How To Make The SKisM Choppy Synth Effect In NI Massive

We welcome back Ryan Enzed as he shows how to recreate the choppy synth effect that is used by SKisM in the song Red Heat, and how you changing your LFO waveform can alter a sound completely.

A true understanding of how NI Massive works unleashes incredible potential for FX and instruments alike![/aside] This sound is very cool, and a bit reminiscent of sounds heard in movies like Transformers, so it is easily used as an FX as well as a synth instrument depending upon your needs. As with many sounds like this one, you may find yourself not believing just how easy it is to make in Native Instruments Massive. Once you’ve successfully followed along and made this sound yourself, you should take some time to experiment a bit using different wavetables and filters to see what other cool sounds you can come up with using the same approach. There is a lot you can do with a sound like this one!

To start things off, you need to load an A.I wavetable into OSC1 and drop the pitch two octaves and set it to run in Bend -/+ mode. Then load a Sine-Square wavetable into OSC2 and drop the pitch one octave. A small amount of phasing is also added to OSC1 via the Modulation OSC panel. Now a Lowpass4 Filter is put into play. Each oscillator needs to be routed to the same filter, whether it be Filter1 or Filter2. The cutoff of the lowpass filter is then modulated by an LFO using a square, or pulse, waveform. The rate fo the LFO is synced to 1/24.

A Sine Shaper and an Bitcrusher are added to add an edge to the sound. A Phaser is added to provide additional movement, while Reverb is added to provide more space and depth to the sound. An EQ is used to finish shaping the synth and it’ ready to go!

As Ryan points out at the end of the video tutorial, there are a ton of ways you can continue to manipulate and modulate this sound. So have some fun with it! If you have a request for a tutorial or happen to have one of your own that you’d like to share, please send us a message today letting us know. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab