth options for this, but still gets some fun results for free.
That's a good use of the formant option! It would be nice to have more capability in the wavetable editor (and support for 24 bit files), since it's a bit limited there. But you could always load your audio into Vital and make your wavetable, export it as a WAV file in the wavetable editor, and then load it into Surge XT. You can make some really fun sounds in Surge. There's a lot of cool features in there for shaping your sound and adding modulation, especially for a free synth.
That's right! There's some nice key tracking features in there. I'm looking at making a video on Surge's filters sometime within the next few videos, so stay tuned...
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...
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! I have a few Vital tutorials up, and although they're more focused on making specific sounds, they do cover some Vital features along the way. I plan on making more Vital tutorials. I'm actually working on a Vital filters one right now, which should cover things like the difference between ladder and diode filters, and so on.
Great video, thank you 🙏, I was having difficulties with setting simple LFO, for some reason the the lfo waves don’t sync very well, also envelopes are kind of tricky to work with, a tutorial about that would be much appreciated, also couldn’t find any video or documentation about this issues.
Glad you found it useful! If there's enough interest in the Surge video(s), I'd like to do a series of videos explaining the different parts of the synth. If that works out, I can make the modulators video next in the Surge series (before the filters). There's a bit of a learning curve, but there's some powerful features in Surge, especially in the modulators. The manual was very helpful for getting me started with them. I'm curious about your LFO syncing issue. Were you synced to tempo (right click on the rate slider at the bottom and select Tempo Sync)?
Not necessarily. Some sound effects may be made electronically, but many sound effects are made by recording and processing real sounds (Foley sounds). There are some really interesting videos on TH-cam on how they make these sounds. On the other hand, arcade and video games (especially older ones) use a lot of electronically generated sounds. It's pretty clever how they come up with these sounds. A lot of it depends on the technology available at the time (and what was popular).
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.
I have a video on surge xt's modulation that should help. It's similar to serum's LFO. Serum has a single customizable LFO that's easy to use and mix lfo styles, and surge is more broken out into different types if you're looking for something quick of a specific type with extra tools to help. You can make completely customizable LFOs in surge like in serum, but it isn't quite as intuitive. It's very powerful though and both have features the other one doesn't.
6:17 How did you change the display? Tried looking it up myself but I can't find anything. Also tried clicking on it while having various keys pressed but nothing happens :/ I would really appreciate your help :)
All you need to do is click on it. The trick is, it you need to be in the wavetable (or window) oscillator to change the display. Most of the time if it's not working, it's because I forgot to switch from Classic.
@@idlethoughtsmusic Thanks for your quick answer, I really appreciate it :) Turns out it was just a bug and a update to a newer version fixed the issue ^^'
I love and hate this synth. Its a good tutorial to go deeper, tnx for that, A couple patches blew me away first time I played around with the presets. 'Rather Low' was one of them, I thought there was an earthquake, the cats freaked out. I think its still among the best patches I try to keep that effect for certain spots in a mix. The cathederal organ is pretty convincing and frightening as well However taming the Surge beast is not so easy for myself. I end up going into the netherworld pretty fast but I should spend a few hours and read the literature
I never thought about that, but that makes total sense that the cats would freak out about that (and to be honest, if you're like me, you might have enjoyed that more than you should have). Hopefully they didn't freak out when I played it in the video (13:12). I probably should have paid more attention to the lows when working on that section of the video; I tend to work on headphones most of the time. Surge does have some great presets, but as you've seen, there's a bit of a learning curve to the synth. There's some powerful stuff in there. I've been digging through the manual and trying to learn it better myself. It has a great manual! If there's enough interest, I'm considering making a series of videos sharing what I've learned. Let's tame that beast!
@@idlethoughtsmusic The cats are my among my best listening critics Its hillarious what they react to There are some unique pad sounds I find myself coming back to and tweek or mimic. Loving your tutorials, and yeh I will keep picking away at Surge and figure it out eventually Just me but most modern wavetable vsts and hardware still sound like old 6 operator DX7s but easier to use and move sounds whereever you like in the stereo field. Yamaha made tons of them, Ive had numerous incarnations over the decades. The simple 4 operator synths were great lead instruments, and they made excellent bell and chimes and of course these days one may use them to beef up a more nuanced sample I hope I am somewhat sympathetic and not inclined subjecting my pets to what I experiment with and can drive any creature to madness :)
@@genuinefreewilly5706 Your cats sound like a lot of fun! I'm sure they're confused with some of the interesting sounds you make. Pads are really fun and can really set the atmosphere for your music. The more you play with them, the more you learn and the better you get! I haven't had the opportunity to play with any hardware synths like DX7s, but maybe one day I'll have the space and time to do that. I'm looking forward to that. For now, I use controllers and software synths. You can do some amazing stuff with soft synths these days. Glad you're enjoying the videos, and thanks for the feedback!
