DRAFT Quickstart Guide
This page is intended to be a companion to the manual, the goal is to be helpful for beginners and also experienced sound designers coming to Surge for the first time. There will be links to relevant sections of the manual for those wanting to dig deeper.
One of Surge's greatest strength is it's single panel design, almost every important control is always visible and only a mouse click away! This design can unfortunately be a little frightening or off-putting for newcomers.
We will be breaking down the interface into small chunks and only discussing the things you are most likely to need when designing your first sounds.
RED MARKINGS ON IMAGES INDICATE AREAS TO FOCUS ON OR CLICK
- 01 Classic Oscillator, Mixer and Amp EG
- 02 The Filter Section
- 03 Modulation, LFO, SLFO
- 04 More Oscillator Modes
- 05 Filter Configurations And FM Routings
- 06 The FX Section
- 07 Misc
Take a glance at Surge's interface...
A sea of sliders!
We will be focusing on these highlighted sections:
Click on the "Patch Browser" and select Init/ Init Saw/ to ensure we are starting from the same settings.
Take a look at the oscillator section:
An Oscillator is the sound generator of any synthesizer, and Surge gives us a number of different types of Oscillators. We are going to start with a simple and useful one.
We should now be in "Classic" mode.
"Classic" is a VA or "Virtual Analog" oscillator, it emulates the sounds of an analog synth. "Shape" morphs between Square and Saw waveforms and we have a number of sliders for further tweaking those sounds.
Beginners:
Stick in this section and try and experiment with a few settings and see how they change the sound and also the way the oscillator looks. You can get some really wild sounds just with this section. We will go over some more of it later.
Once you are ready to move on, select Classic / Sawtooth or Square in the oscillator selection dropdown to get back to a simple sound.
Lets hop over to the Amp EG section:
Amp EG stands for "Amplitude Envelope Generator" This is the master control for the shape of EVERY SOUND coming out of all oscillators. It also includes a master "gain" control and a velocity slider.
You can change the "slope" of the different sections of your envelope by dragging on the visualization in digital mode or select analog mode for locked analog style slopes.
Beginners:
Play around with just this section for a while, and notice how much you can do with just the default "Classic Oscillator" settings, and changes to the Amp EG section.
SOME EXAMPLES:
Here is a plucky shape:
Here is a looooong shape:
This shape is a bit like an electric keyboard:
(Bring down the velocity slider and bring up the Gain slider a tiny bit to compensate for the lack of overall volume, if you bring the velocity slider all the way down, you will get no sound at all if you play quietly enough)
Now lets head to the mixer:
The mixer has volume controls and mutes for the three oscillators. It also has two special faders for combinations of those oscillators (RING), and also a noise oscillator.
The Noise oscillator is the fader with an "N" underneath it.
Lets try something:
- Mute Osc 1 by clicking it's little "M" and un-mute Noise.... like in the image below.
- Now head back to the Amp EG section and try a shape resembling the pluck example mentioned previously.
- You should be able to get some basic drum synth sounds happening.
We can get various simple drum like sounds just by messing with the Amp EG and the Noise Oscillator. Try and get some different drum type sounds just be manipulating the Amp EG section.
One more note on the Oscillators:
Reload the "Init Saw" preset (if you'd like to keep your drum sound you can save a preset by clicking "store" in the top of the interface)
We have three oscillators available to us in Surge, you can switch between them by clicking the numbers "1" "2" and "3" in the top of the oscillator section. Each oscillator can have totally different settings. We can mute and change the level of each oscillator using the mixer.
Every Oscillator will still be controlled by Amp EG. Think of it as your master volume control!
Try this:
- Un-mute Osc 2 in the mixer.
- Select Osc 2 in the oscillator section.
- Try changing the shape of the second oscillator.
- You can use the section below the oscillator visualization to change the octave of that oscillator "-3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3".
- Try setting the second oscillator to different octaves and change the volume balance between the two oscillators.
- The three oscillators and the noise oscillator generate sounds.
- We use the mixer to mute and set the levels of each oscillator.
