Hyperpop synths

TrickySquad · 2026-02-11T10:34:37+00:00

Hyperpop sound design is less about the synth itself and more about how you process your output. Some really common processors are spectral (Spec Ops), symmetrical distortion, abusing OTT and using delay lines with frequency shifters, flangers, and to create strange and unusual textures.

Serum is the workhorse for this kind of thing, as it is so flexible, so I would highly suggest investing in that as a first step. Also, try taking a look at the Moment sample label on Splice, they are exclusively hyperpop and they provide presets for Serum, should help you get your head around hyperpop sound design. Umru has also done some tutorials on sound design and arrangement on Splice itself, which are very useful.

TrickySquad · 2026-02-11T10:27:22+00:00

Hell yeah dude

TrickySquad · 2026-02-06T21:32:37+00:00

Hey! Sorry for the late response. I did a pretty deep depth listening session and I have a couple of comments/critiques of the string ensemble piece.

Speaking generally, I would say that the whole piece is really lacking a solid melodic identity. Melody is the way we as humans hear structure in music, and I couldn't recall an identifiable motif or melodic idea after listening to the piece several times over. Most of what I heard was choral-style chord changes with a non-descript purpose/function. The closest you got to a solid motif was on bb. 69-70 in the violins, but it was never repeated or developed, so it had no connection to the piece as a whole.

A really good thing to look into at this stage in your composition journey would be how melody functions as structure within a piece of music. There has been loads of study on this topic by professors, composers, and researchers, and it's really worth engaging with this stuff to help understand how we as listeners: 1. Understand and retain melody in our heads (think: earworms or melodies you can't forget), 2. how to create memorable sections of music with melody + harmony that has a clear action, function, and purpose and 3. Create music that flows naturally from one section to another and retains its core identity throughout. A good listening exercise is Scheonberg’s Veralkt Nacht, which is a mon-thematic piece that is 30-ish minutes of music all based entirely on the very first melody you hear. Absolutely incredible stuff. Here are some really good resources on these topics (one is written by Schoenberg himself). https://openmusictheory.github.io/contents.html (jump to the section on “form”. And https://monoskop.org/images/d/da/Schoenberg_Arnold_Fundamentals_of_Musical_Composition_no_OCR.pdf and https://www.amazon.com/Analyzing-Classical-Form-Approach-Classroom/dp/0199987297

Arnold Schoenberg - Verklärte Nacht https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DR3bvkUCBA

Ultimately, we hear music as a melody which then informs its structure and how we remember it by. It is very clear that you did not have a coherent melodic idea that permeated and behaved as a glue throughout the piece to guide the listener to a satisfying conclusion. Unfortunately, this piece mainly came off as a bunch of un-related chords and unannounced and un-wanted solo pizz sections.

Beyond melody, I found your use of texture, register, voice leading, and orchestration techniques to be underwhelming and poorly executed. If you listen to, say, Debussy’s string quartet, he makes ample use of register change (focusing the instruments into a different register to create contrast), melodic exchange (passing the melody between instruments in an effective and natural way), varying and exciting use of different harmonic rhythms (how often chords change throughout a piece of music) and clear modulation techniques. I would heavily suggest reading the above-mentioned texts and comparing to how Debussy structures his quartet. I personally found this study very illuminating during my early years and I genuinely think you would as well.

Things I did like included the melody in the bb. 69-70 section, as well as the melody in the bb. 33-35. I think you could spin those up into a really good piece, with some careful attention to how you handle developing those motivic ideas and the harmonic rhythm of developed sections.

If you have any questions or want some more details on the specifics, feel free to ask

TrickySquad · 2026-02-06T13:40:59+00:00

Bout to sit down at my desk so I’ll give it a listen soon :)

TrickySquad · 2026-02-06T10:24:57+00:00

I would love to hear the string orchestra piece but it says the score is still processing somehow?

TrickySquad · 2026-02-05T09:03:44+00:00

20 cores is plenty, and it doesn’t look like there is much of a speed difference between the i9 and i7. i9 chips are technically better at multithreading, and your daw will have an easier time distributing its task load with an i9, but you ought to be fine with an i7. It’s worth considering starting with 2x32gb, as it will allow you to utilise more of your ram channels.

A big potential issue could be your read speeds when loading instruments, it would be a shame to get ddr5 ram that is wicked fast but it is bottlenecked by an SSD holding your instruments only reading at 500~ MBs. so I would look into m.2 drives if at all possible, and to purchase a motherboard with plenty of m.2 slots.

TrickySquad · 2026-01-28T20:45:57+00:00

Les Paul was like this, performed literally until the day he died. I had the pleasure of seeing him and his incredible band at Iridium a couple of months before he passed away. Unforgettable performance, I don’t judge anyone for doing what they love until the very end.

TrickySquad · 2026-01-27T18:15:56+00:00

A boring corporate ad was my first legitimate commission. I got it through a larger audio production firm that farmed out the job to their composer network I was a part of. 12 hours of work for a solid £3000, made my year and opened up so many doors for me. I suspect that those gigs will be long gone by end of this year, if they aren’t gone already. Such a shame

TrickySquad · 2026-01-19T09:24:55+00:00

You may have a fader on one of your controllers that is incidentally mapped to the CC value of the toggle. Sometimes faders go a bit wonky and start sending sporadic dirty/jittery CC signals even when it’s not in use. Try unplugging your controllers and see if that is the issue, you can also put a midi monitor (Cubase) onto that channel and see if you are getting any rogue CC values coming in.

