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Hey Ninja
Today I'm gonna be teaching you the best way to make Dubstep Growls and Wobbles in Spire.
We are gonna be utilizing the stepper to make this process super easy and simple and by the end of this tutorial you will achieve this sound.
Step 1: FM Mode In Spire
First we have to get into FM Mode in Spire which is very easy to do. Just go to the oscillator menu and click on the classic mode and a menu will pop up allowing you to choose FM MODE.
In spire as you can see we have the ability to pick between
Classic Mode: standard wavetable synthesis
Noise: white noise generator,
FM:Frequency Modulation,
AMSYNC: Oscillator sync with amplitude modulation
SAW PWM: Saw Pulse WIDTH Modulation
Step 2: Apply The Stepper To The Matrix
The stepper is whats gonna make creating dubstep wobbles and growls fairly easy in spire. Think of it as person who is gonna aid you in moving the knobs so you don't have to do it yourself.
To use the stepper we first need to click on the matrix button found at the bottom of spire. The matrix is a place where we can route modulations of all sorts to any parameter in Spire. We will be using this to make dubstep wobbles fairly easy.
Once clicked we can apply the Stepper onto the source 1 and then start routing to the parameters as so. We are in FM mode and we are gonna be using the stepper to move CTRL A CTRL B and the cutoff of Filter 1. Like so
Step 3 Apply Your Lowpass Filter
We will be using a perfecto Low Pass filter which is one of the most popular filters to make sounds. Make sure the cutoff is set low.
STEP 4 APPLY Your Sequence In The Stepper
The stepper is amazing for creating awesome patterns. It's not as liberal as the Serum LFO but we can still get some amazing patterns going in it.
What we are gonna do first is make sure we are in the stepper tab which can be found by clicking STP1 bottom left of spire.
You can see we have a 16 bars we can work with. What we wanna do is click on the orange dot and drag down to flatten 4 of the bars.
Doing this we will then be able to use the mini square to create gradual hills as you may say to get the effect. My best tip for you here is to have fun with creating the mountains. The higher the mountain the higher the effect will happen.
Remember how we routed 3 parameters to the stepper? These are the ones that will get affected.
The mountain at it's peak will apply the full chance to the parameters but at the most bottom it will not do anything.
For my sound I created this pattern. Keep in mind that the X1,X2,X3,X4 is just how many hills we are gonna have in our sequence for that 1 bar. Also keep in mind I set the end to 04 so that once 4 bars are sequenced we loop back to the beginning. I don't want to use the total 16 bars they give us.
Step 5 Distortion, Reverb, Compression and EQ
The final step is to add harmonics to our wobble with distortion to get a more fierce sound. For distortion each different type of distortion will give you different results so make sure to test them out.
For this sound I decided to go with the FBSIN distortion type and had a fully wet signal, a hint of drive and I lowered the Sample Rate to get a more dirtier sound as heard in the demo at the beginning of this article. You can go a different way with your own wobble. I also added a hint of reverb.
For compression I added the X-Comp which spire offers which is very similar to the Serum wavetable. It does upward and downward compression and aids in giving you a stronger sound.
I also used a high shelf eq to boost like so to get that finished bright polished sound effect.
FINAL STEP: MONO
The final thing to do is set the sound to mono so we don't play more then 1 note by accident and cause a mess to play. Usually when a sound is heavily distorted and you play more then 1 note at the same time the distortion adds up creating a fuzzy mess so lets be safe and put this sound in mono. Top of Spire you will see poly, click on it to bring down a menu and set it to mono1.
CONCLUSION
Congratulations you now know how to create wobbles in Spire. If you ever want to create different types of dubstep wobbles make sure to follow the same steps but use different distortion types, maybe a different sequence, and experiment step sequences various others parameters to find your own sound.