Making Psy Trance with NI Massive Part 4: Psy Pad

In this members only video tutorial, Jonny shares how to design a very nice psy trance synth pad and how it can be used with the other sounds that have been created throughout this tutorial series. This is a very deep and evolving pad instrument than can be customized in any number of different ways. It is one of those elements that can add some serious depth and character to your projects, as well as help build tension and interest over time. Once you’ve finished following along with the video, you should definitely spend some time exploring some different wavetable , filter, and effect options to truly make this sound your own and match it perfectly to your project!

This pad makes excellent use of the Digigrain wavetables, which are often underutilized or overlooked in this type of sound design. They offer so many amazing opportunities for modulation and expressive changes that it makes sense to use them for designing a psy trance instrument. Of course, you can swap these out for different wavetables and keep the rest of the settings in place for some pretty interesting alternative versions of this sound. The pitch variations also help to create not just a nice chorded character, but a very wide sound as well.

The Voicing tab plays a pretty important role in this sound. Here, the total number if Unison Voices is increased to 6. These voices are then spread out via the Pitch Cutoff feature, Wavetable Position and Pan Position features. Each of these affects the sounds greatly in the end, and in different ways. Using the Pitch Cutoff features adds some additional phasing and keeps the voices spread out in a chord to help maintain melodic quality. The Wavetable Position feature is modulated to change the sounds over time, providing more depth. And the Pan Position feature spreads out the individual voices across the stereo field to make the sound much wider.

The rest of the most important settings made in the designing of this psy trance pad are involving modulation and effects. Understanding how all of these things are working together to create every element of this sound is essential to you being able to create similar sounds on your own. Sp you may want to take the time to watch this video through more than once until it all makes sense!

Cheers,
OhmLab