A cool technique that a lot of people miss when sculpting sounds is the idea of an envelope modulating itself. I’ll explain that in a minute. But this a feature that I learned of by designing sounds on the Prophet 08 by Dave Smith Instruments. The idea is that you can make a filter envelope modulate it’s decay, attack, or anything you can think of that’s available.
For example, I can subtly make kick drums more deep and longer by having the AMP envelope modulate it’s own decay. The modulation can occur positively or negatively, and by that I mean that you could also make a kick drum thinner and shorter by moving the modulation value to the opposite side.
If you check out this video tutorial, you’ll see some examples of how you can put this to use on Native Instrument’s Massive. I’m attempting to create a Boards of Canada type synth which would typically be in the forefront of the mix.