- The Amp EG section is the master volume section, this controls the shape and level of all oscillators blended together.
- You can copy the settings of one oscillator to another oscillator by right clicking the number and selecting copy. Go to the next number and right click to paste.
FOR FUN / EXAMPLES :
Before moving onto the next section consider trying to make a quick beat or song with just a handful of instances of Surge using nothing but the Classic Oscillator, Mixer and Amp EG sections.
It's certainly possible to create a whole song with just these sections. In fact, you may notice it has a bit of a "classic video game sound". This is probably because we aren't using any filters or fx. Just like a lot of early game systems, we are simple relying Sawtooth, Square and Noise with an amplitude envelope.
Here is a track created with Surge using the Classic oscillator, the mixer and different Amp EG settings for every sound. This song was made in REAPER. It takes advantage of some of REPER's built in effects for tonal sculpting but it's mostly just Surge, no reverb or delay was used:
Your browser may or may not play this file, right click and "Save Link As":
The Emu - OSCmixerAmp.ogg
It's hard to create a decent kick drum sound with only the classic oscillator, so a fair amount of low end is being boosted on that sound using EQ. You can look at exactly how every sound was made using this REAPER session file (REAPER's demo is fully functional and is available on Mac, Linux and Windows)
Right click and "Save Link As" an RPP file:
The Emu-OSCmixerAmp
Surge has two separate filters and many different modes that those filters can run in. It also has a dedicated filter envelope.
Many of the filters are capable of self resonating and high resonance settings, which means the filter can even be used as an oscillator!
In this section we will break down the basics of setting up a the filters and some fun and easy ways you can use them.
Some notes on the Filters getting started
The "order" of the filters can be changed with the "Filter Configuration" section, we are going to touch on this later. For these examples stick to S1.
In the original version of Surge, the filter section looked like this:
Moving forward to future versions the filter now has a drop down menu like this.....
In the new layout you can select a filter type by name from dropdown menu OR use the mouse wheel or click and drag on the filter image.
Most of the filter types have a small number beside them, you can click on the number to select different "variations" on the filter. I'm not going to cover that in this guide. The excellent and frequently updated Surge Manual has a section which explains all the types of filters and their variations.
Definitions For Synth Beginners:
Here is a really basic description of filter parameters and types:
- Cutoff: The "center" point where the filter operates.
- Resonance: The sharpness/width of the filter at the Cutoff. (How focused it is)
- Low Pass Filter: Everything above the cutoff is filtered so the filter "passes" the low end.
- High Pass Filter: Everything below the cutoff is filtered so the filter "passes" the high end.
- Bandpass: High and low pass filters around the cutoff. Everything BUT the frequency around the cutoff is filtered.
- Notch: the opposite of a bandpass only the frequencies around the cutoff are filtered.
- 12db,24db: This is used to describe the slope at which the filter cuts out frequencies above or below the cutoff. It's how many DB's a filter cuts or adds when you go up or down an octave. So a 24db filter filters twice as aggressively as a 12db filter.
Going over the filter controls:
To follow along, open up your DAW of choice, put Surge on a track and load the template preset: Init Saw
Most of the important controls for the filter are located in this section in the middle of the synth. For this section of the guide we'll be sticking mostly to this small area:
Turn on a Filter and use the Filter EG
By default both filters are OFF, represented visually by the horizontal line.
Lets start really simple by engaging the Lowpass 24 filter on Filter 2, without changing any filter settings, try playing or programming some notes and notice how with this setting, the default Saw preset has become very gentle and soft sounding. A lot of the high frequency is gone.
The first thing we should try is turning on a bit of the filter envelope for Filter 2, this will apply the filter EG (envelope generator) to the filter:
For Beginners:
Try playing some notes how notice how much more interesting this sound has become. A Saw wave has many harmonics, and using a filter to take some of them away is called "subtractive synthesis".
Try just turning up the A (attack) control on the Filter EG (just a bit). Notice how having a different setting for the filter and amp EG's with this Saw sound, suddenly this sounds almost like a brass instrument?
