Making a Beautifully Chorded NI Massive Space Synth

Of course, as with all of my Massive presets this one will be fleshed out quite a bit the next time you hear it, but this is the bare bones sound and it is a good one! It will be right at home in a very broad range of project genres and styles, from trip-hop and dub to electronic and ambient. This perfectly chorded NI Massive space synth is easy to make and very simple to build on. It is a familiar sound used by many artists in recent years, and will no doubt be around for many more years to come. There are a few simple tricks used in this sound that make it work, and they can all be applied to other sounds. So this tutorial really is for everyone!

It begins by loading a default Square-Saw I wavetable into OSC1 and dropping the pitch by one octave. Then a Square-Saw II wavetable is loaded into OSC2 and the pitch is dropped -5.00 semitones. And another Square-Saw wavetable is loaded into OSC3 with the pitch raised 4.00 semitones. This is the core of our NI Massive space synth.

Now a simple envelope is set up. This will be used to modulate some parameters on the oscillators we just set up, which will largely shape the overall delivery of this NI Massive space synth.

Now the envelope we just set up is assigned to modulate the pitch and intensity parameters of all three main oscillators.

On the Voicing tab, the total number of Unisono Voices is increased to two and the synth is set to run in Monophon mode with a Legato Triller trigger. Some gentle phasing is introduced via the Pitch Cutoff feature, while the sound is spread out a bit with the Pan Position feature. These small changes provide the rest of the character for this NI Massive space synth. You can adjust the glide parameter, according to your personal preference and project needs, on the OSC tab.

The last step in this process is to make this NI Massive space synth bigger! So first a Dimension Expander is added to give it more depth and width. Then some Reverb is added to give the sound even more space to move around in.

Below is a small audio sample of what this NI Massive space synth sounds like playing alongside some drums to help give you an idea of how it could work in a mix.

Remember to shoot us a message before you leave if you have a tutorial request, or would like to share one of your own with the community.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab