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 FX Section
- 05 Filter Configurations And FM Routings
- 06 More Oscillator Modes
- 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.
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 filter getting started
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.....
Where 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.
For Beginners:
Here is a really basic description of filter parameters and types:
Cutoff: the center point where the filter operates.
Resonance: the sharpness of the filter at the Cutoff.
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.
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 like this suddenly some 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! 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 potentially confusing 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, 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 too 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 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 type effects, the Sample & Hold filter can be used to simulate aliasing and low sample rates.
These filter types might be too much to handle when starting out with Surge, as they are pretty strange.
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.
Here is a strange example that has an almost voice 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:
Not really part of the filter, but it's in the section with the filter so it's hard to ignore. 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 the soft mode and low 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.
Here is a preset using all the filters and the Waveshaper as an example:
right click here and save as for preset
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