A personal goal I have for this platform is to post hight quality tutorials on music production. And where better to begin than how to produce a premium supersaw? This is perhaps one of the most iconic sounds ever, but for some reason, many aspiring producers struggle with creating this sound.
So why do so many aspiring producers struggle with creating one of the most popular sounds of all time, especially when there are hundreds of tutorials out there? In my personal opinion, it comes down to two things: chord structure and misinformation. The truth is, if you only play three notes together at a time, no matter how epic your sound is, it won't sound as epic or as full as you want it to. And if you detune it too much, it won't have that crispness to it.
Every synthesizer, hardware and software, has its own unique character. That being said, you don't need to buy dozens of synths just because certain producers use it. I've actually seen a few videos where people will assume a sound was made by one synth while the producer came out and showed how he made it with a different one. I definitely recommend one that makes sense to you.
Making a Supersaw
For this sound, I will be using Synthmaster One. I personally like to use this synth to create supersaws because it's very easy to use. But you can use any synth you'd like to create this sound as long as you use similar parameters.
The first thing you need to do is initialize the preset. After that, go over to the first oscillator, select a saw wave, then set it to 12 voices. Next, put the stereo width all the way up, then make it one octave higher and detune it by about 32. There are a lot of videos out there that will detune it further than this, but trust me on this. Getting your sound to sound big and epic comes from your chord structure.
Now, go over to the second oscillator and select another saw wave. Select 8 voices and put the stereo width to about 70%. Only detune this section by about 20-24. The reason that we are detuning this section less and giving less stereo width is to create space. Think of it like a sound stage. You need to fill the entire stage, not just the sides. If you only have players on the sides, the center will sound empty. I would actually recommend increasing the stereo width at this point so you can see what I mean.
This right here is essentially the basic sound. Now, we are going to process it to make it sound great!
When it comes to getting that professional sound, you can think of white noise as the secret sauce. I personally like to use a separate layer to create white noise. The reason behind that is when you have a separate patch dedicated to white noise, you really get to be particular about it. You can add a noise layer on your synth patch, but keep in mind that if you do, every note you press will add more and more white noise. But if you use a separate patch for it, you will never have that problem.
External Processing
At this point, I like to group both layers together and use external processing so the two patches are processed together as one. Now, take an EQ and cut out everything below 150hz. That is all sub and you don't want too many sub frequencies because it will make your low end sound bloated and awkward. Then, raise everything above 5000hz by about 2db with a high shelf filter.
Once you get to this point, you are very close to finishing your sound! Put an OTT (multi band compressor) on your group, slightly boost the highs and put the depth nob to about 30%. This will glue it together and make it a really tight sound. Finally, put your favorite reverb on it and you are done!
I briefly mentioned earlier how important chord voicing was when it came to supersaws. If you are new to writing music, I recommend writing a few triads, then take two notes, and invert them. If you do that, your sound will start to have that thickness to it.
A few topics that I didn't discuss in the article were ADSR settings and modulation. The reason I chose to leave these out of this article is because those settings are extremely flexible, and will be different for every song you create. Generally, I'd recommend a short attack and short release for this sound, but that is by no means a hard and fast rule. And as far as modulation goes, I will be discussing that topic in much more detail in the future.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments below!
This is awesome content @vitalmistake I hope you keep it up and do more tutorials!
Detuned saw leads can be rad as fuck, it is definitely a core sound for giant EDM music. I've also been fucking with it to make detuned bass sounds - it's tricky, cuz the higher end of the bass has to be prominent and I gotta be careful so the sub of the bass can stay clean and warm.
It ends up allowing for some really heavy bass ideas, almost electro-rock but minus the cheese.
Cheers dude
Thanks so much, I appreciate that! And I'll definitely be posting more tutorials on music production! And I hear you, detuned basses can be very tricky to program, but amazing when you pull it off!
Also, thanks for the resteem and best wishes :)
Hey dude!
Could I suggest you put some H1 headings in this (using the "#" before the sentence)...? This is perfect for people to find via Google and Google does rely a little bit on headings to help sort. This content is perfect for bringing new ace musos to the platform!
Hey!
I didn't know that. I just updated the post. Thanks for the tip :D
No problems at all... Steemit actually ranks quite high on Google and so soon when people Google 'Making a Supersaw' then you should pop up in the Google list.
Agh, this is so cool! I am just now getting in to creating my own music, as I have always had a lot of ideas and not a lot of confidence in getting them out there or in editing them. You seem to have a lot of knowledge in this area. I can't wait to get home and give this a try! Thanks for the hard work you put in to this post! I agree with @aussieninja, tutorials like this will be really popular on Google! Nice work!
Thank you so much for the kind words :) I really want to make it a point to post high quality tutorials on music production here. I'm excited to hear what you produce :) And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me!