Glad it was helpful! To get a 3D wavetable view, you only need to click on the wavetable view window. It'll switch back and forth between 2D and 3D. You could also right-click and tell it to switch between 2D and 3D in the popup menu.
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.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but how do I "play" in Surge XT? You skipped over how to actually generate sound. Is it a keybinding? A 'play' button hidden somewhere in the UI?
So there is no play button - instead, Surge XT, like other virtual synths, runs as a plugin within a DAW (Ableton Live in my case). The DAW sends the MIDI information to Surge XT when play is pressed in the DAW, and Surge XT returns audio back to the DAW which is then further processed and then sent to your speakers. Now, Surge XT does have a standalone version, which is probably what you're using. In this case, I assume it gets the MIDI from any controllers you may have plugged into your PC, and would then return the sound to your speakers. So in other words, you would play notes on your MIDI controller (probably a music keyboard) and hear the sound on your speaker. If you don't have a MIDI controller, I'm sure there are standalone programs out there that can generate MIDI from your computer keyboard. If you're just getting started, I'd recommend looking for a DAW if you don't have one yet. Although Surge XT is free, most DAWs are not and some are very expensive. There are some less expensive ones out there so do your research and find the one that fits you. Just make sure it can load in plugins, like Surge XT.
@@idlethoughtsmusic Thanks so much for the answer! I actually reached out to the Surge XT guys and got a resolution. Let me explain what I did: 1) The first step was getting Surge XT to do "anything". This is most easily done using the 'Menu' -> 'Workflow' -> 'Virtual Keyboard' option, and pressing some notes that way. 2) The second step is to hook up a DAW, a physical keyboard, or a midi editor. I chose to use something called 'Loop' to create virtual midi ports between 'Midi Editor' software and 'Surge XT' Hope this helps anyone on their own journey :)
That's a good question. I upload in 1080p and TH-cam converts it automatically. I just tested it and it works on my computer in 240p, but maybe it doesn't work on some phones or some browsers or something?
@@idlethoughtsmusic strange... youtube has really been making some bad decisions lately, i'm thinking of completely deleting the app off my phone, but creators like you are the only reason keeping me on this platform
best synth plugin of all time
It is pretty awesome, yeah. I can't believe it's free!
@@idlethoughtsmusic thanks for the tutorial sir
not saying i disagree, just saying it's only the best if you know how to use it...
Vital just beats it for me but these two are all I need in the VST synth world.
@@straighttalk2069 VItal is good, but Surge is a competely different beast. With all its weird oscs, filters, waveshapers, effects, routing options it provides so much character.
Very informative, no blabbering and not trying to make yourself the more interesting content. I like that.
What I find very remarkable about Surge is its frugal use of CPU power. On my system Surge rarely exceeds 1%.
My original thought was to use some synths like Synth 1 or one from Fullbucket for the simpler stuff and Surge for the more sophisticated sounds. But after doing some very unscientific comparisons with the help of the task manager I can't see a reason to not use Surge for everything.
Btw, Vital on my system: 15-20%, when minimized at around 7%...
Glad you found it useful. Sometimes it's best to get straight to the point.
Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, Surge is pretty remarkable for its low CPU usage. It's hard to beat!
I started using this for big lush pads because it doesn't cook my CPU like Serum can tend to. Underrated synth!
Totally agree, that's one of its best features! It's a great synth and I'm surprised it isn't more well known.
love this synth.
it’s also possible to import audio wavs as wavetables but breaking with initial time and pitch restrictions using the window option. you can even assign key tracking to formant in the modulation setup, then adjust it so that each key doesn’t formant shift. better synth options for this, but still gets some fun results for free.
That's a good use of the formant option!
It would be nice to have more capability in the wavetable editor (and support for 24 bit files), since it's a bit limited there. But you could always load your audio into Vital and make your wavetable, export it as a WAV file in the wavetable editor, and then load it into Surge XT.
You can make some really fun sounds in Surge. There's a lot of cool features in there for shaping your sound and adding modulation, especially for a free synth.
