Making a Cool Saw Wave Riser Transition FX with NI Massive

Marc Adamo is here to share how you can use Native Instruments Massive to design your own killer transition FX, and breaks down the mechanics involved in each step of the process.

Transitions are something that is easy to get into a routine with. Some may even call it a creative rut. How do you constantly innovate new ways to design FX and implement them successfully? How do you keep blowing away your audience after years of music making? It’s simple really. You need to keep the passion alive, and the best way to do this is to gain a deep working knowledge of how sounds are made and what things can be used to influence or change them. This is the first step to a life-long affair with sound design. And if you are intent on pushing the envelope of your skill sets and what has already been done in the music genres you write for, then you can put together some truly incredible FX with very basic tools. NI Massive has everything you need to create professional FX and instruments you can use in any style of music.

This FX starts out with a basic sawtooth wave. An LFO is then set up, with a sawtooth wave, and assigned to the pitch of OSC1. To create a rising pitch modulation, the LFO drop the pitch four octaves rather than increase it. This is because the sawtooth wave of the LFO starts high and works downward, so this needs to be inverted.

A second LFO is then also assigned to the pitch of OSC1. This LFO is also set up with a sawtooth wave, yet it is going to modulate the pitch value up one octave over the same period of time. This generates a rhythmic movement as the sound develops. Now to automate the increase the second LFO’s rate, you can either assign another controller to modulate the rate parameter, or you can simply write in the automation in your DAW. Marc has chosen to go the route of writing in the automation, as it is a more precise approach.

Another idea shared in this NI Massive video tutorial is to increase the number of voices used and then put them to use via the Pitch Cutoff feature. Assigning the first LFO to the pitch cutoff slider will allow you to automate the phasing introduced by the pitch shift. While on the Voicing tab, you can also turn on the Pan Position feature to spread teh sound out more across the stereo field.

The main Pan parameter is also set up to be modulated by the the second LFO to active pan the FX back and forth as the sound builds up. A Reverb effect is added to give the sound more space to work in, and the Dry/Wet and Size knobs are modulated by the second LFO so it increases as the sound builds.

That wraps up this session, but there is no end to what can be done with this kind of FX. All you need to do is stay creative! If you have a request for a future post or tutorial, please send us a message and let us know. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab