How to Pitch Bend an NI Massive Trap Synth Up and Down Automatically

With the recent rebirth of excitement in southern hip-hop, we’ve been receiving a lot of requests for NI Massive trap synth tutorials. This tutorial shows you how to make one of the more popular types, with the added bonus of a secondary pitch bend, which many artists are now using!

Although we’d love to answer each and every request we get for sound design tutorials, we actually receive dozens a day and we simply do not have the time to get to all of them. But I decided that one great way to meet the needs of more of our community members, would be to put together some lessons that cover a broad range of specific sounds in one tutorial. So, I will be toss some of them out here from time to time from here on out. I hope it helps a lot of you achieve the sounds you are after! Recently, the number of requests for very specific NI Massive trap synth sounds has been staggering. But one of the toughest things people are trying to figure out is how to get the pitch bend up at the beginning of the synth and a pitch bend down at the end. Well, this tutorial is going to show you how! We’ll also touch on how to get a little grit in your NI Massive trap synth, too.

First off, you will need to select a wavetable (or three, depending on what type of sound you are after). This particular lesson will cover how to make a slightly distorted NI Massive trap synth, as that is the current trend in many circles. I chose to load up a Square-Saw II wavetable into OSC1. Next a Drive I wavetable was loaded into OSC2, with the pitch dropped one octave. Lastly, an Electric wavetable was loaded into OSC3, also with the pitch dropped one octave and set to run in Bend+ mode.

Pro Tip: Sometimes the mode the oscillator is set in is more important than the wavetable itself, on a sound like this one.

Before we go any further with the making of this NI Massive trap synth, the modulation envelopes need to be set up. These will add the automated pitch bend action for us. The first envelope will be used to control the upwards pitch bend, while the second envelope will control the downward pitch bend. Below are images showing the exact curves used.

Pro Tip: Notice that the Delay feature is used in the second envelope, which keeps the envelope modulation from kicking in too early.

Pro Tip: When setting up two modulation envelopes that will work together, it is sometimes easiest to use the copy and paste features to save time and help ensure consistency.

Now let’s go back and assign the first modulation envelope to the first pitch modulation slot on each of the main oscillators, with a value of +12.00. The second modulation envelops is assigned to the second slot on each oscillator, with a value of -12.00. This gives you the basic recipe for most trap synths. If you only want the upward pitch bend at the front of the sound, there is no need to worry about the secondary envelope.

Here the sound is routed through a Lowpass 4 filter, which is used to shave a little of the higher frequencies off, while also imparting some subtle resonance.

The Tele Tube Amp is used to give our NI Massive trap synth a bit of grit and drive. The Small Reverb gives it a touch more room to develop in. And the EQ is used to cut out some of the lows, while boosting some mids and highs for a nice top end.

Pro Tip: If you want a little movement in your NI Massive trap synth, you can easily swap out the tube amp for a flanger. If you prefer to keep the tube amp, try using a touch of Vibrato instead.

Some White Noise is what helps give us a slightly raspy quality that is heard in so many traps synths lately.

Pro Tip: White noise too much? Try Bright Noise instead!

A Sine Shaper insert effect helps bring out some more of the drive in this NI Massive trap synth, while the Bitcrusher unit helps enhance the noisy grit elements.

And just to round out the character a bit more, the Modulation OSC panel is turned on and used to add some Ring Modulation to OSC1 and a Filter FM effect on Filter1.

Below is a small audio sample of this NI Massive trap synth in action.

Cheers,
OhmLab