Before moving on, try spending some time experimenting with different settings for the Filter EG and Amp EG and see what different sounds you can come up with. With just a simple Saw wave a filter and an envelope there is a whole world of sounds available.
Filter Keytracking: turn off the Filter EG on Filter 2 and double click the Filter Cutoff to set it back to it's default value. Try playing some very high notes.....
Notice if you go high enough, you don't even hear anything anymore! This is because the filter is at a fixed point and these notes are falling out of it's range.
There is a simple way in Surge to set our filter to be relative to the key we are playing on the keyboard. If we have our filter cutoff set to it's default value and we turn this setting here to 100% the cutoff of the filter will be set to the same note as the oscillator!
Using the filter as an Oscillator:
Now that we have a way of controlling the filter cutoff with the keyboard we can use the filter itself as an oscillator. Turn up the resonance on Filter 2 all the way.
The sound should be a lot louder, and should also have a roundness to it that it didn't have before. That is the filter resonating.
Go over to the Mixer and turn Osc 1 way down (not all the way, but very low) Now we are pretty much JUST hearing the filter resonate. It's should sound like a sine wave!
Beginners:
Surge has a ton of controls but with just the "Classic" Oscillator, the AMP EG, the mixer and the Filter settings we have covered so far, many many classic synth sounds are possible. Indeed, lots of old school analog synths didn't have many more settings than these available.
Make sure to spend some time digging into these parameters and seeing what you can come up with.
The Filter Crossfader
Above the Filter EG is a slider that goes between F1 and F2 this is a filter crossfader... it's a bit of unique feature in Surge that can be used in some cool ways!
Turn up Osc 1 again and try moving the crossfader around while notes are playing. Since Filter 1 is OFF we are basically using the crossfader as a blend knob between a Saw wave (Osc 1 with no filter) and a Sine wave (resonating filter).
Making drum sounds:
Lets use what we've done so far in this section to create some drum sounds!!!
Keep the settings we have from the last example but put the crossfader for the filter back in the middle by double clicking. Go over to the mixer: mute Osc 1 and enable the Noise oscillator.
At this point, you could turn up the R (release) setting on the Amp EG and you'll have an interesting ghostly sound. If you want to try that feel free. Double click the R slider in the Amp EG to return to it's default once you are ready to move on.
Go to the Filter EG and turn up the F2 slider again try playing or programming some low notes on your keyboard (between C0 and C2), suddenly we have something that is starting to resemble a pitched kick drum sound!
This is because the Filter EG is rapidly changing the pitch of the filter from high to low, this simulates what happens when a drum is struck (a sudden change in tension on the drum head)
By tweaking the Amp and Filter EG's without straying too far from these settings we can come up with tons of different drum sounds from Snares to Kicks and Toms
Many times you may want your drums sounds to ignore the pitch input and always play with the same pitch. Try experimenting with disabling the keytracking and manually adjusting the cutoff of the filter.
Here are some settings for some different sounds:
808ish pitched kick drum: make sure to play low notes or it won't sound like a kick at all.
Snareish sounds: notice the Filter crossfader is slightly towards F1 to let some raw noise through. The cutoff of filter 2 is around 200hz which is typical for snare drum resonance.
Mildly aggressive dance kick: Keytracking is off and the filter cutoff is set too 70hz.
Filter FX
Some of the filters in Surge function more like effects, I'm talking about the Comb filter, and Sample & Hold modes. To summarize the normal usage of these filters, the Comb filter can be used in physical modeling and for phaser/flanger/chorus sounding effects, the Sample & Hold filter can be used to simulate aliasing and low sample rates.
With these modes it can be fun to set one filter to something simple like Lowpass 24 and the other to Sample & Hold or Comb filter and use the filter crossfader as a dry wet knob between the strange sound on one side and a more normal sound on the other.
These filter types might be too much to handle when starting out with Surge, as they are pretty strange. For those who love weird sounds there is lots of fun to be had here, especially with the keytracking enabled.
Here is a strange example that has an almost vocal sounding quality to it using the Sample & Hold and Lowpass 24 filters.
right click here and save as for preset
Other things you should know:
This is the Waveshaper:
It's not really part of the filter, but it sits between Filter 1 and 2. The Waveshaper can be used to distort your sounds and can be really useful.
