Synthesizing birds - patching basics in PhasePlant

Let's learn the basics of patching in PhasePlant by making bird songs, insect stridulations and wind whistles!
I love making bird sounds. To me, they're the perfect example of the power of sound design to breathe life into the invisible... to paint what is off screen.
00:00 Intro
00:29 Let's talk
00:41 Init patch, oscillator
00:58 Volume envelope
02:17 Basic modulation
03:23 Disabling key tracking
04:20 Attenuating the modulation
05:20 Additional modulation
06:45 Modulating the modulator
08:40 Printing to audio
12:06 Oops
12:15 Synchronized LFOs
13:58 Insects: ring modulation, frequency modulation, phase modulation
17:08 Basic wind using bandpassed noise
19:00 Outro
Huge thanks to my dear friend François Beauvais for his mixing pass on the intro soundscape, and to Manuel Silva, Olivier Rodon, Adrian Cristea and Felix Krejci for the constructive feedback.
With stock footage by Matthias_Groeneveld and federicomaderno on Pixabay.
Thumbnail picture by JillWellington on Pixabay.

[@tihinter]

This is the best tutorial about synthesizing nature sounds so far, IMHO! Huge respect. Will include some of your tips in my new album for sure! Thanks a lot for sharing. A colleague of mine works as a scientific researcher for bird songs and animal sounds. Got to show him this treasure find!

[@HoMinhAudio]

Hey thank you so much for the kind words! I would be interested to know your friend's opinion! I know bird songs IRL are more complex and have more range than simple modulated sine waves. I've been listening more intently to bird songs when walking in the forest and there are some lower-pitched sounds I'm thinking about trying to synthesize, just for fun 😄

[@orionzane950]

Great video thanks for sharing!

[@nivonis393]

That fucking cicada sound was so damn impressive.

[@HoMinhAudio]

And the patch is actually so simple when you look at it! Ahah

[@blindcinema_]

Amazing stuff!

[@kimmolaine665]

Very nice❤

[@pawesulewski4030]

Amazing!!!

[@HoMinhAudio]

Thank you!

[@molzkmusic6398]

Love so much your tutorials! Thanks man ❤

[@HoMinhAudio]

Thank you so much for the kind words man!

[@pmishraofficial]

Really well explained.

[@HoMinhAudio]

Thanks Prashant!

[@renardsound]

I love birds design, great stuff.

[@HoMinhAudio]

Thanks Paul! 😄

[@michmarmx]

very inspiring, thank you very much for sharing ! ;)

[@HoMinhAudio]

Thank you for the kind words Michel! Nice to see you here 😁

[@lfakroll]

Harmor is really good for this!

[@mattjhart]

Hey, really nice job here! There aren't enough people talking about animal synthesis, especially in Phase Plant which is a great tool for it. That tip about setting harmonic to zero is really great to know, and I think the way you modulate the "scale" module would be handy for some animals too. If I can offer a tip in return - I find that if I want an envelope with consistent length, it is useful to use a "Curve" instead of the envelope module, as you can then have complete control over the shape. Keep up the good work!

[@HoMinhAudio]

Hey thanks for the kind words and for the tip! I definitely should use the Curve module more! I guess I really developed the habit of using LFOs (I think the Curve module got added some time later?)

[@mattjhart]

@@HoMinhAudio Ah fair enough! I'm relatively new to it so that could be the case! They seem very similar TBF, but curves let you set duration rather than frequency if that makes sense. There seem to be many different ways to things in Phase Plant haha

[@ItsaMeJay64]

I mega feel you at 12:14 when you're like "and I tend to get carried away" me frickin too dude. Every time i sit down to design i do that exact thing, and then later i look back and am like "no way i gotta edit all this...i will just delete it.." loool Great video!!!

[@HoMinhAudio]

Ahahah too relatable! I kind of stopped doing long takes like this. Now I mostly just tweak and do quick 'punch ins' on cool variations. I pretty much stopped using randomization in my patches, too (for this reason among others). Thanks for the kind words man! Appreciate it 🙂

[@ItsaMeJay64]

You're a genius! I'm gonna have to be more careful about this too...Of course bro! Keep up the great content! Your stuff is a gem!

[@buenmin799]

Dude. THIS IS INSANE!

[@HoMinhAudio]

Thanks!! So awesome to read that kind of reaction 😁

[@LAxemann]

Lots of gold nuggets in there, aside from amazing birbs themselves! Great stuff! :)

[@david_farmer]

Thanks for this! A great tutorial and I'm Phaseplant noob. This gets me excited to play with it more and is super helpful.

[@HoMinhAudio]

Hey David, thank you so much for this comment. I'm a huge fan of your work. I'm very glad to read that you find this tutorial helpful!

[@ninjamnox]

Trés bonne vidéo mec !

[@HoMinhAudio]

Merci dude!

[@AZALI00013]

this is actually insane what the hell >:0

[@HoMinhAudio]

Hey thanks 😄

[@jamesmeustache7740]

holy cow, legendary Azali gets into the depth of internet :D

[@jamesmeustache7740]

really amazing! thank you! when you get to the insect part and say that you modulate the volume with the frequency, isn't it Amplitude Modulation instead of Ring Modulation ? Or are they quite similar in the process?

[@HoMinhAudio]

Hey thanks for the kind words! So ring modulation and amplitude modulation are very similar concepts, but ring modulation is a bipolar modulation: the modulating range is [-1 : 1] (assuming a modulator normalized to that range) and the negative parts of the modulator result in a polarity inversion of the carrier in the resulting output, whereas with amplitude modulation, the modulating signal is 'shifted' to be positive only, and the modulator range is [0 : 1] (again, assuming a modulator normalized to that range), so no polarity inversion occurs. I actually demonstrates the difference in my sound design workshop (linking to a precise timestamp in the third video, but I do invite you to watch the whole thing 😄) : kzbin.info/www/bejne/goWygGStnb2UsJI

[@buenmin799]

hey man, im working on a sound design project right now and i really love what you did here. is there a possibility to purchase a sample pack of birds, insecs, winds that you artificially synthesized in that way? most recorded bird sounds come with lots of ambient noise, that makes it difficult to implement it in a project. :) I'd love to support your work

[@HoMinhAudio]

Hey, thanks for the kind words man! I haven't really planned to make a sample pack out of these techniques. I'd love to work on sound libraries at some point, but I'm already struggling to find the time to do all the projects I've started 😅