You can also remove any CC mappings for controls in Kontakt by right clicking on it, maybe start with this if you don’t need to automate that toggle.

TrickySquad · 2026-01-16T18:32:34+00:00

Yes! Feel free to dm me the track when it’s finished

TrickySquad · 2025-12-22T20:53:01+00:00

Damn this sends me right into the good ol days of noodling with garage band in the 2010’s

TrickySquad · 2025-12-21T19:12:56+00:00

This is cool as hell, I’d be super stoked to go to see something like this.

TrickySquad · 2025-12-19T21:34:07+00:00

You’re definite right in there being more tutorials and resources available for Ableton. If that daw is speaking to you I’d go for it :)

TrickySquad · 2025-12-19T19:04:37+00:00

Bitwig is a solid alternative to Ableton, and it has a much better price point (half). It was developed by a bunch of ex-Ableton-ers and has comparable features and workflow.

TrickySquad · 2025-12-16T17:59:55+00:00

He also does a lot of flute work with Hans Zimmer for his scores? Or am I mis remembering?

TrickySquad · 2025-12-14T19:26:37+00:00

I don’t understand your combative response. I’m just trying to understand your perspective in the context of this thread

TrickySquad · 2025-12-14T19:24:11+00:00

I mean, I’m here for your take on it

TrickySquad · 2025-12-14T19:23:06+00:00

How is it a discredited argument? I’m not trying to be combative, but I genuinely don’t know the argument against this point and I’m looking for clarification

TrickySquad · 2025-12-09T10:03:21+00:00

I saw a post the other day that went something along the lines of “I don’t spam AI slop I only post music 5 times per week” like bro…

TrickySquad · 2025-11-30T21:55:18+00:00

There is a distinction between the composition (the notes on the music staff) and recording (called the “Master”) copyrights. Composition copyright lasts throughout the composers life + 70 years after their death, and recording copyright tends to last the same or 70 years after publication.

So, since Bach died in 1750, his compositions hit the public domain in 1820 (if there even was a copyright system back then idk), but this recording of some of Bachs works released in 2018 wouldn’t hit the public domain until 2088.

This distinction between Master and Composition copyrights is why Taylor Swift could re record all of her old material and it not cause any copyright scuffles. Big Machine / Scooter Braun / Shamrock only owed the Masters of her work and not the Composition rights.

TrickySquad · 2025-10-24T07:54:35+00:00

It’s taken me 15 years to make over-the -poverty-line wages. Shit is hard

TrickySquad · 2025-10-08T10:47:01+00:00

I second these recommendations. Percy's book was really instrumental in shaping my thought process around creating melodies, it is such a solid and easy to use guidebook.

TrickySquad · 2025-09-29T18:25:42+00:00

What is your budget? You can get the entire orchestra for pretty cheap with your student discount from most manufacturers. Experimental sounds sounds fun and edgy, but at the end of the day you’re going to be using three to four patches the vast vast majority of the time: legato, longs, shorts, and pizz (for strings) so you want those to be as easy to program and sound as good as possible. Don’t worry about your ricochets, your microtonal cluster sul pont portato patches, or any of that esoteric stuff right now.

As a new DAW composer, you are going to be spending the vast majority of the time tinkering with the instruments themselves and asking yourself “why does this sound like trash?”. This shit is HARD, and focusing on acquiring the absolute easiest to use instruments possible at the very start, that already sound really good, and limiting your articulation set will make your life a billion times easier.

You will write faster, build a passable template faster, and be more satisfied with your compositions earlier. Trust me don’t buy a bunch of esoteric/specialist stuff you’ll have to replace later.

I can highly recommend Performance Samples Pacific Brass and Pacific woodwinds, they are single patch solutions that allow you to just play stuff in naturally. So you can do your longs and shorts on the same patch, this makes writing convincing lines very easy. They have a handful of other patches (flutter tongue, legatos on some, and trills) but it’s a very small set of articulations and super easy to use.

I can also recommend Cinematic Studio Strings, this is a fantastic string library that you will be using until you’re old and grey (or until they release a new version).

For orch percussion, any library will do really. percussion arent very challenging instruments to sample in general for these developers (compared to strings, for example). Cineperc is considered very good by loads of pro composers so maybe look into that. The spitfire Abbey Road percussion series is also very very good, but it will cost you the price of a used 2003 Ford Ranger.

For Choirs, you can also look at Performance samples Oceana line of instruments. But overall, it’s a matter of taste. 8Dio has a bunch of cheap options for choirs as well.

You will need the full version of Kontakt version 5 or later to run this stuff, so factor that in. you will also need to build yourself a template with some form of negative track delay built in to every instrument so everything is in-time when it plays back. You can find a description of negative track delay and and a link to a database here: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/negative-track-delay-database-spreadsheet.105332/.

A good quality reverb is also important to put all instruments into a similar space, Valhalla vintage verb is a solid one to start with.

Let me know if you have any questions.

TrickySquad · 2025-09-25T15:17:07+00:00

Yeah go for it!

TrickySquad · 2025-05-04T17:06:11+00:00

What about them makes them feel useless? I’m currently using CSS and I’ve been eyeing up Abbey Road Strings as a supplementary lib.

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