It's also easy to completely mess up sounds with the Waveshaper. It can destroy the subtlety of other features of the synth really quickly if you overdo it; I'd recommend going with really low boost values to start.
Beside the Waveshaper is a dedicated high pass filter:
It's nice to have if you want to quickly control the low end of a sound with giving up one of your other filter slots to a highpass filter.
When designing sounds I commonly use one filter as keytracked filter and one filter without keytracking as more of a way to generally shaper the sound. The HP filter is a way to finally control the low end.
Keep in mind when designing sounds, the Waveshaper is after Filter 1 but before Filter 2. If you want to hear the effect of the distortion clearly make sure you aren't filtering it all out with Filter 2.
Here is a preset using all the filters and the Waveshaper as an example:
right click here and save as for preset
- There are two Filters which can be set to many different filter types and blended between with the Filter crossfader.
- They share one dedicated EG (Envelope Generator) and have individual keytracking controls
- Many of the Filters can self resonate and be used as Oscillators.
- Between the two filters is a Waveshaper for distorting and adding extra harmonics.
- There is a simple one slider High Pass filter for controlling the low end.
- The Amp EG section is the master volume section, this controls the shape and level of all oscillators blended together.
Something fun to try:
Try making a song again with just the what we've learned so far. With Filters, Filter envelopes and the Waveshaper added to the mix there is huuuuuge variety of sounds possible that wasn't before!
Here is a track I made in REAPER with just the what we've covered so far:
Right click and save to download the project file
Taking a Look at Surge's Modulators
Surge has a very powerful modulation section with LFO's, Envelopes and Macro controls. It also allows easy routing of many common MIDI controls like Velocity, Pitch Bend and Modwheel AND a bunch of more exotic controls like MPE Timbre and Release Velocity.
Surge does not yet include modifiers or math operations for adding or multipying Modulation sources BUT you can use one modulator to modulate parameters of another modulator. Sound confusing? It's not as bad as it sounds... lets check it out!
Modulation for Synth Beginners Modulation is simply a way of setting up the synth to control and change parameters over time, either automatically or by taking input.
- Envelopes: The same as the Amp EG and Filter EG. An envelope generator typically rises and falls, sometimes holding for a set time at a certain value. It will usually happen once per note and stop.
- LFO's: Go up and down in different shapes and repeat over and over again. Some start on new notes and continue for the life of the note, some repeat on their own endlessly in the background. A good example of an LFO is Vibrato or Tremolo.
- Note on or off Input Sources: Velocity, Release Velocity Keytrack and Random are examples of Modulation sources that change on the start or end of every note.
- Continous Input Sources: Pitch Bend, Modwheel and Timbre are examples of input sources which continually change based on user input.
Basic Settings Of The LFO and assigning Modulation
LFO 1-6 are per voice LFO's. Everytime you press a key a new LFO will run with these settings. They cannot be used to modulate global parameters like FX.
SLFO 1-6 are Scene LFO, these aren't created for every new note, they run as long as any note in the synth is active. They can modulate global parameters like FX.
Load up the Template preset Init Saw again. LFO 1 should already be selected. For now lets just focus on the control in the left hand side of the LFO section. There is lots to cover here.
We have 4 sliders:
- **Rate**: The speed of the LFO
- **Phase/Shuffle**: The starting Phase of the shaper
- **Deform**: You can bend the LFO shape with this control, hard to explain but if you try it you will see quickly what it does.
- **Amplitude**: The strength of the signal. If you have your LFO mapped to many parameters this will be a global control on all of them.
Beside that are some more important controls you can choose between Freerun, Keytrigger and Random for you LFO start times.
- Freerun: LFO runs on it's Own
- Keytrigger: New notes restart the LFO
- Random: LFO will restart randomly on it's own.
And one more:
- Unipolar: Is LFO unipolar or Bipolar, lets explain this with an example.
Don't even look at any of the other parameters in the LFO yet......LETS MAP Something!!!!!!
