How To Make The Synth From Centipede By Knife Party with NI Massive

A very unique and catchy sound was recently used in the latest hit song from Knife Party called Centipede and this NI Massive video tutorial shows you how to recreate it!

This sound starts out with loading a Roughmath II wavetable into OSC1 and increasing the pitch value to about half a semi-tone shy of two octaves. Then a Square-Saw wavetable is loaded into OSC2, set to run as a Square wave and the pitch is dialed up three octaves. And lastly a Square-Saw wavetable is loaded into OSC3 and the pitch is raised one semi-tone shy of two octaves. So you can already see that this sound will be a high pitched one and we will need to set up a fair bit of modulation to achieve the signature high speed wobble in the original sound.

So before we go any further we need to set up an envelope on the 1Env tab to control several parameters. The curve is shaped to give the envelope a slow attack. It is then assigned to the Wt-position knob of OSC2 and the Amp knob fo OSC3. We will also use this same envelope to control some White Noise, as well as the cutoff of a Lowpass 4 filter loaded into the Filter 1 panel. And while we’re talking filters, a Highpass 4 filter is loaded into Filter 2.

A Tele Tube Amp is added to FX1 to introduce some distortion and drive, while a Phaser is added to FX2 to generate a little movement and pitch shift. The Feedback is turned up to get a little more out of the filters. And a Sine Shaper and a Parabolic Shaper are both added to call out more of the distortion created by the FX, feedback, phasing and filters.

On the Voicing tab, the synth is set to run in Monophonic mode with the Trigger set to Always. The Unison voicing is increased to a value of four. The Pitch Cutoff feature is turned on and the slider is offset to create some more phasing.

A very subtle envelope is set up and assigned to the pitch value of OSC1 to automate a slight detuning of less than one semi-tone. Next an LFO is set up and assigned to the main Pan parameter, which causes the sound to bounce back and forth across the stereo field. Two more LFOs are set up in similar fashion, but with different Amp and Rate values, and are assigned to the Amp knob of OSC1. The last step in this session is to simply add a small bump to the low-mid end of the sound via an EQ plugin in your DAW. It will be a more precise way to shape the sound compared to using the EQ in Massive.

If you have a request for a future tutorial, let us know by shooting us a message. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab