Make a setting move

About 9 minutes

You will build a growl that opens up as it plays, and learn Movement: letting something that changes over time, such as a rise or a wobble, move a setting. It is the biggest step from a sound that plays to a sound that evolves.

Start from nothing

Open a blank sound (opens in a new tab)

1. A low saw

Press + Tone and set Wave to sawtooth.
Set Pitch to 110, Length to 1 and Volume to 0.2. Play: a steady, buzzy drone.

Hear step 1 (opens in a new tab)

2. A muffled filter with a ring

Switch on Filter (lowpass), set Cutoff to 300 and Resonance to 4.
Play. The drone is now dull and slightly vowel-like, because the filter hides the bright part.

Hear step 2 (opens in a new tab)

3. Let it open up

A Movement has three parts: a Source (what does the moving), what it Moves and the Amount it pushes. The sources are Wobble (swings back and forth), Rises (nothing to full over the layer) and Falls (the other way).

Press + Add movement. A box appears.
Set Source to Rises and Moves to Filter cutoff.
Set Amount to 3. For the filter, the amount is in octaves: the cutoff climbs three octaves (from 300 to about 2,400) over the layer.
Play. The growl starts muffled and opens to a bright snarl.

Hear step 3 (opens in a new tab)

4. Add a wobble

Press + Add movement again. The new one starts as a Wobble on Pitch.
Set Amount to 40 (cents; 100 cents is one piano key) and Speed to 5.
Play. The pitch now wavers while the filter opens, like something alive.

Hear the finished growl (opens in a new tab)

What can be moved?

Pitch (in cents): a wobble is vibrato; a rise or fall is a slide you can add to an existing one.
Filter cutoff (in octaves): the classic synth move. It only works with the Filter on.
Volume: a fraction between -1 and 1. It only ever turns the layer down from its own volume, so a Falls at 1 fades to silence and a Wobble at 0.5 pulses between half and full.
Metallic amount: how much FM there is. It only works with Metallic (FM) on.

A layer has one Movement for each of these four things, at most. A negative Amount pushes the other way, so a Falls with a positive amount is the same as a Rises with a negative one. The older Vibrato and Tremolo switches are still the quickest way to the two most common wobbles.