Anyone watch The Mentalist? What synths are used?

[matto]

Oct 20, 2009, 4:40pm, rolanoid wrote:Another good synth for film work is Absynth. It has great presets but can be a bit intimidating to program so the new Sound Mutator feature in version 5 looks interesting in that it claims to be an easy way to change existing sounds without "delving into the depths of the synthesis architecture." I'm upgrading to it soon.+1 on Absynth, definitely...

[markjsmith]

There are a TON of great synths out there, but knowing a little about programming sounds will make a huge difference!Heck audiomidi.com has AAS UltraAnalog for 15 bucks through October. This won't touch Omnisphere by any means but for $15 its a gimme, and it is relatively easy to program.

[matto]

Oct 20, 2009, 2:40pm, kevinmathie wrote:Oo! Never mind. I just did a google search. Are you talking about Vital Arts' Plectrum? If so, I'm listening to some of the sounds now. Nice!Yeah sorry couldn't remember the spelling. I like Plectrum a lot although it's not nearly as versatile as Omnisphere which honestly is the one synth I would recommend to you above all else simply because it covers so many bases and covers them so well. By comparison Plectrum is quite specialized, but also unique.If your computer can handle it get Omnisphere and you may not need to get anything else for quite a while...

[mazz]

+11 on Omnisphere.

[hurican]

Both modern and older synths have a wide variety of stock sounds. Some of the newer ones like my Fantom have a category called "Soft leads", where the sound can still be played around with and is not invasive. Washes, atmospheres and the like can be easily used without getting in the way of dialogue.But if you want to get into the meat of the synth there are a few really simple things to start with that can get you the sound you want in a few minutes (1/2 an hour or so if you need to read the manual) Cutoff- This is a setting that increases the "bite" of a sound. Setting it high will increase presense in midrange and higher frequencies. Low settings will give a very gentle sound.Effects- Giving any sound a chorus can thin it out just enough to chop off its "pay attention to me" value. But you do lose the robust character of some of the synth sounds.If you give any sound a "wet" reverb, and remove the vocal range of frequencies in the reverb eq, this can mellow a sound quite a bit.And also, just running any of the keyboard sounds through an eq and cutting some of the vocal ranges can make them less invasive.Those are a few quick and easy tips to get started with. (That's how I did!)

[kevinmathie]

Thank you all for the great advice! This gives me a nice head start on the homework I need to do in researching synths and synth programming. You guys are fantastic.

[mojobone]

Most analog-style synths will have pretty similar controls, it's pretty much a building-blocks approach where you have maybe up to four oscillators per note, each can produce maybe four types of static waveform or modulate another oscillator's output (to produce tremolo and/or vibrato) Then you'll have a few filters, maybe some delay lines and a routing matrix. AAS is probably as good a place to start learning synth programming as any, and the price is right. Digital synths, like Yamaha's DX series have oscillator algorithms that can interact in some very complex ways and are kind of a bear to program.Even a two-oscillator machine can do some neat stuff. You'll be surprised how much mileage you can get from a sawtooth waveform and a little pulsewidth modulation!