Laura Emiliano: Drag’n Drop in Serum
Did you know that Serum has an audio renderer built in? A small wave symbol appears in the top left corner when you move the mouse pointer there. If you hold it down, Serum will render the last note played.
You can then drag the result into the DAW as a one-shot or directly into one of Serum’s oscillators as a wavetable.
Laura Emiliano: Double LFOs and envelopes in Vital
What a package of sound, workflow and new ideas! And it‘s free! Vital has made quite an announcement in the direction of Serum, Pigments and Phase Plant. But like Serum, there is more to Vital than meets the eye at first glance. You can easily double the number of envelopes and LFOs! So three envelopes become six and four LFOs become eight. Simply connect the first three envelopes to modulation destinations and a fourth, fifth and sixth will automatically appear. The same applies to the LFOs, except that up to eight are possible!
Laura Emiliano: Use serum as a sampler
Serum is primarily a wavetable synthesizer. And with appropriate modulation you can also make wavetables sound somewhat like a sample. But even the old lady Serum can play audio files directly, albeit quite limitedly. So you can drag and drop any WAV file from the DAW or a folder onto the noise module in Serum (AIF don‘t seem to be recognized).
Then activate “Pitch Tracking” and “One Shot” and the serum trumpet is ready!
Laura Emiliano: Lock Soundtoys plugins
Practical tip for all fans of Decapitator, Echoboy, LittleAlterboy & Co.: You can lock every parameter in the Soundtoys plug-in. Hold down CTRL + Option (Mac) or CTRL + Alt (Windows) and click on a slider. Then its name will be displayed in red.
If you change the preset now, this control remains at its value! Very practical when mixing vocals, for example, to lock the mix control on Echoboy and not always have to readjust it.
Laura Emiliano: Play other synths with the sequencer in Arturia Pigments
Arturia Pigments has been improved again in version 5. But there are still users who can‘t get used to the sound. Unlike Vital, Serum or Phase Plant, Pigments has a built-in sequencer and arpeggiator. And since the last update, you can easily use it via the MIDI out function of your DAW to trigger other VST instruments! So you can abuse Serum or Phase Plant with wild acid bass lines.
Oliver Schmitt (Sounds Of Revolution)
d16 Punchbox
Many people see d16 Punchbox as “just” a bass drum synthesizer, but you can also create great-sounding basslines with the keytrack function. For me, the 808 emulation is the most impressive
