Ron Bakker/SynthLabHelp
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Tutorial · Beginner · 10 min

Your first patch

Build a playable synthesizer from scratch: an oscillator, a filter, an amplifier and two envelopes. This is the recipe behind most synth sounds you have ever heard.

  1. Start with an empty canvas

    Open SynthLab in Modular mode. Choose File → New project and remove everything except the Keyboard and the Output (⋯ on a module → Remove). Cables go from an output (on the right of a module) to an input (on the left). Their colour tells you what they carry: orange is sound, blue is modulation, dotted yellow is notes.

  2. A tone you can play

    Press + Module and add an Oscillator. Drag a cable from the Keyboard's Notes to the oscillator's Note, and from the oscillator's Out to the Output's In. Play the on-screen keys or your computer keys (A W S E D F T G Y H U J K). It plays, but it never stops: an oscillator always sounds.

    Tip: On a phone, tap one port and then the other to connect them.

  3. Shape each note with an envelope and a VCA

    Add a VCA and an Envelope. Re-route: oscillator → VCA In, VCA Out → Output. Patch Keyboard Notes → Envelope Gate, and Envelope Out → VCA CV. Now each note rises, falls and stops. Turn Attack up for a soft swell, Decay and Sustain down for a pluck.

  4. Colour it with a filter

    Put a Filter between the oscillator and the VCA. Lower the Cutoff and the sound darkens; raise Reso and it starts to sing around the cutoff. Set the oscillator's wave to saw: it has the most harmonics for the filter to work with.

  5. Make the filter move

    Add a second Envelope, gate it from the Keyboard too, and patch its Out into the filter's Cutoff input. Set its Sustain low and Decay to about 300 ms, and the filter's Mod amt to 3 octaves: every note now starts bright and closes, the classic "wow".

  6. Play chords and add space

    Set Voices in the toolbar to 6 and play a chord: SynthLab makes a copy of the oscillator, filter, VCA and envelopes for every note (the ×6 on their names). Add a Reverb between the VCA and the Output. Finally, add a Scope and patch the VCA into it to watch the waveform.

    Open the finished patch ↗

  7. Keep it

    Press Save as instrument and give it a name. It now appears under + Track in Studio mode, in this project and in your other projects in this browser.