Yesterday I had a friend sleeping over. He came into the room when I was listening to the video about the new Make Noise (stereo) pulsewidth modulation module.
He listened and then reflected how it made sense to him how it sounded like someone playing a didgeridoo.
He studied some version of sound and composition, and to me it shows how some version of conceptualizing sound and recreating real world sounds does really help deepening an understanding of how sounds work
At uni, my friends on a music production course (I did creative writing, so I didn’t partake) had to make a track with a chair. I was already making music at the time so thought it was a great challenge. Are you telling me at this stage that you couldn’t make a track sampling sounds made with a cup, some chess pieces and a microwave? 
For me, it’s learning to have confidence in sounds i like and think will fit.
I’m weird in that I have aphantasia, so as much as I don’t see images in my minds eye, i don’t ‘hear sounds’ i want to create either. Yes, I know some sound design techniques, and might lock in some amp parameters for example, but that’s when starting to randomize parameters and experiment with trig locks helps. I arrive at sounds via some design instructions and randomness in a kind of balancing act.
The skill for me is settling on sounds I think will suit the context or be a great thing to sample as a jumping off point. It’s not always easy to not second guess myself 
Because I want to and it often doesn’t take as long. It is often shorter. Why would you want to reinvent the wheel every time you want to ride a bike? That sounds lame.
This idea really resonates with me as someone who loves samplers. But I think one instance this would be justified is when working exclusively on something like the Digitone where you are forced to develop your own selection of synthesized sounds (if you’re not just buying preset packs).
It’s not reinventing the wheel when you are actually experimenting to understand and create sounds you like to hear. Once you kind of control that (which basically is a life long adventure), you can get to very interesting places.
Nothing wrong with working with presets by the way. In a sense a field recording could be considered a preset. And it’s lovely to use those as a starting point . But it’s different from sound designing things from the ground up. You activate your brain differently that way as your starting point is something less abstract than starting from nothing.
On reinventing the wheel: not only can this be a great learning experience, it also opens diversions from an already walked path which can lead to new types of wheels others haven’t created ;). Nothing lame about that at all.
Yes, I do this every day. I sound design, I use presets, I use random functionality, I sample, I use hardware, I use DAW’s, I play instruments, I do anything I want to create music. None of it is incorrect or wrong or ‘lame’.
Having the right equipment always helps
What is the direction? This is a very broad term. Game or theatre sound design? Contemporary pop-music/RNB/EDM sound design? Electroacoustic sound design?
I think it can be both classical education in this direction (synthesis, mixing, microsound) and a lot of practice and active listening.
Maybe listening to some well-mixed (or badly mixed) albums and trying to understand what they were doing here and why it sounds so good (or so awful), and replicate it or to create a cliche track in particular style as a challenge.
Contemporary music is a one thing and hopefully there are thousands of tutorial or breakdown videos online.
Game or theatre sound design - I think classical education in this direction is welcome. Not to learn the particular techniques (this is not difficult now, provided how many tools and presets are available), but rather to change a mindset and think “out of the box” or on a higher level. For example in terms of composition, sound objects, processes, their relations (I don’t know the exact terms or subjects, just my guess from visual art courses I took some part in. Another example - famous book “Microsound”, the first part of it does not focus on “grains” much, but rather on a phenomenon of music in bigger scope, this was really exciting change of perspective to me).
nah those are actually objects you can practice creating from scratch in 3D software. i did manage to recreate 1 item in each level. 
sorry for slow reply!
and i think that statement is true.
i personally never was fully happy with the end product, if i let the work lead me, instead of me leading my work. creating with intent always led me to something better.
when it comes to sound design specifically, for me, most important thing was to
learn how to understand which sound i want to design for the piece
im going to relay some of the other messages and say that, taking inspiration and trying to recreate sounds from music that you like is a great way to become faster at getting what you want.
plus you dont have to adhere to them 100% and make sounds better suited to what you want to do.
The two things that have helped me most in becoming a good sound designer have been:
So those are what I would consider to be the two most important parts of my development as a sound designer but I should also add that I started taking apart sounds in my head at a very early age, there are some albums that every time I hear them I remember that when it came out those were the albums that really got me thinking about what goes into a sound or a mix, Nine nice nails downward spiral is one that immediately comes to mind, when that came out I was probably around 11 years old and I distinctly remember taking that album apart in my head and really hearing all of the different things going on and dissecting them.
Additional and I can’t stress this one enough is to constantly experiment. I see each part of a synthesizer as colors of paint and each synth has its own color palate and it’s your job to create never before seen colors by using the various combinations that any one synth has.
I don’t know, that’s my personal journey in sound design I’m not sure how much of it is applicable to someone else’s I can only speak from my experience. But the road I took led me eventually to do sound design work for some decent sized companies like Arturia and Akai so I’d say to make this applicable to someone who’s already well involved the biggest take aways would be experiment constantly and recreate anything you hear that interests you without tutorials
We’re not talking about composition. Even with my bare hands on a chair I would do something. And even more with an OT ^^
The subject here is sound design, as in synthesizing sounds from scratch 
At the start of Covid, I decided to try to recreate sounds from other drum machines using only the analog engines on the Rytm. I learned so much about how to achieve very specific nuances of a sound I was hearing by spending literally hours trying to recreate it within the Rytm architecture. It was educational in an exploratory way.
