Sound Design Tutorial For Beginners

The number #1 reason a lot of producers, musicians and artists alike cannot compete on a commercial level is simply because they don’t spend time getting the right sound straight from the source.

This is what separates the Pros from the amateurs.

The reason why mixing vocals or instruments that are well recorded by a professional engineer is a simple process.

The engineer spends a lot of time during the recording stage, changing different microphones till they find the one that will sound best for the project they’re currently working on.

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to getting a professional sound.

The digital age has made it easy for anyone to get access to millions of sounds. So, it is a double-edged sword. Meaning, it can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.

A beginner just wants to simply open a VST instrument, choose a preset and then call it a day.

I really wish it was that easy, but unfortunately, it’s not. Each and every song will require sound design so that all the instruments can work well with each other.

It is really crucial to spend time on improving your sound design skills to separate yourself from everyone else, you need to stand out from the rest.

In this blog post I want to share a sound design tutorial that will help any beginner to get a professional sound using any synthesizer plugin.

For this to work, make sure that you use a synth plugin not a sound library such as kontakt, omnisphere, sampletank etc.

Once you’ve mastered one synth plugin then using sound libraries such as omnisphere will be a walk in the park.

Sound Design Tutorial

Any reputable DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) will come with one or more synth plugins. Simply choose one that you’ll use for practicing and improving your sound design skills.

The process is really simple.

All you need to do is to:

  1. Open your favorite synth plugin
  2. Choose a preset
  3. Play a midi part and loop it
  4. Duplicate the channel
  5. Reset the synth
  6. Reverse engineer the preset

Once you’ve figured out how the preset was created then reset the duplicated synth to default and remake the sound from scratch without looking at the preset.

Check out the video above for a visual representation of the process.

This will help you learn what each parameter does on any synthesizer since the language is always the same. So, if you master one synth then you’ll be able to master most of them (if not all).

You’ll also be able to create your own signature sounds from scratch without browsing for presets hoping that you’ll find something that will fit.

When you have a sound in your head then you’ll be able to simply design it from scratch with ease.

If you practice this process with 3 different sounds every day then you’ll master the art of sound design in 7 days or less. It will only take less than 40 minutes of your day to do this.

That’s how I learned sound design fast.

There’s not a lot of tutorials about sound design on the internet and the ones that I’ve found in the past just complicate the process till I found this reverse engineering process which helped me learn the art really fast.

If any of this is confusing then simply watch the video where I go in-depth about the process.

If you found value in this sound design tutorial then share it. Leave a comment below if you have any questions and I’ll definitely get back to you. We’ll talk again tomorrow, take good care 🙂