You can also type the pitch note in the filter if you're interested in keytracking and stuff
That's right! There's some nice key tracking features in there. I'm looking at making a video on Surge's filters sometime within the next few videos, so stay tuned...
Wow I thought the sine wasnt pure the other day, didn't understand but now i know. I guess id have to use a filter to get a pure tone in future
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...
Splendid explanation! Good for you!)
Thanks! Glad it was helpful!
Awesome video! Please, cover any of these in the future: zynaddsubfx 3 (zyn-fusion), odin 2, dexed, helm, cardinal
Thanks for the suggestions! I'll look into those some more.
Thanks for explaining all this 🙂
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...
Never mind ableton, the vcv rack version makes routing audio or modulation signals easy peasy.
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
Great review and tutorial. I'd like to suggest a similar video with the amazing Vital.
Thanks! I have a few Vital tutorials up, and although they're more focused on making specific sounds, they do cover some Vital features along the way. I plan on making more Vital tutorials. I'm actually working on a Vital filters one right now, which should cover things like the difference between ladder and diode filters, and so on.
Great video, thank you 🙏, I was having difficulties with setting simple LFO, for some reason the the lfo waves don’t sync very well, also envelopes are kind of tricky to work with, a tutorial about that would be much appreciated, also couldn’t find any video or documentation about this issues.
Glad you found it useful! If there's enough interest in the Surge video(s), I'd like to do a series of videos explaining the different parts of the synth. If that works out, I can make the modulators video next in the Surge series (before the filters). There's a bit of a learning curve, but there's some powerful features in Surge, especially in the modulators. The manual was very helpful for getting me started with them.
I'm curious about your LFO syncing issue. Were you synced to tempo (right click on the rate slider at the bottom and select Tempo Sync)?
@@idlethoughtsmusic yes it happened when synced to tempo, its like every few waves there’s a different wave (longer) coming up.
@@solo9334 Huh. I'll keep an eye out for that!
So, all the sound effects I heard in 1970/80 animations/movies were made with waveforms?
Not necessarily. Some sound effects may be made electronically, but many sound effects are made by recording and processing real sounds (Foley sounds). There are some really interesting videos on TH-cam on how they make these sounds. On the other hand, arcade and video games (especially older ones) use a lot of electronically generated sounds. It's pretty clever how they come up with these sounds. A lot of it depends on the technology available at the time (and what was popular).
Great, How do you change the hase of the oscillator?
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
Does it have sequencer
It has a step sequencer LFO type. You can use that for all sorts of interesting modulation effects, including pitch modulation. Good question!
@@idlethoughtsmusic how does modulation work it the most confusing part about this vst like it work sometime other time it doesn't change anything
@@idlethoughtsmusic also another question is the step-sequencer is comparable to serum Lfo sequencer
I have a video on surge xt's modulation that should help. It's similar to serum's LFO. Serum has a single customizable LFO that's easy to use and mix lfo styles, and surge is more broken out into different types if you're looking for something quick of a specific type with extra tools to help. You can make completely customizable LFOs in surge like in serum, but it isn't quite as intuitive. It's very powerful though and both have features the other one doesn't.
Absolutely excellent tutorial.
Thank you
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it.
An excellent overview, thanks.
Glad you liked it!
6:17 How did you change the display?
Tried looking it up myself but I can't find anything. Also tried clicking on it while having various keys pressed but nothing happens :/
I would really appreciate your help :)
All you need to do is click on it. The trick is, it you need to be in the wavetable (or window) oscillator to change the display. Most of the time if it's not working, it's because I forgot to switch from Classic.
@@idlethoughtsmusic Thanks for your quick answer, I really appreciate it :)
Turns out it was just a bug and a update to a newer version fixed the issue ^^'
That's good to know! You aren't the first person to run into this behavior, so I'll remember that as a potential cause...
Thank you for your videos, please continue💌
Of course! More coming soon!
Holy# this thing is powerful yet CPU efficient. Thanks dude!
Yeah, no problem! It's a great synth. More Surge XT videos in the works!
@@idlethoughtsmusic Awesome!🙏
I love and hate this synth. Its a good tutorial to go deeper, tnx for that, A couple patches blew me away first time I played around with the presets. 'Rather Low' was one of them, I thought there was an earthquake, the cats freaked out. I think its still among the best patches I try to keep that effect for certain spots in a mix. The cathederal organ is pretty convincing and frightening as well
However taming the Surge beast is not so easy for myself. I end up going into the netherworld pretty fast but I should spend a few hours and read the literature
I never thought about that, but that makes total sense that the cats would freak out about that (and to be honest, if you're like me, you might have enjoyed that more than you should have). Hopefully they didn't freak out when I played it in the video (13:12). I probably should have paid more attention to the lows when working on that section of the video; I tend to work on headphones most of the time.
