12 Serum Sound Design Tips You Need to Know

I’m not sure anyone could’ve predicted the impact that Xfer’s Serum has had on the entire landscape of music.

Originally released back in 2014, Steve Duda’s “perfect synth plugin” was immediately praised for its ingenuity and forward-thinking capabilities. It promised “a truly high-quality sound” and a “visual and creative workflow-oriented interface to make creating and altering sounds fun instead of tedious.”

And boy, did it deliver.

Today, we’re going to look at a few of our favorite Serum sound design tips that you can apply to your music right away. Let’s get to work.

1. Play with Warp Modes

Warp modes allow you to manipulate the playback sound of the Wavetable Oscillator. At the end of the day, this allows for countless timbre changes with extreme ease.

Pro Tip: Try automating the warp modes for even more movement and interest. There is a TON of room for experimentation here.

Here’s a quick breakdown of all the different warp modes available to you in Serum and exactly what they do when manipulating your wavetable:

• Self-Sync: a formant-shifted effect that plays/repeats faster than normal and abruptly restarts at the ‘correct’ length. Use this on buzzy sounds.
• Windowed Sync: provides a smooth fade across the waveform which can help soften the sound.
• Bend +: pinches or bends the waveform inwards towards the middle of the wave cycle.
• Bend -: pulls or bends the waveform outward towards the edges of the wave cycle.
• Bend +/-: allows for both of the last two warp modes.
• PMW: pushes the entire waveform to the left, which can be useful on square waves.
• Asym +: similar to “Bend”, but bends the entire waveform to the right.
• Asym -: bends the entire waveform to the left.
• Asym +/-: bends the entire waveform to the left or right.
• Flip: creates an instantaneous polarity flip (often called phase-inversion) on the waveform.
• Mirror: creates a mirror-image of the waveform. Has an ‘octaved’ type of quality by ‘doubling’ the waveform into both halves of the wave cycle.
• Remap 1: custom remapping of the wave cycle within a graph to change how the waveform will remap. ADSR Sounds has an excellent explanation of Remap 1 if you want to go deeper.
• Remap 2: a mirrored remapping. Same as above, but applies the graph to each half the waveform independently.
• Remap 3: a sine wave based remapping of the waveforms. Another option for remapping without attempting to draw fancy curves.
• Remap 4: a 4x remapping. Similar to Remap 2 (mirror) but now the graph takes place 4 times.
• Quantize: similar to sample-and-hold, that is sample rate reduction. Taking place on the waveform itself, so the aliasing sound will follow pitch perfectly.
• FM (from other OSC): frequency modulation from the other oscillator. The other oscillator must be enabled for this to function.
• AM (from other OSC): same as above, except amplitude modulation instead.
• RM (from other OSC): same as above, except ring modulation.
• FM Noise OSC: FM from the noise oscillator.
• FM Sub OSC: FM from the sub oscillator.

2. Play with Direct Out

Technically, Serum is a 4 oscillator synth: oscillator A, oscillator B, the sub oscillator and the noise oscillator. This is important to note because the sub and noise oscillators are easy to overlook for someone new to Xfer’s Serum.

Direct out is a super powerful tool because it allows you to bypass all filters and effects on JUST the sub oscillator. When it comes to achieving a clean bottom end, this is extremely beneficial. Plus, this allows for even more processing to the rest of your bassline across other oscillators because the sub will not be disrupted.

3. Turn On Velocity Sensitive Envelopes

Velocity-sensitive envelopes can make any preset in Serum more human, organic and real because of one simple fact: the patch will sound different depending on how hard you press the note.

Not only will your live performances retain their human imperfections. But this also means that when you program your melodies and chords, you can literally manipulate velocity as a parameter to make your sounds more human.

Interested in making your music feel more alive? Check out our 12 Movement Tips to Bring Your Music to Life.

4. Import Audio as Wavetables

Possibly the coolest thing that separates Serum from many other synths is its ability to create custom wavetables by simply dragging and dropping audio. This is more than a glorified sampler: it’s like having the power of Xfer’s Serum with ANY wav file you choose to drop into it.

Unlike a sampler that plays back through the audio as a single stream of data, when importing a sound into Serum, it attempts to slice the sound apart into individual single-cycles. Just think of the possibilities.

