Creating synth sounds with lots of attack/pluck

[ambinate]

I'm trying to learn the basics of subtractive synthesis right now, and I've made some decent progress with making pad and lead-type sounds, but one thing that's lost on me is making a sound that has a short, heavy attack, almost like it's being plucked or hit with a mallet. There's a big spectrum of sounds that have the kind of thing I'd like to recreate - any type of bell, synths that go 'pop' ("Rose of Jericho" by BT is a good example), the really common trance pluck sound (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9k2FJ4HpB8 - about 2 and a half minutes in), all sorts of stuff. I realize these are all very different sounds (and are all made differently), I just wanted to give a bunch of examples to get my point across.

I'm using Logic's ES2 mostly, if it makes a difference. I know I could just use Sculpture for some of this, but I feel I'd be cheating myself out of figuring out what the hell is going on.

Thanks a lot in advance for the help!

[Hy Bound]

It all has to do with the ADSR Envelopes you use. Both the Amp and Mod Envelopes can be set the same way to get the same effect:

Simply set the Attack to 0, the Decay to 50%, the Sustain to 0, and the Release to 0 (or more if you want it to be longer or shorter.)

[Rozovian]

In the ES2 you can see the millisecond times of the envelopes. Attack 1ms, Decay 150-250ms, sustain less than 50%, and the release depends on the sound you want. You can give it a longer "tail" with reverb, or use release for the tail. if you know the envelope well enough, and how you can control the sound by controlling the filter and/or the volume you should have no problem customizing those settings to what you're looking for in the sound.

Some pluck sounds are better done with FM synthesis, which is what the EFM1 does. Same envelope times tho.

[The Vagrance]

As said before, envelopes are obviously key, but its usually more than just the amp envelope. Try experimenting with the filter envelope (obviously) as well as the pitch envelope (have the pitch start off an octave or two up for a few milliseconds before it pitches down to give it more of a sense of percussion) and any other envelope you can think of, generally following the same rules: Little-to-no attack, decent amount of decay, and little-to-no sustain. You can also try just layering percussive sounds on top of your stab sounds in a sampler or something.

[Yoozer]

Three things that have been omitted from the previous replies, informative though they were:

- the shape of the envelope. FM allows exponential (positive or negative) slopes; exponential negative gets you plucky blips. Absynth allows you to modify the curve of the envelope; it becomes immensely obvious once you experiment with that.

- the shortest attack is no attack at all. Sample your instrument and cut off the first bit so you always have the waveform starting at the zero crossing (cutting the waveform at the start when it does not cross zero gets you clicks)

- use a compressor. I used to have an Alesis Ion which had one on board; even though VAs don't generally suffer from sluggish envelopes, the compressor added the extra punch.

[ambinate]

You guys are awesome, thanks so much for the feedback. So far it's really helping me get some of the sounds I was aiming for. I still have a lot to learn and experiment with but this is real nice.

The Vagrance mentioned using pitch envelopes to add to the attack - I just have a quick question for anyone who's used Logic's ES2. I don't think it has a dedicated pitch envelope by default, so would I be able to achieve the same thing just by, for example, having the Router direct Envelope 2 to affect pitch1 (or pitch2 or 3 or whatever)?

[Cerrax]

I use Logic, but I have Logic 7 Express, so I do not have the ES2, only the ES1. Everyone has hit the major points already, but I just wanted to throw in that a light delay on the synth can accentuate the "pluck" or "pop" a bit because the audience will recognize the echo of the attack. Also, a technique employed quite a bit by chiptune artists to give the note a stronger attack is to place an extremely short note a few octaves above right at the beginning of the note.

Just my $0.02

[Yoozer]

I don't think it has a dedicated pitch envelope by default, so would I be able to achieve the same thing just by, for example, having the Router direct Envelope 2 to affect pitch1 (or pitch2 or 3 or whatever)?

Pitch1 is probably just the pitch of oscillator 1 alone; you'll want all three at the same time.

"Routing" (most other synthesizers call it a modulation matrix) works with a source, a target, and an amount. Basically, just imagine that the volume envelope is also a connection in the router - from an envelope to the amplifier, at maximum intensity/amount.

Congratulations on the first step to truly understanding synthesizers - by getting away from the idea that you have "a pitch envelope" but rather a connection of anything to a parameter changing (modulating) it, you'll find new creative ways to work with sounds.