stab Help

11. Sound

The Synth

Stab Synth is a synthesizer built into Stab. Any track but a drum track can play it: a keys track for pads and basses, a guitar track for a lead, with the notes, bends and techniques the track already has. Its sound is the track’s Source, so it’s saved with the song, and every setting can be automated.

Stab Synth

Available on every platform.

Making a track play it

  • Its sound button, on its strip in the Mixer or on its Source in the Sound pane: Stab Synth.
  • The track’s menu (right-click its header): Sound › Stab Synth.
  • The Sound pane’s Presets: on a guitar or keys track, the Stab Synth submenu turns it into one of the Synth’s sounds in one step.

To go back, choose Stab Strings or SoundFont the same way. A Synth track can also go through the guitar’s chains, from Presets › Guitar Chains.

Presets

On a Synth track, Presets lists the Synth’s sounds: leads (Saw Lead, Supersaw, Pulse Lead), brass and pads (Synthwave Brass, Warm Pad, Glass Pad, Ambient Drift, Soft Strings, Phased Strings, Shimmer Pad), plucks and keys (Pluck, Arp Pluck, FM Bell, FM Keys, Lo-Fi Keys), basses (Sub Bass, Acid Bass, Reese Bass, Wobble Bass, 808 Phonk: a sine 808 with its thump, through Tape with its sub kept clean), 808 Cowbell (the 808’s cowbell as a voice to play tunes on: the phonk hook), the chip sounds (Chip Lead, Chip Pulse 12.5%, Chip Triangle Bass, Chip Arp Chords, Chip Noise Hit, Chip Crushed), struck metal on the bell engine (Tubular Bells, Church Bell, Celesta, Music Box) and Trance Gate. Each sets the voice and the devices after it; change anything from there.

The demos Chiptune, Synthwave, Ambient, Acid House, Ambient Electronica, Drone, Lo-Fi Hip Hop and Drift Phonk use it.

Its controls

Select the Source in the Sound pane to see the whole voice (in Patch mode’s panel, or an Inspector pane), or choose Open Editor on the Source band for the editor: the same controls laid out as panels, with the waves, the filter’s curve, the envelopes and the LFOs drawn. Drag the drawings as well as the knobs; while the song plays, you see the voice move through them. In Patch mode, double-click the Source to open it. Press Esc to close it.

  • Oscillator 1 and Oscillator 2: Shape morphs from sine to triangle to saw to square; Pulse Width narrows the square; Tune in semitones (±24) and Fine in cents; Level. Oscillator 2’s Mode mixes it in (Mix), multiplies the two (Ring), or bends oscillator 1’s pitch with it (FM, as much as FM says, plus FM Envelope from the mod envelope: bells).
  • Sub and Noise: a sub-oscillator one or two octaves down (−1, −2), Sine or Square, and noise with its Colour.
  • Unison: up to seven Voices of each oscillator, Detuned against each other and Spread across the stereo field.
  • Filter: Low 12, Low 24, Band or High, with Cutoff, Resonance, Drive, Key Track (higher notes open it more) and Envelope (how much the filter envelope moves it, up or down).
  • Filter Envelope and Amp Envelope: Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release.
  • Mod Envelope: Attack and Decay, moving the Pitch (±24 semitones) and the FM.
  • LFO 1: vibrato and wah. Shape (Sine, Triangle, Saw, Square, Random), Rate, Vibrato (pitch, in cents) and Wah (the cutoff).
  • LFO 2: morph and tremolo. Shape, Rate, Morph (the oscillators’ shape) and Tremolo (the level).
  • Voice: Poly, Mono or Legato (mono without restarting the envelopes), Glide between notes, Velocity (how much playing harder matters), Level. The Source’s full face also has its Humanize and Swing.
  • Engine: Analog, Chip or Bell. Chip is the sound of an 8-bit game console, with its narrow pulses, a stepped triangle, its noise and stepped volume. Chip Arp cycles a held chord fast in one voice, as those games did (Off at 0). Bell is struck metal: in place of the oscillators, the partials a bell rings with, each at its own pitch and ringing for its own time.
  • Bell (with the Bell engine): which metal (Tubular, a chime whose note you hear from partials near 2, 3 and 4 times a fundamental that isn’t there; Church, with its hum an octave below, its minor third and fifth, and the nominal an octave above; Celesta; Music Box), Ring (how long it rings: 200 % is twice as long) and Mallet (soft and round to hard and bright; playing harder brightens it too). The amp envelope still shapes it: a long Release lets a bell ring on after the note ends.
  • Arpeggiator: plays the held notes one at a time, Up, Down, Up & Down, Random or As Played, at a Rate from 1/4 to 1/32 of the song’s tempo, over 1 to 3 Octaves, each note held for its Gate.

Every knob is one undo step, a whole drag included.

Automating it

Each of these can change over time: add an automation lane for it from the track’s Stab Synth section (see Automation). A filter opening over eight bars is a lane on Cutoff.

The devices after it

A Synth track has a chain like any other: delay, chorus, the electronic effects, or an amp. They come after the voice, in the Sound pane.