Making a Simple NI Massive Formant Lead Tutorial

The range of formant synth sounds that have been gaining in popularity lately are quite easy to replicate with Massive, and it’s even easier to design new and unique sounds of this nature. This particular NI Massive formant lead is somewhat flexible and will work in projects with little ro no tweaking at all. Of course, it can also be sent in a new direction very quickly by simply swapping out different wavetables, filters or effects. Let’s take a look at how this sound was made.

To begin with, load a default Square-Saw I wavetable into both OSC1 and OSC2. Both are set to run in Formant mode, and each has a different Wt-position setting. Inserting a Sine Shaper helps to define the edge of the sound and adds just a bit of roughness to this NI Massive formant lead synth. This sound is then run through a Daft filter, which has been loaded into the Filter1 panel.

A Classic Tube Amp is used to provide some drive and a Dimension Expander is used to give the sound more depth and some extra width. The EQ tab is activated and used to finish shaping the sound. The last big step in this process is to increase the total number of unison voices to three, via the Voicing tab. This will add a lot of punch and presence to your NI Massive formant lead, no matter how else you decide to change it from here.

Don’t forget to shoot us a message today if you have tutorial requests or feedback for us. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab