How to create the classic acid main lead sound for your track
Following on from last week’s tutorial, we’re tackling creating an acid main lead sound in one of my new favourite plugins.
The basic concept is running a very simple oscillator through a series of filters, one of which is being modulated. The result is then passed through some distortion, chorus and some reverb to create that “acidic” lead sound. Furthermore, I add some post-processing and discuss a few techniques to create a “moving” effect.
The idea is to show how even a simple tone – in this case a basic mix of a saw and square wave, can come to life with some simple post-processing either from within the plugin or using external effects – in this example I used both. I like to drown my leads in time-based effects like reverb and delays, it helps to boost that dreamy and atmospheric feel which is a key feature in the Psytrance genre.
The resulting tone is similar to the sound of the legendary TB-303 which can be heard used as a main lead sound in Psytrance since the dawn of the genre.
Why Spire?
Reveal Sound’s Spire is quickly becoming one of my favourite VST synthesizers, it’s super intuitive and offers a variety of high-end features – from the amazing filters to the vast built-in effects. On top of Spire is Polyverse’s new Wider plugin, to boost the stereo image. Then I applied the Waves H-Delay, which is another one of my favourites however there are some cheaper alternatives I will outline below, finally some more reverb and EQ to round it out.
Some great alternatives for Waves H-Delay are Variety Of Sound’s NastyDLA mk2 and HY-Plugins HY-Delay, which are both free – I just like the sound of the Waves.
We also recently did a full write-up on the new plugin collaboration from Infected Mushroom and Polyverse – Wider, another fantastic free plugin (especially for main leads) that everyone needs to grab.
Check it out here.