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Ben Cantil on Z3TA+ 2 – Teaching Synthesis & Sound Design at Berklee Valencia

We recently had the opportunity to catch up with our friend Ben Cantil (aka. Encanti) – EDM Producer, author of the Mutant series Expansion Packs, and evangelist for Z3TA+ 2.

Who is your Masters Sound Design Course at Berklee Valencia geared towards?
I am working with young professionals from all walks of life who have come to Berklee Valencia to earn their Master’s degree, especially as part of the Music Technology Innovation program. My curriculum emphasizes practical and professional applications of creative music software. Some of these students will become sound designers, but many others will become engineers, stage musicians, film scorers, and installation artists, so I try to find common threads to make the content really relevant and useful no matter where you take your skills outside the classroom.

 

What are your goals for the students in your class?
This course is all about the fundamentals of sound design. The first goal is to equip students with creative and technical skills for generating sounds from scratch, emulating sounds, and composing unique sonic gestures intuitively. Another goal of this course to produce content using a variety of different medians. I think it is an ideal class for anyone that learns best from hands-on experience.

 

What are some of the Cakewalk Products being used in your class?
Z3ta+ 2 is a major part of my masters sound design course. We spend several weeks building patch libraries and sequences to make the synth really sing. I’ve found this is the ideal plugin to use when teaching synthesis, because it’s so unrestrained and versatile without being a processor hog.

 

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Video: Playing Z3TA+ 2 with the new QuNeo MIDI controller

Electronic music producer Encanti has a brand new toy.  Watch as the Z3TA+ 2 preset designer takes the new QuNeo controller for a spin with Z3TA+ 2.  Z3TA+ 2 is currently available as a VST for Windows, and it’s coming soon for Mac, so it can be used in other hosts like Ableton Live as pictured below.

Encanti: “In this example, all of my square pads on my QuNeo are set to “latch”, which means where ever my finger goes on the x-y axes, the value will remain there once I take my finger off.   The notes are pre-programmed and playing back on the sequencer. This gives me 16 x-y controllers, which I can use to fine-tune values across the board.  QuNeo’s XY pads are immediately useful with Z3TA+ 2 because once you’ve set up some interesting routing settings in Z3TA+ 2’s modulation matrix, you are free to explore their potential by dialing in many different values at once with the QuNeo pads.  When I find a “sweet spot”, I save a preset in Z3TA+ 2 and keep on exploring.  Later on, I can revisit all my variations, and explore them further, add/subtract ideas, make pads into leads, and keep ideas flowing until starting the process over again with new routings in Z3TA+ 2’s modulation matrix or possibly binding my QuNeo to different controls.

 quneo z3ta infograph

First preset:
Two sweeping resonant bandpass filters are at the soul of this gnarly bass sound.  While most traditional x-y setups typically control “filter freq” and resonance, I’ve opted to control filter frequency and pole separation width as my x-y, on two different x-y pads.  I’m also modulating these filters with two envelopes, while I control the duration/volume using two different x-y pads. This opens up a huge range of expression – because 3 sweeping poles on two filters (that’s six points of resonance all moving together) is easier to keep track of since I can define their movements all at once with the QuNeo. I’ve also got an envelope opening a delay effect, which I can control the attack/sustain and duration of.   With a soft attack on my delay volume, my bass womp has a nicely compressed-sounding impact when the note hits, but I can still add lots of variation to how spacial it sounds, lending me the ability to make those long notes sound really massive.

Second preset:
The QuNeo is controlling the same parameters as the last preset, except I’ve added a few things: each filter has it’s own LFO modulating the frequency along with the envelopes – and again what’s also true with this patch is that the soul lives in the filter modulation settings.  There’s also a quadruple-phaser modulation, with pad control over speed, depth, volume, and feedback, which sounds good with all the LFO sounds happening.  I also have the ability to change the octave of different oscillators independently.  One of my faders are also controlling the key of my chords (via Ableton “pitch” midi effect), allowing me to easily explore different range potentials for the patch.”

More info on Encanti‘s music.