Hey everyone! Jan Morgenstern here, I'm a composer and sound designer from Germany. I hope this kind of post is not frowned upon here, but I'm hoping this bit of news will be interesting to any of you who want to get their feet wet creating their own sounds with synths, or just broaden their sound design proficiency.

I've been working on getting a new series of video workshops on synth programming and synth-based sound design off the ground, and wanted to let you know that the pilot episode of Jan's Patchwork Corner is now on YouTube:



If you're interested, a bit of background – I'd been thinking about doing something like this for longer than I'd had the idea of designing sounds for other composers, so when I started my own tiny soundware label last year, it was clear from the get-go that I'd eventually have to give the synth workshop idea a whirl, too. In each episode, I'm going to take one of my patches – either from my commercial soundsets or from a music project – and break it down into its essential components, explain how all the parts work and come together to achieve the sound that I was looking for, share the thought process behind the design decisions, and try to leave as many morsels of general synth technique and theory in my trail as I can muster.

For the first couple episodes at least, I'll be using u-he Zebra2; that said, JPC is supposed to be a series on synthesis and not any particular product, so I'm making a point of keeping explanations as synth-agnostic as possible wherever it makes sense in the hope that even those of you who don't have Zebra or prefer other synths will get something out of it.

The inspiration was quite plainly to try and make the kind of tutorial that I'd have liked having around back when I got serious about programming synths. In this, it attempts to be pretty much the opposite of the "step-by-step-walkthrough of which knobs to set where to get synth staple sound XY" that YouTube is ripe with; I'd much rather use the patches as a springboard for a much more in-depth look at basic, intermediate, and advanced approaches to creating sounds that are truly your own. That's the idea, anyway – you let me know whether I'm making it work. But an obvious consequence is that the videos are fairly long, especially compared to other YouTube tutorials; think "full podcast episode" rather than "bite-sized coffee break tidbit".

So, yeah. If you're at all interested in diving deeper into synthesis, do give this one a spin! Curious to hear what you think. Also, obviously grateful for any shares. The second episode is in the works with good chances of a close release, with more in the pipeline; you can always find all episodes on the "watch" section of the Treeswift Audio website, and you can subscribe to our YouTube channel if you don't want to miss a thing.

Enjoy!

In episode 2, I'm putting final touches to the sonic foundation of the patch, then take a deep dive into effects and how to use them to put a shine on our sound, and finally explore some swirly haze. ? If you have some time off inbetween the holidays and New Year and feel like joining me for some in-depth patch exploration, grab a cold one, hop on YouTube and give it a spin:



Hope you'll get some insight out of this. As always, grateful for any share!