Need help getting started with synths.

[masterpain56]

I've been inspired by many of the mixes on this website (among other places), to try my hand at the synthesizer. Unfortunately, I know little about them at all. I am an active bassist, and know a decent amount of piano and recording techniques, I just know nothing about the synths themselves. It seems to me best (cheaptest) to buy a MIDI keyboard and synth software.

Could anyone give me some advice, what's good and what to avoid? I'd be using the synth mostly for sting and choir sounds, along with "real instrument sounds" (bells, guitar, piano, etc).

Its also probably worht mentioning, I'm on a butget, preferably less than 500$

I'd appreciate any help!

[The Vagrance]

You'll probably want to look at getting a sampler as opposed to a synth, because while a synth can do a lot of cool things reproducing natural sounds is usually best done through samplers. I'd look at Native Instruments Kontakt 4 first because its pretty much the sampler of choice for most people.

[masterpain56]

Ahh, I didn't even know the difference, I'll check it out, thanks

Something like that can be used with a midi keyboard?

[Yoozer]

Yes. What you even use as MIDI keyboard doesn't matter; a $30 USB MIDI cable (E-mu Xmidi 1x1) will turn any MIDI keyboard into a controller for your computer.

You play a note on the controller.

The controller yells out of its MIDI port: "Hey, this guy just hit F#4!"

The cable dutifully transmits the signal to the computer.

The computer listens and passes it on to your host - software like Cubase, Ableton Live, Reaper, Sonar, FL Studio, whatever. You're going to need something like that.

The host has a MIDI track with Kontakt loaded on it, and yells to Kontakt "Yo, I'm getting an F#4 here! Move your ass!"

Kontakt receives it and does what it has to do - e.g. play something.

The sound goes to the host. The host passes it on to the soundcard. The soundcard translates it to a voltage, and the voltage hits the speakers. Then, you hear whatever sound was assigned to that note in Kontakt. It basically does not care what it has to play - Kontakt is a sampler, which means that you can record yourself playing a vuvuzela or making disgusting bathroom noises, and it'll do it. Alternatively, it also comes with a crapton of really nice and usable sounds.

Virtual analog synthesizers can be had for free, as in beer - easily enough. Kontakt's library, not so much; so it makes sense that if you're starting out and want a wide range of realistic (instead of synthetic) sounds - to choose that.

To get a teaser, get yourself http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/producer/kore-player/ for free.

[Arcana]

Could anyone give me some advice, what's good and what to avoid? I'd be using the synth mostly for sting and choir sounds, along with "real instrument sounds" (bells, guitar, piano, etc).

For stuff like this you probably want a sampler, not a synthesizer.

What's the difference? A sampler takes audio recordings and plays them back when you play notes. Samplers usually shift the pitch of your sample when you play different notes.

A synth takes some kind of a wave form and does a bunch of stuff to it to make a sound. So it might take a square wave that goes "bloop", and then you apply a bunch of filters to modify the sound.

If you're still interested in learning about a synthesizer, you might want to read about subtractive synthesis. Synth1 is a free software subtractive synthesizer.

[Yoozer]

Samples are pretty much subtractive synthesizers too; it's just that you don't get oscillators that can interact with eachother or have waveshaping options (so what you see in Synth1 with pulsewidth or FM is not available in Kontakt).