SAMPLED#sound design
22 stories
Stories tagged #sound design on Sampled — sound, style, and scenes, all in one place.
FM synthesis: how to program it on purpose instead of by accident
Operators, algorithms and ratios — the three things that decide whether FM gives you a bell, an electric piano or a mess.
Building drums on an analog synth: noise, pitch envelopes and the 90 ms rule
Kicks, snares, hats and toms from a single voice — what actually creates each sound, and the envelope settings that matter.
Velocity, aftertouch and mod wheel: making a hardware synth sound played
Most synth patches sound programmed because nothing responds to the hands. Four routings fix that.
Granular synthesis on hardware: turning three seconds of audio into a whole track
Grain size, density, position and pitch — the four controls that matter, and how to keep granular textures from turning to mush.
Additive synthesis explained: building sound one harmonic at a time
Why the oldest idea in electronic music is also the most literal, and how to use additive thinking even on a synth that has no additive engine.
West Coast synthesis: wavefolding, low-pass gates and why it sounds nothing like a Moog
Subtractive synthesis starts loud and removes harmonics. West Coast synthesis starts simple and adds them. Here is how that changes the way you patch.
Wavetable synthesis on hardware, explained without the math
What a wavetable actually is, why scanning it sounds different from a filter sweep, and how to program moving timbres that stay musical.
Arturia Rev OCEAN turns any sound into an underwater dream — the reverb producers have been asking for
Released June 25, 2026, Rev OCEAN pairs FDN processing, multi-stage diffusion and three expressive modes to make instant atmosphere for drums, vocals, guitars and synths.
Best Free VST Plugins for Producers
A practical guide to the best free VST plugins for producers, beatmakers, artists, and home-studio creators.
Sampling your own analog synth into a library
Multisampling, round robins, and when a sampled patch beats the real thing on a deadline.
Analog warmth is mostly distortion. Here is the proof
Harmonics, headroom, and noise floors. Naming what people hear when they say a synth sounds warm.
Arpeggiators and sequencers: writing with hardware
Step entry, ratcheting, and gate length as a composition tool rather than a preset toy.
Sub-bass on analog: getting weight without smear
Sine sub layers, sidechain alternatives, and the mono discipline that keeps clubs happy.
Patch design for house and techno leads
Short envelopes, filter accents, and the mixing space a lead actually needs in a club track.
Ring mod, FM, and hard sync on analog synths
Three ways to get metallic, aggressive tones out of two humble oscillators.
LFOs beyond wobble: modulation that stays musical
Slow drift, keyed retrigger, and routing choices that add movement without cartoon effects.
Envelopes: attack, decay, and the shape of a sound
Most bad patches are envelope problems. A working method for shaping transients and tails.
Building analog pads that do not turn to mud
Detune, filter tracking, and the arrangement moves that keep wide patches out of the vocal's way.
The 303 sound: how acid actually works
Slides, accents, and a resonant filter pushed past polite. Building acid lines on anything you own.
How to record analog synths without ruining the low end
Gain staging, DI vs line, and the high-pass decisions that keep a fat patch fat in a mix.
How to program your first analog bass patch
A step-by-step patch you can build on any two-oscillator mono synth, plus the three knobs that do most of the work.
Subtractive synthesis explained without the math
Oscillator, filter, amp, envelope. The four blocks that make almost every analog patch you have ever loved.