How To: Sine Drop!
The ‘sine drop’ is a classic sound, typically used in synth-based music, or as sound design in sci-fi games, or films. It’s a great effect when used subtly, adding flavour and movement to the music, commonly creating a dropping feeling, as if you’re falling into something, or even for horror, as when used in a specific manner, the effect can replicate a sense of dread.
For the basics on what a sine wave, it’s basically a fundamental pitch, with no distortions or harmonic layers. Unlike when you press one key on a piano, where many different pitches in the harmonic series will sound to create the tone that you hear, a sine wave is a smooth sound with just the fundamental frequency. It is also represented as a smooth line, in a regular wave fashion.
The reason we use a sine wave for this technique is because of its smooth nature. It is easy to blend into your music, while still having the same effect. Regardless of that, you can add plugins to stylise, and add nuances to the sound if that is the desired effect!
My absolute favourite use of this effect is in Joe Hisaishi’s score for Princess Mononoke. This was my main inspiration for writing this article, and adding it to a hybrid orchestral production of my own. In the track ‘The Legend of Ashitaka’ It adds SO much drama and tension to the music that when it drops, the release is just ethereal bliss. Breaking through is a lush string melody that soars, giving me chills every single time. If you want to check it out, it is the first track on the official soundtrack release, and difficult to find on YouTube.
EDIT: It’s the first track on this upload of the OST!
You can make a similar basic sound using any Sine on a soft-synth. In this case, I’m using Logic Pro’s stock synth ES2. A good starting point is to use the preset Sine Bass, but I like to start from scratch, as this is where interesting things/happy accidents can happen:
-> Make a 100% sine wave by choosing Sine on oscillator 1 and switching off oscillators 2 + 3. Move the triangular oscillator blend to only sound oscillator 1. It also doesn’t hurt to turn up the sine level dial on the right hand side of ES2.
-> Ensure that the synth is playing a mono-voice mode (Legato is even better). Sliding the glide up to ~around~ 1800ms.
-> Head down to the ADSR settings, and increase the attack so the notes start smoothly, and don’t suddenly cut in. Also pull back the sustain by about half.
-> Add some distortion in ES2 or with a plugin to beef up the sound. You want the distortion to be bright, if you can, but it’s down to personal taste. Some chorus works really nicely to smooth out the distortion too!
-> Now we’re going to assign LPF FM [Low Pass Filter Frequency Modulation] to the MIDI-Modulation control for some automation later on. Turn the blend fader in the big round filter section in the middle of ES2 all the way to the right (and increase the cutoff on the right while you’re there..). This is because we need to use the FM dial for the modulation. Then, go to the dark blue router panel and on the first set, click the box, and on the dropdown choose LPF FM. The middle box should be set to off, and choose ModWhl for the lower. Then slide the little green arrow to the side all the way down.
This step allows us to control the filter setting with your modulation wheel, or just the modulation channel in Logic (CC1), which you can draw automation with!
-> Then for some extra movement, you can add a really slight pitch vibrato to the synth sound we created. A similar method to the previous step with some differences. Choose Pitch 1 for the first box, then the middle “via” box, choose LFO2, and the last box choose LFO1. Then make a tiny space between the two arrows that appear to the right, so the depth isn’t too noticeable. Also, you might want to adjust the LFO2 rate below, to about 1/8.
-> Then to execute the sine drop, choose a note in the high/mid range, and let that gliiiiiiide down to a note in the low range. A cool effect can be made when you swell the modulation once it hits the low note. Also, I add a light echo and reverb to create space.
-> To add impact and a ‘destination reached’ feeling, you can add a low impact, or boom noise. I used some of the impact sounds from this great free library https://www.boomlibrary.com/sound-effects/free-sounds-cinematic-series/
These steps are just a guide and I wholeheartedly hope you manage to get something useful out of them! It’s a good position to branch out and try your own things with this particular sound, whether you’re adding this to for drama to an orchestral track, or doing some badass sci-fi sound design.
Happy creating!