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(I want to thank Steve Duda for teaching me about all that I have wrote on this tutorial, as well as making this excellent VST. I would feel wrong taking all the credit from what I have taught you here.)
Today I will be showing you a very important feature found in Xfer - Records Serum plugin.
This feature allows you to import any sample you have on your computer into a wavetable so that you may use Serum as a sampler or better yet, get creative with the imported sample.
import: normal (dynamic pitch zero-snap)
import: normal (dynamic pitch follow)
import: constant frame size (pitch avg)
FFT 256 FFT 512 FFT 1024 FFT 2048
These features can be better explained reading the XFER RECORDS Serum PDF manual found on the plug-in itself on the top right corner of the plugin under
menu -> Read the manual.
Information reguarding these can be found on page 55! (I highly suggest that you read the manual as well as import the sample in yourself and figure out first hand what they do!)
Now once you've loaded a sample into your OSC A or OSC B (you can load samples into either one.)
Throw an Lfo with with a shape looking like this |/| an upward looking saw at 1/4 rate.
It's important to place the LFO shape as such because placing it in the reverse order will cause the sample to play in reverse (Unless that's what you want then by all means do so, even experiment with different lfo shapes to see what you can do to the sound)
1/4 rate matches your tempo on your DAW's bpm and allows the sample to play smoothly.
If you want to use it as a sampler, make sure to click the ENV box under the LFO in the MODE section,
that way the sample will retrigger everytime you trigger Serum with a midi note.
Something cool you can do is add a Kick drum on here with a very punchy clicky transient sound at the beginning of the sample, then throw the LFO at say 1/2 to even 1 BAR rate.
Then, click on the pencil icon on the top right corner of your wavetable view (highlighted in the yellow box in the picture below.)
This will bring you to an in-depth view of the wave table and all the things you can do to modify the wavetable even more.
I have a lot to show you here but writing it down and showing pictures would take way too much time and I think it would be a lot easier to not only show but to learn in a visual explanation.
So for the time being I will keep it short and simple.
What you want to do here, is click on Process, then click -> X-fade edges (grid size).
After this you want to click on Morph -> Spectral.
X-fade edges fixes the most right and left part of the wavetable so it transitions from one sample to the next smoothly by placing it at the middle of the grid, so all tables of the wavetable start and end in the middle, thus allowing a smoother transition to the next one.
The morph to spectral allows each sound to oscillate smoothly throughout the whole sample
(faster rates tend to chop it up, especially if there's a lot of samples and transients in the sample itself.)
Experiment with Morph -> Crossfade as well.
An explanation on what these things do to the wavetable can be found on page 50 of your Serum manual.
After you've done all this try putting the rate at 2 bars then at a low note say C1 play it and you should get a nice dubstep-ish growl.
The more you mess around with this the more you'll realize how much potential can be found in this.
Though this provides you with lot's of sound design capabilities, there are certain wavetables that are made in very specific ways.
I'm still trying to figure out how companies are able to create those nasty grimey dubstep tables, but once I do I'll probably make a tutorial on that as well.
Thank you.