Teaching Synthesis

I’ve been teaching synthesis for several months now, and got and interesting email related to that recently that I figured might be best to answer in blog format (sorry for the delayed response lol). I’ll just paste the message in full (with redactions of personal info):

Hey! I saw your contribution in aftertouch audio’s video about magic sound design. You seem like a deligthful person and I’m so incredibly impressed by what you manage to conjure from synthesis. I work as a composer and sound designer currently working on a project that could need a boost in this area, so I wish to ask two questions! I hope that’s ok.

1. Do you have any phaseplant presets anywhere I could buy and try to figure out?

2. I’m looking for someone who could help me personally develop in this specific area of sfx synthesis. Now I don’t have hardware but I work closely with phaseplant and I saw that you do too and thought “oh this person might just be who I’m looking for!”

Are you interested in a mentoring role to help me develop my phaseplant sound design synthesis? If yes, up for a chat?

To answer the two questions with one word, no. Sorry. I’ve been asked before, and similar things are coming, but it’s not gonna happen like this. But I have good reasons!

1) I don’t sell presets even though that’s the vogue and profitable thing to do for anyone producing creative content because most of my presets are weirdly specific and include copyrighted samples. Usually the specificity goes hand-in-hand with the copyrighted content, which I obviously can’t include in content for profit as it’s often not allowed in most EULAs, so it would be weird to sell presets where each one has a paragraph-long note about how to set it up. I could sell synthesis-only or native sample based presets (native in this case referring to both included samples in Phaseplant and samples I personally created), but again you get into the weirdly specific thing so they’d largely be not useful other than for education purposes. I like things to be useful, as much as I am an educator.

1.5) I will have a sample and preset pack available as soon as I get my book on synthetic sound design published! Stay tuned for that 🙂

2) answering the last couple sentences here really, but while I could probably work out some kinda schedule and payment and everything, if the last several months as a sound design teacher at a private high school have taught me anything, it’s that teaching an incredibly niche subject is very difficult and requires a lot of planning and changing of teaching style for each person and their goals. Some of my students are synthesis almost exclusive, which is cool, whereas others are more into sample manipulation and yet others still are into Foley (yes I’m covering all that and more in my class – it’s a lot to manage and I barely know what I’m doing half the time).

I started my class effectively with definitions. Samples, libraries, Foley, synthesizer terms, etc. I then did real world examples in-class showing how samples can be manipulated, how Foley is performed, how field recording works, how synthesizers can be used for final or layers of sounds, and layering sounds and applying effects, each time having students give it a go and discuss amongst themselves how to make things work by giving them end goals and watching the myriad of ways they went at it and judging how close they got. Now we use those skills for different theatre performances and dances held by the department, with each student having different preferences and learning methods but then teaming up to create sounds for the performances. That’s right, I’m technically theatre faculty, not music. There’s no musical knowledge required, but is the most immediately understood way to presenting ideas, so in an indirect way I do teach them how to make music with sound design techniques.

The issue with doing that one-on-one is twofold: one, I can more quickly figure out your style, how you learn, what you prefer, etc., but then it might be harder to teach you even basic synthesis concepts. I’ve held events in the past both online and in-person about synthesis techniques that participants even a year later don’t fully grasp or even remotely understand, and honestly I don’t know what to do in that case.

2.5) Good news, again regarding said book, it will go through and teach you how to make a wide variety of sounds with synthesis! The book plus samples plus presets will likely help a lot for many of you, and for others will be useless. I’m not perfect.

This has basically been a post about advertising my upcoming book, but also showing the struggles of teaching synthesis for sound effect design and why I don’t offer private lessons. What I can do for now is paste my copypasta for anyone starting out learning synthesis online and hope it suffices until I can get my book and stuff published. Enjoy:

hi im ava i synthesize things sometimes here’s a mountain of knowledge for you to pour over

https://moogfoundation.org/learning-synthesis/synthesis-fundamentals/ (outlines the basic parts of a synthesizer)

https://learningsynths.ableton.com/en/get-started (interactive web-based synth that walks you through how the above parts work together)

https://www.soundonsound.com/series/synth-secrets-sound-sound (63-part series on how to synthesize realistic sounds, mostly instruments)

https://vital.audio/#getvital (free, super powerful synthesizer on par with and in some ways surpassing popular synths like serum – be sure to read the manual)

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/606b615de4309721c5c34b58/t/606f4c46d0db2166e36a2b86/1617906759643/Vital+User+Manual+Hookline.pdf (unofficial Vital manual because a real one doesn’t exist)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfJ9Dbjz6cs (if the first link doesnt help, here’s how to translate between synths so if someone tells you to run a saw and a square into a 2-pole lowpass plucked by a decay EG, you can do that on any synth)