Trifonic: Making Pads with Spectral Dronemaker from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Brian of the music production team Trifonic completes his two-part series on synthesizing sounds with Native Instruments Massive (which shows nicely here, though you could also translate these techniques to similar semi-modular synths). Part one from May covers oscillators, filters, and other features, further processed with a third-party plug; part two this week covers the performance editor and filters “to make sweet bass sounds.” (I like sweet and sour bass sounds, myself.) Check out the videos below.

What I love about Brian’s videos is that they’re very much connected to his way of working – more master class than dry curriculum – while still giving you a taste of the features you need to know in the tool. And since they are more compact, they’re a good way to tickle your creative sound design bones for a few minutes, then set you on a project, ideal for launching this weekend. You can follow them here:
http://nextstepaudio.com/

Massive is cool, but Mac users won’t want to miss the gems of plug-ins he mentions in the video at top. (I know I missed them — MacBook, boot!) Michael Norris’ SoundMagic Spectral is a collection of completely free-as-in-beer, Universal AU plug-ins which, true to the name, cover real-time spectral processing:
Included in SOUNDMAGIC SPECTRAL are the following plug-ins:

Spectral Averaging • Spectral Bin Shift • Spectral Blurring • Spectral DroneMaker • Spectral Emergence • Spectral Filterbank • Spectral Freezing • Spectral Gate and Hold • Spectral Gliding Filters • Spectral Granulation • Spectral Harmonizer • Spectral Partial Glide • Spectral Pitch Shift • Spectral Pulsing • Spectral Shimmer • Spectral Shuffle • Spectral Stretch • Spectral Tracing • Chorus • Comb Filter Bank • Grain Streamer • Idee Fixer • Mr Filterbank

http://www.sinevibes.com/experimental-audiounits/

Brian makes use of that DroneMaker, at top. Enjoy some production this weekend, folks! On to Massive…

Trifonic: Synthesis with NI’s Massive – Part 1 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Trifonic: Synthesis with NI’s Massive – Part 2 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.