cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9494144
I’m looking for some help in recreating the main synth patch for “A Warm Place” by Nine Inch Nails (can be heard in the linked video) using a software synth.
I think one of the main components to the patch is some kind of organ voice but beyond that I’m a bit lost as to what I should try. I’m pretty new to creating synth patches, but I learn best by experimenting and trying to reproduce things I know I like. I’m not looking to recreate this sound perfectly, but if anyone here could offer some guidance on how to achieve a roughly similar sound, or even just a good place to start, I’d really appreciate it.
I’m mainly using ZynAddSubFX but don’t mind trying out other software.
Can you be more specific about which synth? I think I hear at least 2 different pads and a lead.
Zyn is very capable, but also more complicated than most other synths, and afaik doesn’t have wavetable capabilities (though I could be wrong). I would recommend getting Vital which is free/ has an optional paid expansion. It’s very similar to Serum so you can copy patches manually pretty easily too.
For the ambient pads I suggest watching this tutorial to start - I hear a lot of movement in the first pad similar to what he achieves here: https://youtu.be/ImWJixBPZj0?si=lLPUY8Kk34_qRVgS
In my limited experience, the answer to most “how to make this sound” is “detuned and unison on a saw” with varying amounts of filtering and envelope.
Thank you for the suggestions! I’m trying to recreate one of the pads - the more ‘organ’ sounding one. The other more ambient pad sounds to me like it’s actually a guitar played with some form of tremelo picking/strumming, with a lot of reverb and delay.
Yeah that guitar thing came to my mind as well when listening. I missed the part about the “organ” in your post the first time.
I hear it now, and when I look up “how to synth an organ” the first result says just regular sine waves. I made a patch of 3 sine waves at different octaves, added unison (more voices) and a little detune, then a lowpass filter, and it sounds pretty close. Some optional effects I find help are chorus, reverb, and another lowpass filter.
Thanks very much, I’ll try that out
I’m fairly certain that what we hear on the record is cut from a much longer recording and it maintains some granular delay and tons of reverb from the parts we do not hear. So I’d say it’s a 100% wet signal that we are hearing the long tails of. Then the foreground melody is also heavily processed very likely through a modulation model we sorts. The Line 6 MM4 can emulate a Leslie speaker (the one where the cone spins around) and something like that could get you there once you have the tambre of the ‘organ’ patch in hand. Remember that Trent Reznor is extremely experimental so if that melody was made with samples of the reverb tails of the whole textural background in key and then put through a resonant filter that would not be out of character for him at all.
Thank you, that’s all really helpful.
No sweat, have fun making music!