Surge does have some great presets, but as you've seen, there's a bit of a learning curve to the synth. There's some powerful stuff in there. I've been digging through the manual and trying to learn it better myself. It has a great manual! If there's enough interest, I'm considering making a series of videos sharing what I've learned. Let's tame that beast!
@@idlethoughtsmusic The cats are my among my best listening critics Its hillarious what they react to
There are some unique pad sounds I find myself coming back to and tweek or mimic. Loving your tutorials, and yeh I will keep picking away at Surge and figure it out eventually
Just me but most modern wavetable vsts and hardware still sound like old 6 operator DX7s but easier to use and move sounds whereever you like in the stereo field. Yamaha made tons of them, Ive had numerous incarnations over the decades. The simple 4 operator synths were great lead instruments, and they made excellent bell and chimes and of course these days one may use them to beef up a more nuanced sample
I hope I am somewhat sympathetic and not inclined subjecting my pets to what I experiment with and can drive any creature to madness :)
@@genuinefreewilly5706 Your cats sound like a lot of fun! I'm sure they're confused with some of the interesting sounds you make.
Pads are really fun and can really set the atmosphere for your music. The more you play with them, the more you learn and the better you get! I haven't had the opportunity to play with any hardware synths like DX7s, but maybe one day I'll have the space and time to do that. I'm looking forward to that. For now, I use controllers and software synths. You can do some amazing stuff with soft synths these days.
Glad you're enjoying the videos, and thanks for the feedback!
@@idlethoughtsmusic Absolutely
This is what i wanted to see thank you! I have a question, how do you have 3D wavetable view?
Glad it was helpful! To get a 3D wavetable view, you only need to click on the wavetable view window. It'll switch back and forth between 2D and 3D. You could also right-click and tell it to switch between 2D and 3D in the popup menu.
@@idlethoughtsmusic I probably need to update then. Ye it worked. But i guess i was on a classic oscillator before updating.. 😂😂
I did the same thing at first, until I realized I was still on classic...
Is there a way to change the phase of the oscillator?
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.
👌🤌👍
🤘🤘
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but how do I "play" in Surge XT? You skipped over how to actually generate sound. Is it a keybinding? A 'play' button hidden somewhere in the UI?
So there is no play button - instead, Surge XT, like other virtual synths, runs as a plugin within a DAW (Ableton Live in my case). The DAW sends the MIDI information to Surge XT when play is pressed in the DAW, and Surge XT returns audio back to the DAW which is then further processed and then sent to your speakers.
Now, Surge XT does have a standalone version, which is probably what you're using. In this case, I assume it gets the MIDI from any controllers you may have plugged into your PC, and would then return the sound to your speakers. So in other words, you would play notes on your MIDI controller (probably a music keyboard) and hear the sound on your speaker. If you don't have a MIDI controller, I'm sure there are standalone programs out there that can generate MIDI from your computer keyboard. If you're just getting started, I'd recommend looking for a DAW if you don't have one yet. Although Surge XT is free, most DAWs are not and some are very expensive. There are some less expensive ones out there so do your research and find the one that fits you. Just make sure it can load in plugins, like Surge XT.
@@idlethoughtsmusic Thanks so much for the answer!
I actually reached out to the Surge XT guys and got a resolution. Let me explain what I did:
1) The first step was getting Surge XT to do "anything". This is most easily done using the 'Menu' -> 'Workflow' -> 'Virtual Keyboard' option, and pressing some notes that way.
2) The second step is to hook up a DAW, a physical keyboard, or a midi editor. I chose to use something called 'Loop' to create virtual midi ports between 'Midi Editor' software and 'Surge XT'
Hope this helps anyone on their own journey :)
unrelated question: why can i not watch this video in 240p?
That's a good question. I upload in 1080p and TH-cam converts it automatically. I just tested it and it works on my computer in 240p, but maybe it doesn't work on some phones or some browsers or something?
@@idlethoughtsmusic strange... youtube has really been making some bad decisions lately, i'm thinking of completely deleting the app off my phone, but creators like you are the only reason keeping me on this platform
Yeah, who knows what they're up to. Things are always changing one way or another and it doesn't always work out. Appreciate the support!