Sound Design

At School of Synthesis we cover SOUND DESIGN in a small class of between 1-9 students to ensure you develop a thorough understanding of this powerful music production method.

Course Overview

Learning how to create that sound inside your head is about understanding basic synthesis and sound manipulation possibilities. Sound Design is a growing field and one that is forever embracing new technologies and techniques. Our tutors create sound design for film, video games and their own music on a daily basis and employ modern techniques to distinguish themselves in the industry. Former School of Synthesis Sound Design students have gone on to become full time working sound designers and have created sound for several major projects. This course is tutored by Tristan Malloch who is Australia’s brand specialist for major synth companies such as Korg, Native Instruments and Arturia. The course has been co-designed by Davide Carbone who has been making sounds for synths, video games, music and film for over two decades and is renowned for his innovative sound design skills. This course introduces you to sound design, synthesis and sampling and uses the most advanced analogue and digital tools such as Korg Minilogue, Korg MS20, Moog Sub Phatty, Roland SH, Arturia Mini Brute, Rob Papen, Massive, FM8 and Davide’s own MusicTech awarded virtual analogue synth, Carbon Electra, as well as samplers such as Kontakt by Native Instruments and others found in Ableton Live and Logic.

All sound design students receive a free full release MAC & PC copy of Carbon Electra and each student has their own Korg Minilogue to work on for the duration of the course. This course will dispel the complexities of creating your own sounds and introduce you to unique and advanced techniques that can be used across any analogue or digital synth or sampler.

Course Level

The course is suitable for most people from beginners to those with experience in music production. This course covers basic and advanced techniques and benefits those who own a software or hardware based synthesizer.  Please contact the school if you have any specific needs or requirements.

Course content and features

• An introduction to subtractive, additive, FM, wavetable, granular synthesis.
• Modules of a synthesiser and parameters common to many samplers
• Envelopes and other modulation sources
• Creating original sounds
• Advanced synthesis and sampling techniques
• Creating sound design for various genres of music

Course objectives

by the end of this course you should be able to:

• Understand synthesis and sampling
• Utilise oscillators, envelopes, modulation, filters and effects
• Navigate any analogue or digital synth or sampler
• Create original sound design using advanced techniques
• Create your own synthesizer and sampler patches and presets for use in any DAW
• Develop a show-reel of original sounds

EXCLUSIVE LEARNING TOOLS INCLUDED

Permanent access to our guides and articles in our Content Portal:
Each student gets access to detailed notes and references covering all courses and providing a valuable ongoing and updated resource to aid learning reinforcement.

Carbon Electra:
Each enrolment includes a software licence to use the award-winning Carbon Electra, one of the world’s leading synthesizers.

School of Synthesis Producer Pack:
Each enrolment includes a carefully selected VST/AU plugin pack for Windows and MAC OSX with everything you need to get producing, including some of the best EQs, Compressors, FX and Limiters available.

Analogue Sequences:
Each enrolment includes an authorised download of the Loopmasters Analogue Sequences pack designed by School of Synthesis trainers.

SOS Loopmasters Pack:
All SOS students receive 2 gigabytes of samples from the award-winning Loopmasters collection.

Educational Discounts:
As an SOS student, you will be eligible for student discounts from Ableton, Output, Fabfilter, Rob Papen, Plugin Boutique and more. Information on educational discounts will be sent to you via email upon enrolment.

Learning methods:
Each session commences with a group demonstration and discussion, followed by solo work on one of our eight Mac workstations where you will practise set themes and techniques derived from real-world applications of the technology.
Upon demonstrating your command of the necessary skills you will be further encouraged to add originality to your recreations and save various versions of your work.

Additional resources and materials:
All hardware and software is supplied, though we recommend students bring a storage device (eg. a portable USB drive) to save and back up all work, and a pen and paper to take notes. We also recommend students own a PC or MAC.
Students can bring their own laptops to class so the tutor can assist with setting up software like Rekordbox.

Assessment and feedback:
You will save successive work and will receive regular support, encouragement and feedback from your tutor. All students will receive a t-shirt, sticker and completion certificate upon the successful completion of the course. At the
conclusion of the course, you will be invited to leave feedback and evaluate your experience, at which point we’ll email you a link to a suite of exclusive sounds and various discount offers from the School and its partners to say
‘thanks’!