This means if you find Serum to have a very “digital” or “abrasive” sound, you can attempt to warm it up and make it feel more analog by simply importing wavetables from analog synths. To pull that off, simply record the waveform in another synth and drop the audio in Serum’s oscillator. That said, if you’re overwhelmed, just use ‘import: normal (dynamic pitch zero-snap)’ for the most accurate representation of your audio. And experiment with different settings from there.

5. Smooth Out Your Imported Wavetables

To piggyback off of our last Serum sound design tip, you can smooth out your imported wavetables by using Spectral Morph in the wavetable editor. This allows you to smooth out frames of any imported wavetable and can result in a much more pleasing end result. Also, try using X-Fade Edges to remove popping as you move from one frame to the next.

6. Use the Multiband Feature on The Compressor

For those unaware, the multiband compressor inside of Serum is effectively the same exact thing as the stand-alone OTT compressor. The multiband feature will instantly allow you to maximize the fullness of any sound, to a degree. It will also allow you to shape the presence and body of the patch by adjusting the three frequency bands.

Pro Tip: Try experimenting with adding envelopes and LFOs to the different bands of the multiband compressor itself.

7. Reorder Your FX

Like any processing chain, you can change the order of your FX processing chain inside of Serum to take advantage of every facet of sound design. Playing with where you place special effects like reverb and delay can have an absolutely massive impact on your sound.

Pro Tip: Try moving the Multiband Compression after special effects like reverb to dramatize the effect that the reverb would normally have.

8. Conserve CPU with Oversampling

How’s this for a Serum tip? When doing heavy sound design, you might run into CPU issues. CPU issues are the bane of any serious producer’s existence because it slows down your workflow and leads to frustration or even boredom.

The solution? Use a lower oversampling rate to conserve processing power. If you’re NOT concerned about CPU issues, you can achieve the best quality possible in Serum by selecting 4x oversampling. This is great when rendering a Serum patch.

9. Use the Preset Browser

Simply put, using the preset browser is a faster alternative to the main preset dropdown. Your patches will instantly switch, making it much easier to audition sounds without waiting several seconds between each one.

You can even rate and star presets you like here for quick access later on.

10. Serum FX Envelope Trigger

Ever wanted to use Serum FX on audio channels in your DAW? Check this out: simply send MIDI to Serum FX on a separate channel to trigger the envelopes.

This will allow you to process your sounds further or use Serum FX on other synths as well.

11. Loop LFOs In Envelope Mode

If you’re trying to sound like a professor when using Serum, this might be your favorite tip. When you are using or manipulating an LFO in envelope mode, simply press Shift+Command+Click (for Mac users) or Shift+Ctrl+Click (for PC users) to create a loop point. From there, it will continuously loop.

You can even click on a pre-existing curve node to turn it into a “Loop” point. When this happens, there will be a grey letter “L” that will appear over the node to indicate that it is a looping point.

Envelope mode allows the LFO to play once and not loop by default. Looping LFOs lets you create advanced looping sequences and shapes that would otherwise require external automation.

12. Turning LFOs Into Step Sequences

Did you know you can use Serum’s LFOs as step sequences or step patterns? To do that, create a few points in your LFO, hold Shift, and start manipulating the existing points. The curves will change to flat lines.

From there, drag and modulate the LFO into your semi-pitch parameter (use + or - 12 or 24 semitones to stay in key). Now you can hold down one note and get a fully functional arpeggiation.

I made a full walkthrough of this technique using Serum’s LFO step sequences. It’s easier to show than explain.

This is just one example of the kind of creative routing Serum makes possible once you get comfortable with the LFO editor.

Sound Design is a Skill, Not a Secret

Sound design can often be overwhelming and difficult to grasp. We recommend learning with Serum because the possibilities are endless, but it is also very intuitive and user-friendly. These 12 tips will get you going in the right direction and help you eventually conquer advanced production and synthesis with Xfer’s Serum.

When in doubt, reference the Serum manual, which you can download entirely for free. When learning a synth, I like to keep the manual on my desktop so I can consistently reference it when needed, until I know it like the back of my hand.