Advanced Synthesis Techniques with Serum
What you'll learn
- Advanced sound-design with Serum
- Subtractive Synthesis
- Wavetable Synthesis
- Sound Design Examples
Requirements
- XferRecords Serum
Description
When I think Serum, I think Synthesizer, because that's what it is. But I also think:
FM, AM & RM
Custom WaveTables
Text to Speech
Sampler
Math
Polyphonic Modulation
Joseph Fourier
Steve Duda ♥
Image Synthesis
Serum is seriously overflowing with cool features, many of which often overlooked, and some features not even documented.
This is what made me decide to make an advanced sound-design course, focussing just on Serum. And indeed, it turned out to be the most in-depth course ever created by me, or on Serum in general. At first I just wanted to focus on the Serum Guru's, those of you that already know and love the synth, and are enthusiastic about diving even deeper.
But then I realised, since it was going to be a big course anyway, I might as well include the basics, so that everyone who owns Serum can follow along. Because of this, the course is separated into three different levels, over 9 hours of content:
Level A - The Foundations (2.5 Hours)
Here you will find all the fundamental information required to understand the rest of the course, and subtractive/wavetable synthesis in general.
We talk about Oscillators, Waveforms, Basic Filters, Envelopes, LFO's, Note Modulators, Effects, etc.
Everything is explained in great detail, with plenty of examples and context to make sure that the topics really "click"
Watching this part of the course will provide you with a strong foundation on subtractive synthesis as a whole, and of course on Serum itself.
Level B - The Depths (3 Hours)
Here we descend into the depths of Serum, we explore custom Wavetables, Image Synthesis, FFT Bins/Additive Synthesis, Hybridizing, The Formula Parser, and much more! You'll understand this for example:
[sin(sin((abs(-2*x)-1)*pi*z)*pi)]
Math is really cool when you want to figure out the universe, but it's even better when you can use it to create custom Wavetables
Level C - The Experiments (3.5 Hours)
At this point you're going to have a very thorough understanding on everything that Serum has to offer, even more than the manual would offer. But, we also need examples.
So this last part of the course is designed to give you as many real-life sound design examples as possible, it serves as a creative cookbook for tons of delicious Serum recipes.
Among other things we'll dive into; using LFO's as Wavetables, creating organic sounds with the Noise Oscillator, Audio Rate Synthesis, Custom Tunings, and Polyphonic Modulation.
Who this course is for:
- Beginners and Experienced Serum users who want to dive a level deeper
Instructor
Sound Designer (Loopmasters, Camel Audio, ADSR sounds, SoundFreqs), Music Production Instructor (Pyramind), Grade C certified music teacher
My name is Jor van der Poel, I was born in the Netherlands and lived in Vancouver, BC for years. Currently I am living in Berlin, which proves to be a great playground for the experimental minded (i.e. Mad Scientists).
I am a music producer, composer, teacher and sound designer. I am certified in both music theory and sound design education. When I was younger I wanted to be a famous drummer, which resulted in me practicing for a ridiculous amount of hours per day, which eventually got me into music education and my first job as a music teacher. This introduced me to a whole new world of music, and I realised that if I knew how to record and arrange I could be my own band. So I started practicing piano and guitar, both classical and jazz and learned how to record this to use in my music.
Besides acoustic music, I also love the extreme flexibility of synthetic sounds which made me want to learn about sound design, mixing and mastering. I spend a few years practicing this 8 hours a day, I got pretty good at it and 7 years ago I started making weekly sound design videos for the online community ADSR. This introduced me to a lot of people in the music industry, and taught me more about educating others. It also got me on the Sound-Design team of various Software Developers and a position as a featured mentor for Pyramind, CA.
I am a co-founder of Sound-Freqs, a sound-design label that focuses on community and the owner of Subject Sound, an online school for Sound Design, Production & Music Theory.
I also create music under the alias Jorgalad