There are two ways to map a parameter in Surge, once a modulation source is selected for editing it will be blue, press it again and it will turn green, once its green you'll notice the sliders in the interface turn blue, if you change a slider when it's blue it will apply modulation rather than adjust the base value.
You can also press the "tab" key on your keyboard when the Surge interface is open.(doesn't work in all DAWs) This will toggle modulation assignment on and off for the last selected modulator. This feature is AMAZING and very underrated, it makes Surge SO fast for sound design.
So lets map LFO1 to pitch! To recap:
- click on your modulator again or press "tab" so that it lights up green.
- move the pitch control for oscillator 1 and notice how a second lite blue slider appears over top of the base value. Set it really extreme for now so it's easy to hear.
- Click on the modulator again or press tab to disable modulation.
Spend some time experimenting with Rate, Phase/Shuffle, Amplitude and Deform. Also try restart modes. You can really do a lot with just the sine wave LFO and those controls.
Before moving on, toggle Modulation assignment again by clicking the name of the modulator or pressing tab. Look at the green line on the Pitch slider. Try enabling and disabling the Unipolar button. It's clear to see what it does.
If the unipolar button is not checked the synth is in bipolar mode, in bipolar mode the base value of the parameter is the CENTER and the modulation will go above and below the center point. With Unipolar mode checked, the base value of the parameter acts as the lowest point, and the modulation will only occur above this point.
For a vibrato effect we probably want to keep this unchecked, but unipolar mode can be really useful for some parameters.
Changing the LFO to different shapes
In Surge the LFO's can be a number of different shapes, and can actually be turned into an Envelope.
Try moving between the first 6 types. If you right click the pictures you can see all the names: Sine, Triangle, Square and Saw should be pretty self explanatory. Noise and Sample&Hold are different types of random values.
Noise will "slide" between random values and Sample&Hold will step to and hold random values. The easiest way to hear these is to set them to control pitch and play held notes while changing the speed settings.
Spend some time trying these different types and experimenting with the basic controls to hear what they do.
Again, to start:
I recommend sticking to pitch modulation, because it's really easy for our ears to hear.
Once you feel like the modulation stuff is starting to make sense select the Envelope mode in the LFO, the name of the modulator will change from LFO 1 to ENV 1.
If you look over at the envelope display it will be just a straight line, and if you play a note, you'll notice it's no longer "modulating" just staying up at the max value you've selected with modulation.
We need to now adjust the LFO EG controls on the right side of the controls.
There is the familiar controls from the Amp and Filter EG's ADSR but we also have some other interesting controls.
- D (delay) which is a delay from when you press a key until the envelope starts.
- H (hold) after the attack period the envelope will Hold at it's max value for the amount of time set by the H slider.
To start, just bring up the A slider and see what it does, we just get pitch ramp from very fast to veeeery slow. If you want to create an envelope that slides from your start value to another value over a set period of time all you need to do is turn your LFO in an envelope and adjust the A slider!
gif of A slider
Since we are already controlling pitch, lets try and make a drum type sound. Bring the A slider back down. And also grab the S and R sliders. Bring them all the way down. Now you can use the D slider as speed control for the envelope.
Note: In Envelope mode, Rate, and Phase/Shuffle, Freerun/Keytrigger/Random don't do anything, but Deform and Amplitude still do.
Try experimenting with the D slider and the Deform control to get some drum type sounds. Try assigning the Envelope to a bunch of other parameters and see what kind of weirdness you can come up with.
Once you get to a point where you've created something that is either amazing or completely unlistenable garbage, save the preset, post a video on social media and tag us and move on.
LFO and Envelope at the SAME TIME & modulating Modulators The LFO in Surge can act as both an LFO and Envelope at the same time... this might seem strange, but it's actually pretty useful.
To create a sensible example go back to the Init Saw preset. Set LFO1 to modulate the pitch of Osc 1, by 1 semitones or so very lightly. While staying in Sine wave mode bring up the attack fader on the LFO EG and see what happens?
set LFOEG
The EG is acting as a modifier for the LFO. The LFO will only be audible for the length of the LFO EG.
