How to Make a Pluck Synth Sound on Any Synth, in 5 Steps

A pluck synth is a saw wave with two short envelopes on it. Set the volume envelope (ADSR) to a 0 to 2 ms attack, a 250 to 400 ms decay and zero sustain, then run the saw through a low-pass filter with the cutoff turned down and a fast envelope that opens it on every note. The filter envelope should decay faster than the volume, so each note goes dark before it goes quiet. Add a dotted-eighth delay and a little reverb and you have the classic house and pop pluck.

What is a pluck synth?

A pluck is a synth sound that behaves like a plucked string: it starts at full volume and full brightness, then fades on its own, even while you keep holding the key. Guitar, harp and kalimba work this way, and so do struck instruments like the marimba.

Two things make a synth sound read as plucked. First, it fades by itself. With sustain at zero the note dies whatever your finger does, where a pad or an organ holds for as long as you hold. Second, it gets darker as it fades. On a real string the high harmonics die away faster than the low ones, so the bright twang at the start melts into a rounder tone. On a synth, a filter that closes on every note copies this.

Get only the first and you have a short beep. Get both and it sounds plucked. Length sets the flavor: under about 200 ms is a tight tick, 200 to 800 ms is the familiar house or pop pluck, and a second or more starts to sound like a harp or a kalimba.

To hear one before you build one, pick the Pluck sound on our free online chord player and listen for the snap at the front of each chord.

How to make a pluck synth in 5 steps

These steps work on nearly any subtractive synth (one with oscillators, a filter and envelopes), hardware or software. The numbers are starting points; the next sections show which way to push them.

1. Start from an init patch with one saw wave. The init patch is the synth’s blank default sound, with no effects or modulation hiding in it. A saw wave has every harmonic, so the filter has plenty to carve. A square wave gives a hollower, woodier pluck, and a triangle a softer one. For width, add a second saw detuned 5 to 10 cents.
2. Set the amp envelope. Attack 0 to 2 ms, decay 250 to 400 ms, sustain 0, release about the same as the decay. On some synths an attack of exactly 0 clicks; 1 ms usually cures it. With sustain at zero, release only matters when you let go before the decay has finished. Matching it to the decay lets a quick tap ring out about as long as a held note.
3. Add a low-pass filter and close it down. Choose a low-pass filter, 24 dB per octave if you get a choice (12 dB is gentler and leaves more fizz). Turn the cutoff down to around 300 to 600 Hz, so the note sounds dull and muffled for now. Set resonance to 10 to 25 percent.
4. Send a fast envelope to the cutoff. Filter envelope: attack 0, decay 100 to 200 ms, sustain 0, release to match. Turn the envelope amount up until the cutoff jumps 4 or 5 octaves at the start of each note, which from 400 Hz means up to about 6 to 13 kHz. This is the step that turns the beep into a pluck. If your synth has one envelope for both volume and filter, set its decay around 250 ms and lean on the envelope amount for the snap.
5. Add space. Put a delay on it, set to a dotted eighth note, with 25 to 35 percent feedback and a 15 to 25 percent mix. If your delay only takes milliseconds, divide 45,000 by the tempo: 375 ms at 120 BPM, about 352 ms at 128 BPM. Short notes leave gaps, and the echoes fill them off the beat. Cut the delay’s lows below 200 Hz if you can, so the repeats stay out of the bass, then finish with a short reverb, 1 to 1.5 seconds at about 15 percent.

Here are both envelopes side by side:

The filter envelope: where the snap comes from

A pluck with a static filter sounds like a toy keyboard with the volume fading. The snap comes from movement. The moment you press a key, the filter envelope throws the cutoff high and the full saw comes through with all its buzz. Then the cutoff falls back over the next 100 to 200 ms, and your ear hears that falling brightness as the tick of a pick on a string.

So keep the filter decay shorter than the amp decay. With the filter at 150 ms and the volume at 350 ms, the note is bright for an instant, then rings on dark and round before it fades, like a real string. Set them equal and tone and volume drop together, which sounds flatter. Make the filter decay the longer one and the brightness never has time to fall, so the snap disappears.

Three controls set the character of the snap. For more on how each one behaves by itself, see how cutoff and resonance work.

