NI Massive Harp Pluck Tutorial

We hope to be featuring more tutorials from Myles in the near future, as this lesson in designing a NI Massive harp pluck is pretty good! It’s a nice refreshing sound that carries itself well with a rounded low end and crisp harp characteristics in the higher frequencies. It’s a perfect sound for all sorts of music genres, and it can be quickly modified to be customized for your specific needs. Let’s take a look at how it’s made.

It begins with loading a Duck Organ wavetable into OSC1, running in Formant mode. A Sine-Square wavetable is then loaded into OSC2. And lastly, a Frozen wavetable is loaded into OSC3, running in Bend+ mode. The sound is then routed into a Lowpass 4 filter on the Filter1 panel. An envelope is set up with a short attack and release, and assigned to modulate the cutoff parameter of the lowpass filter. A Macros is also assigned to the cutoff knobs to provide for added control on-the-fly. Reverb is added, via the FX1 tab, to provide extra space and depth to the sound.

A small amount of processing is also added outside of Massive in a DAW. First, an EQ is use to better shape the instrument, removing some of the high and low end frequencies. Then some tremolo is added for natural movement during the development of the sound. And Sausage Fattener is used to give the sound an edge and increase the overall presence of the synth. Each of these steps is optional and the sound should be treated according to your specific needs relative to both the sound on its own and its affect on other sounds in your project.

If you have a tutorial request or would like to share one of your own with the world, get in touch with us by send a message our way before you leave today. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab