In this tutorial
My notes from this video
First thing I worry about is the legato. Put it on mono legato with a slide of 60 milliseconds, and start with a basic saw wave. Then go directly into the filter, select something like MG Low 18, take envelope two and add it to the cutoff.
The lowest point really is prominent, because you boost the mid frequencies there. We're going to use the resonance, and that boosts around that frequency range. So you want to start around 130 hertz. Here I start on 110, so it starts in the mids. Don't make it go too far open, otherwise you get this clicky sound.
What's important now is that you get a distortion mode and open the drive. You want tube distortion, soft clip or hard clipper, maybe Stomp Box or tape saturation. You don't really want Downsample or Zero-Square, it doesn't work.
You use these modes because it's a vintage sound. People use the TB-303 with this classic distortion, like a tube over driver. I think Stomp Box is great, because it leaves a little bit of this gritty analog vintage sound.
There are three options. You can make acid with a low pass, with a high pass or with a band pass. So it all depends on the sound you want. The high pass is a little bit different, more snappy. The band pass is in my opinion the best one.
Once it sounds acidy, you can make envelope two longer so the decay gets longer. Then you need an envelope on top of that to get an initial clicky sound. I add envelope three, make it shorter and add it to the cutoff as well. I also add it to the resonance a little bit, so it opens up the resonance in the beginning and gets more clicky.
Go into the velocity and the note section. Higher velocity gets a higher automation point. So if I add the velocity to the cutoff, the lowest velocity gets this cutoff range and the highest velocity gets that one. I just tweak it between the mid range.
On a higher note the acid usually loses the power, because you're not really in the low mid range anymore. So I add the note to the cutoff as well, but in inverse mode. The higher you go in the note, the lower this range goes. That way you also get that nice acid sound in a higher range.
A cool thing you can do with the saw wave is take the RAND knob down, so the phase randomization is at zero at all times. Then open the unison to two or three, very slightly. I like a unison of three with the blend down. Now you've opened it up in the stereo spectrum, which is really cool.
With the RAND knob on zero and unison 16 you get a muddy sound. For a normal detuned saw wave, open up the RAND knob. Afterwards I add a little bit of hyper dimension, to give that analog vintage sound. You can do the same thing with the chorus. Take down the feed and the delay.
FL Studio·Serum
Acid Sounddesign
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