• Base cutoff is where the filter lands after the sweep. Around 200 to 400 Hz leaves a dark, thumpy tail. At 1 to 2 kHz the tail stays glassy and bright.
• Envelope amount is how far the filter opens. More amount gives a sharper, clickier attack; less gives a softer, rounder one.
• Resonance boosts the frequencies right at the cutoff as it sweeps, adding a vocal “pew” to each note. Past about 50 percent it starts to sound like an acid bass line or a laser zap.

Two more settings make a pluck play well across the keyboard. Turn key tracking (sometimes labeled Key Track or KBD) up to 50 to 100 percent so the cutoff rises with the note. Without it, a 400 Hz cutoff swallows most of a C6, whose fundamental sits at about 1,047 Hz. And if the synth can send velocity to the filter envelope amount, do it, so harder hits come out brighter, the way a string does when you pick it harder.

If your synth can curve its envelope stages, curve the decay to drop fast and then tail off slowly: a snappier front with the same long ring.

Pluck variations: house, harp and marimba

Each starts from the five steps above, with different numbers.

House pluck. Use two detuned saws, or a unison of 5 to 7 voices, through a 24 dB low-pass at around 300 Hz with plenty of envelope amount and about 20 percent resonance. This sound is made for chords, so play three- and four-note voicings between C3 and C5; lower than that, the dark tails turn to mud. A good first loop in A minor is Am7, Fmaj7, Cmaj7, G, one chord per bar, with each chord stabbed on the off-beat eighths (the “and” of every beat). Put the dotted-eighth delay on it and let the echoes land between the hits.

Harp pluck. A harp rings long and sounds soft, so stretch everything and calm the filter down. Amp decay 1.5 to 3 seconds, sustain 0, release around a second. Filter envelope decay 300 to 600 ms with resonance at 0 to 10 percent, because a squelchy sweep sounds synthetic here. A triangle wave with a quieter saw underneath gives a round body with a bit of edge. Play rolled chords, bottom note first, and quick runs up the scale, and give it a larger reverb, about 2 seconds at 25 percent. Some synths also have a plucked-string mode built on Karplus-Strong synthesis (published by Kevin Karplus and Alexander Strong in 1983), which feeds a short burst of noise through a filtered delay line and sounds much like a real string. The KarplusStrong mode on Arturia’s MicroFreak is one.

Marimba. A marimba note is round and close to a sine wave, with a woody knock right at the start. Skip the filter sweep (leave the filter open or off) and use a sine wave with a 1 ms attack, a 300 to 700 ms decay and zero sustain. For the knock, add a second sine two octaves up (+24 semitones) at about a third of the level, with a much shorter decay of 50 to 100 ms. A 5 to 10 ms burst of white noise, mixed low, adds the sound of the mallet hitting the bar. It sounds most convincing from C3 to C6. For a metallic mallet such as a vibraphone or glockenspiel, the FM recipes in how to make a bell sound on a synth take you the rest of the way.

How to make a pluck in Vital, Serum and on iPhone

In Vital, a software synth with a free tier, ENV 1 is already wired to volume, so give it the settings from step 2. Switch on Filter 1, make sure oscillator 1 feeds it, choose a low-pass type and lower the cutoff. Then drag ENV 2 onto the cutoff knob, raise the modulation amount until the filter opens wide, and give ENV 2 a 0 attack, a 150 ms decay and zero sustain. Serum works the same way: ENV 1 controls the volume, and you drag ENV 2 onto the filter’s Cutoff knob.

In Gelato Synth, our synth for iPhone, pull Sustain to zero on the Env page, set a short Decay and keep Attack at the bottom of its range. On the Filter page, choose Low, bring Cutoff down, add a little Resonance and raise Envelope to filter until each note snaps. Envelope to FM on the FM page does a similar job with FM: a bright attack and a purer tail. The Burst slider on the Noise page adds a short noise burst for a pick or mallet attack, and the Pluck, Harp Pluck and Marimba presets are good ones to take apart.

If a pluck still sounds off after the steps above, check these:

• Only one note of a chord plays, or fast runs lose their snap. The synth is in mono or legato mode. Switch it to poly so every note gets its own envelopes.
• Chords sound muddy. Voice them higher, or cut everything below about 150 Hz and let a bass part cover the low end.
• Sounds thin next to other parts. Layer a quiet sine one octave down with the same envelope.