Set the D parameter to 0.5 seconds and the A parameter to to around 1 second and try playing some notes, we are basically getting a slow onset for vibrato, so the note starts solid, and starts to modulate as we hold it.
Now lets try something interesting.
- In the LFO controls set the amplitude all the way down to 0%.
- Click the "Velocity" button in the modulators. Notice it has no controls of it's own. We still see the controls for LFO1
- Click it a second time, or press tab to enable assignments.
- Grab the Amplitude slider again and pull it all way up to 100%
- We now have the velocity controlling how aggressive our vibrato is!
- Click the Velocity button again to turn the assignment mode off.
- If you have a ModWheel, click on the ModWheel modulator control.
- Click it a second time, or press tab to enable assignments.
- Grab the A control in LFO EQ for LFO 1 and pull it all the way down.
- Now your modwheel controls the onset of the vibrato, and velocity controls it's intensity!
Gif of this whole shebang:
Modulate and LFO with another LFO
If you want to use an LFO to modulate the parameters of another LFO:
- select the LFO you'd like to be the controller.
- press the small arrow on the LFO you'd like to target
- adjust parameters Here I'm using LFO2 in freemode and vererrry slow to change the SPEED of the vibrato.
You can keep going with this forever.
Useful tips Now it's time to experiment and try to make a song or some sounds by applying the new modulator knowledge to all these other things you've learned!
Try and switch between the LFO and SLFO for different things and see how they differ. Notice the controls that can't be adjusted with the LFO.
There are a couple more Envelope types the list Step Sequencer and MSEG. There is already enough to cover 90% of use cases or more with what we've gone over so I'm not going to cover those here, but they are covered in depth in the manual.
Here are some useful pointers:
- Any Modulator parameters that are speed based (Rate,DAHDSR and also the AMP EG and Filter EG ADSR's) can be set to lock to the project tempo of your DAW.
- right click the parameter and select Tempo Sync!!!
- The Filter EG and AMP EG are accessible from the modulator section if you'd like to use them to modulate other parameters, sometimes this is really useful.
- The Random and Alternate modulators create a random value or a high and low value on each keypress, they can be set to unipolar or bipolar by right clicking.
- Many types of modulation sources are availble from the modulation section in the center.
- Click on a modulator and click it again or press tab to enable assignments. Press tab or click it once more to turn it off once you are done.
- LFO's include Envelopes and have many adjustable parameters.
- LFO's are created per voice
- SLFO's are global "scene" LFO's that continue as long as a scene is making sound.
- If you can't modulate something with an LFO you probably can with a SLFO.
- You can right click an LFO to copy it to another LFO. OR and copy the settings to an SLFO
- you can right click time based parameters to lock them to the project tempo
Something Fun to Try: This time instead of making a song I've made some demo sounds that do cool stuff with the modulators. You can get them all in this REAPER file or download all the presets in this zip. Just drag and drop a preset onto the Surge interface to open it.
This time for practice rather than making a new song from scratch..... try and go back to your older songs and use modulation to add "depth" and "subtlety" to the sounds.
Adding modulation into the mix with everything else you've learned, the sky is really the limit. You can create sounds like no one has ever heard with the right combination so get to it!
IF I MIGHT MAKE ONE SUGGESTION:
It's SO fast and easy to add modulators in Surge that it's easy to go overboard and end up with a writhing pile of auditory garbage. Even just one or two teeeeeeeny tiny modulation sources can add a lot of life to sounds. So go slow, go subtle and easy and experiment with different parameters,
- Try light modulation on Oscillator Sync, Width and Shape
- Try modulating the Filter crossfader or Filter Resonance.
- Try modulating different oscillators with LFO's of different speeds.
- Try putting a tiny tiny bit of Velocity modulation on lots and lots of different parameters to create sounds that morph depending on how hard they are played.
- Try to go waaaaaay overboard with LFO modulation and bring it back to something tasteful by using the LFO EG or using another modulator to control it's Amplitude.
Please share your creations with us on social media or email. We'd love to see what you come up with!
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- fx are fun is good
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