Getting Better at Creating Synths
Hey fellow ableton users,
I’ve been wondering ways I can work on getting better at creating synths. I’ve used a lot of YouTube videos to create different synths but still when I sit down and try to create a synth I have no idea where to start. Any tips or advice on synths
Start off simple!
Go download the TAL-NoiseMaker, its free and its a great little synth.
Synths are made from a wave generator (sine, saw, triangle and square are the pure waveforms) after that everything on a synth that makes the sound what it is, is down to effects, so play around with the ADSR levels and get a feel for what each one does and how it affects your sound then slowly move on to applying reverbs and delays, but be careful because effects can often be overused especially on synth sounds!
What I found that helped me was after messing around and understanding what everything done was to pick one of your favourite tracks and try and copy the synth from it as close as possible, everything in production is all about practice and synthesis is without a doubt one of the harder elements of production so just keep at it and eventually everything will fall into place!!
Happy Producing, remember, if your not having fun your not learning! 
Thanks! I have massive currently but I think I will use this free synth. The only problem is I can’t seem to get to use it in ableton. I’m using a mac. Its probably something simple I’m forgetting to do.
Nevermind I just had to move it from my downloads to my VST folder! Its been awhile since I got a new VST.
Glad youve got it working!
Its an extremely simple but intuitive synth to start with and once you know it inside out you can get some great noises out of it! Massive is great but I wouldnt recommend it if your first starting out with synths, as soon as you have a brief knowledge of one synth every other synth is exactly the same with a slightly different layout depending on the VST 
Tal Noise Maker is my hero.
Recently I’ve been watching some videos on production by dubspot and in the one video they mentioned you can get some good Free VST’s from a site called studiotoolz. The sites awesome and full of different free plug ins and instruments.
Nice find! Thanks for sharing
You’ve got Massive (bought I hope), and you’re not using it?
Sounds pretty strange mate. Watch some toturials, spend a day twisting all the knobs to know what does what, read the manual, …
This book, The Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys, and Techniques, by Rick Snoman, is a pretty great place to start when it comes to understanding basic synthesis and translating the basic sound in your head to your synth.
If you’ve spent all that money on Massive, why not use it? Have you looked at free tutorials on sites like MassiveSynth.com? They have lots of good guides to making basic sounds for a number of music genres. Another good way to learn a synth is find factory or user presets you like and analyze them. What waveforms do they use? What kind of envelopes and LFOs are they using–and where are they putting them? What internal effects are they using? Then, to really get a feel for what effect each knob is having on the overall sound, start moving them around, one by one.
You definitely won’t break it by experimenting, and while Massive seems… well… massive, you don’t have to let yourself be totally overwhelmed with options that you don’t need to use. Like somebody else said, experiment, try random and new things, and most importantly have fun!
The hardest part is not letting yourself get intimidated and overwhelmed by a blank synth canvas–sometimes, not knowing exactly how something is supposed to work is the best way to discover new and interesting sounds.