I mean pick a particular goal, then choose an aspect of it to improve and practice it until you achieve measurable improvement. The alternative is just messing around making music until eventually it sounds good. There’s nothing wrong with either approach do what makes you happy. But if the goal is speed, efficiency and competency or whatever other metric you believe constitutes being better then there are faster ways to do it than brute force. If you have a particular end goal in mind you could share it and someone specifically aligned with your goal could give you some starting points. I can’t say much when I’m not sure if you want to make ambient soundscapes, IDM or lofi boombap
tbh when I started this thread, I thought to myself “yeah I know what that parameter does” or “yeah I know how to use a modulation matrix” or “yeah i know how to make a chorus or flanger”
and a lot of replies here also talked about learning the ins and outs of your tools.
to reply CCMP’s question, the reason i started this thread is to find ways to get out of this Dunning-Kruger effect in sound design; what’s the next thing you can improve when you mastered this specific area of this skill? what’s next after learning the ins and outs of this tool? what differentiates someone who knows every feature of the synth versus someone who knows when to use that feature?
I see this as a way of saying a great piece of music has parts that are created with intentions and some without. Are there ways to study the interaction between sounds?
on the topic of intent, I often find that learning a new skill (synthesis, video editing etc.) can be easy if you take time, it’s having a solid idea of what you wanted to make that’s the hardest (i.e. knowing your intent or direction) or not being distracted from what you wanted to make.
i often ‘make’ music mindlessly; it’s a lot more like solo jamming than really making music. there’s a video i watched online about what’s the best way to start a song (I think it’s from Andrew Huang) and that video just shows how easy a simple musical idea can go in different directions. with so many different directions you can take your idea, sometimes we can’t help but be like ‘oh what if we change this or change that’. how do you usually practice intent?
might try to synthesize a pan flute now.
it sounds like from what you’re saying, getting more proficient in sound design also requires observing what other people do with a certain instrument and understanding what’s happening.
I suppose when I say ‘sound design’ in the context of the thread, I’m just talking about the skills and the sensibilities towards sound, which does include using samples and music composition among other things like synthesis.
I haven’t tried much microphone based physical sound design. of course a lot of producers have used samples in their production before, but going through the process of recording them is something I haven’t tried much.
there’s this one time I asked a friend to mix a song for me, and he said that if you can figure out the ADSR of every sound and balance the levels, you’ll get a cleaner mix. ADSR envelopes are something we encounter all the time in synths, but never really put too much thought and intent into.
shotgun approach and design in situ?
with all the sound design options, second-guessing can become a habit. “i wonder what happens when i turn this parameter. maybe we can try make it more pop? that reverb sounds questionable…” knowing what sound will fit and having confidence in your own discernment towards sound is very tricky. i do have the ‘mind’s eye’ and i can ‘hear sounds’, but after making that sound i can lose confidence in it easily, asking myself if it really fits with the context of the music or composition.
yep, though the tricky part is knowing what is the ‘right’ one for you.
recreating sounds is one of the feedback i got from this thread, but i didn’t realise before that doing it without a tutorial makes it more valuable
when I started this thread, I thought to myself ‘yeah sound design is just synthesizing sounds from scratch’. it’s when i kept seeing the replies that made me realise context and intent are also important, which does include the composition. now when i think of sound design, i see as ‘the skills and the sensibilities towards sound’. e.g. how do you know that chair sound or cup sound doesn’t sound out of place?
A slight generalisation, but the someone who knows every feature probably works in sales (inc synthfluencers, YouTubers, actual sales people… don’t mean this to be negative, think of Loopop for example, his job is to know the ins and outs).
Musicians/artists, tend to know what they need to know to get sounds they want.
Learning the fundamentals is worthwhile… once you know and understand about Osc, filters, envelopes, lfos, modulation, etc, you have a basis to transfer to most synths and make sounds.
18 months ago I couldn’t understand why people said they started from init patches and didn’t just use presets, this is after 30+ years in music (2 years into synthesis and synths now)… now I get it.
And to be honest, it amazes me how simple the sounds are that I make/prefer for actual music making, and often not that far from an init state.
Yeah, don’t overlook sampling and field recording as integral parts of sound design. It doesn’t all have to be from a synthesiser. Case in point, some of the most mental sounds from Autechre are creative sampling, such as running a pen down a radiator, for example. Also, check out foley sound demonstrations. It’s fascinating how incidental sounds in TV and movies come from smashing things together or walking in salt, etc etc. The lightsaber noise is Star Wars is from swinging a microphone around, from what I recall – though that might be an urban myth.
…there’s the art of foley first…then there’s the art sound design…
knowing all kinds of synthesis inside out is one thing…
knowing how to trick the ear and mind with whatever it needs…is another…
when i think of sound design…
first keywords that cross my mind are…layering and blending…
since there is no truu void…ever…even a single sinus wave is not all alone on it’s own…
and can swarm and morph into ANYTHING…
we can hardly perceive and actually HEAR between 23 hz and 23 khz…everything beneath and beyond, we can “only” feel…
and all that pretty small range is still all just low frequency spectrum design in the bigger picture, while containing, translating ALL, what we’re talking about…and remains nothing but a miracle to me…ooooof…so, let’s bang more wires…and keep on listening…closely.
if failed, set an easier goal.
Fundamental music theory, and physics.
Having a basic grasp on those will help with navigating the “cold” side of sound desing and composition.
Music theory will help you to understand what sounds “good”.
Physics will help with understading “where” it sounds good.
(specifically wave functions of acoustics and general stuff to know why/how music instruments make sounds and how human ear is able to hear them)
but this is only in case if you actually want to sit and read books full of answers.
otherwise that knowledge is useless and you better off just creaing things untill they sound good.
