9 Types of Synth Sounds: Bass, Lead, Pad, Pluck and More

There are nine main types of synth sounds: bass, lead, pad, pluck, keys, bell, arp, drone and FX. Each family is defined by the job it does in a song and by how its volume moves over time, and the settings below build all nine on almost any synthesizer.

Preset libraries are usually sorted into these same families. The volume shape comes from the ADSR envelope (attack, decay, sustain, release), which controls each note from key press to fade:

We make Gelato Synth, an iPhone synth whose 52 presets include one for eight of the nine families: Reese (bass), Analog Lead, Juno Pad, Pluck, E-Piano (keys), Sunny Bell, Space Drone and Laser (FX). It has no arpeggiator, so arps are the one family you play by hand there.

Synth bass, sub bass and 808

1. Bass (holds up the low end). One note at a time, mostly between E1 and C3, fast attack. The bass usually plays the root of each chord, which tells the ear what the chord is; a third this low blurs into mud. On phone speakers you mostly hear a bass through its upper harmonics, so a saw or square bass carries better than a pure sine.

A good all-round bass is one saw wave through a low-pass filter, cutoff around 400 Hz, low resonance. Give the filter an envelope (0 ms attack, 200 to 300 ms decay, zero sustain) so each note starts bright and settles, and set the amp envelope to a 0 to 5 ms attack, full sustain and a 50 to 100 ms release. Most basses are a variation on that patch:

The Reese takes its name from Reese, the alias Kevin Saunderson used for “Just Want Another Chance” (1988). His bassline came from a Casio CZ-1000, and two detuned saws get close to it on any synth. The 808 is named after the Roland TR-808 drum machine (1980), whose bass drum is built from a sine oscillator with a decay control that stretches it out; hip-hop producers lengthened that kick, tuned it to the song and played basslines with it. To make one, take a sine, add a pitch envelope that starts 12 to 24 semitones above the note and falls to it in 30 to 60 ms, set the amp decay to 1 to 3 seconds with no sustain, and add a little drive so small speakers can hear it. The synth bass guide gives step-by-step settings for the sub, filtered, acid and 808 basses, plus an FM bass.

How to make a synth lead

2. Lead (carries the melody). One note at a time, usually above middle C (C4), bright and up front. A synth lead does the job of a singer or a guitar solo: it plays the tune and has to cut through everything else. It gets its character from a bright wave and a little movement in the pitch, and ranges from a soft square-wave whistle or a chiptune beep to a wall of detuned saws in a trance drop.

Starting settings:

Glide, also called portamento, slides the pitch from each note into the next. In legato mode it slides only when notes overlap, so you choose which notes slide by how you play them. Bring the vibrato in late, with the mod wheel or an LFO delay, so each note starts straight and wavers after half a second, like a singer. In a song, keep lead lines in the gaps between vocal phrases.

How to make a synth pad

3. Pad (fills the space behind everything). Held chords, slow attack, long release. A pad is the synth version of a string section or a choir holding chords behind a song. You notice it most when it drops out and the track suddenly sounds empty. The lead’s two detuned saws can become a pad: switch the synth to poly, stretch the attack to 500 ms and the release to 2 seconds, and play chords.

Starting settings:

• Waves: two saws detuned 5 to 10 cents for a lush pad, or two triangles for a soft one.
• Amp envelope: attack 300 ms to 1 second, sustain 80 to 100 percent, release 1.5 to 3 seconds, so chords swell in and overlap as they change.
• Filter: low-pass about halfway, with a slow LFO (0.1 to 0.3 Hz) nudging the cutoff so the pad breathes.
• Effects: a slow chorus around 0.5 Hz, then reverb with a 3 to 5 second decay. The Roland Juno-60’s chorus, a signature of its pads, runs at 0.4 or 0.6 Hz.
• Playing: three or four notes between C3 and C5, one chord per bar or slower. Spread voicings sound wider, so try C3, G3, E4 for C major.

In a full mix, high-pass the pad around 150 to 200 Hz to leave the low end to the bass. To hear a pad next to a pluck and a keys sound, open the online chord player and switch one chord between its Pad, Pluck and Keys sounds: the same notes through three envelopes.

Plucks, keys and bells

All three start the instant you press a key and then fade. They differ in how fast they fade and what the tone does on the way down.

4. Pluck (short, bouncy notes). Instant attack, quick decay, no sustain. A pluck is a bright snap that dies away fast, like a plucked string, so it stays out of the way even when it plays lots of notes, from offbeat chord stabs to quick melodies. Run a saw through a low-pass filter turned down to about 300 to 600 Hz, and give the cutoff an envelope with a large amount: 0 ms attack, 100 to 200 ms decay, zero sustain. Set the amp envelope to a 0 to 2 ms attack, a 250 to 400 ms decay and zero sustain, so the tone darkens before the note dies. A dotted-eighth echo (375 ms at 120 BPM) turns one pluck into a rhythm. The pluck synth guide goes through it step by step.

5. Keys (chords played like a piano). Fast attack, medium decay, some sustain. Synth keys cover electric pianos such as the Rhodes and the Wurlitzer, organs and the clavinet. The FM electric piano is the classic synth version: E.PIANO 1, a factory preset on the Yamaha DX7 (1983), imitated a Rhodes and was all over mid-1980s power ballads. Organs break the pattern, with full sustain and near-zero attack and release. On any keys patch, send velocity to brightness so harder playing sounds brighter.

6. Bell (rings out above everything). Instant attack, long decay, no sustain. Bells and chimes ring on after the strike, and their overtones do not fall on the whole-number multiples of the note that most instruments produce. Those off-grid overtones are what your ear hears as metal. For an FM bell, use two sines with the modulator at 3.5 times the carrier and a 4 to 6 second volume decay, and let the FM amount die away over 0.5 to 1.5 seconds so the clang of the strike settles into a pure ring. Play bells from middle C up; lower down they get muddy.

Arps, drones and FX

7. Arp (a chord broken into a pattern). Short notes, locked to the tempo. Arp is short for arpeggio: the notes of a chord played one after another in a repeating pattern, which an arpeggiator does for you. Hold C, E and G with it set to up and sixteenth notes at 120 BPM, and it plays C, E, G, C, E, G at eight notes a second. Plucks work best, since a long release smears the pattern into a pad. A two-octave range with the up-down pattern gives a longer, smoother sweep.

8. Drone (one sound that never stops). Held notes, slow attack, full sustain. A drone holds one note, or a note and its fifth, under the music for a long time, like the tanpura in Indian classical music or the drone pipes of a bagpipe. On a synth it is a pad that never changes chord, so it needs slow movement: an LFO on the filter cutoff or wave shape at 0.05 to 0.2 Hz, one cycle every 5 to 20 seconds. Hold a low D and the A above it, then play any white-key melody on top. Drones suit ambient music and slow, tense intros.

9. FX (sounds that mark a moment). Risers, sweeps, zaps and noise hits, any envelope. FX are sounds that are not really notes, such as a riser that builds into a chorus or a laser zap. Many start from white noise, a hiss containing every frequency at once. For a riser, sweep a low-pass filter on white noise from about 200 Hz to fully open over the four or eight bars before a drop, with resonance around halfway and plenty of reverb. For a zap, drop a sine’s pitch 2 to 3 octaves in 50 to 150 ms: the 808 pitch drop again, only bigger and slower.