# How to design botanica sounds ## Source material We're essentially going to be making a [[Make a mud pie|Mud pie]]. Ambient noise as well as tiny, lowercase-type sounds work well to create a sense of intimacy and vulnerability.[^1] Field recordings are commonly used and manipulated.[^2] Reverses and swells are key.[^2] For pitched swells, start with a musical motif.[^3] Pads and aleatoric stuff also work well,[^4] as do pitched granular sounds and anything that adds a bit of randomness and chance.[^5] It's common to use [[Color bass]] techniques as well.[^6] Low frequency impacts are important as well.[^7] ## Granular effects For textural and foley effects, pick a oneshot. Import it into a granular synth.[^4] Alternatively, add a delay with LFOs effecting delay time, print, reverse, then mix down the forwards and reversed track.[^8] Large granular windows can result in cool chopped and screwed effects.[^9] Similar effects are explored in the [[Sparkly 90s pad sound]]. ## Spectral processing and digital loss Spectral processors can also be abused for digital lossiness. Use a spectral processor like Soothe in delta mode to get those spectral artifacts.[^8] [[ReaFIR]] works well for this, as does Spectral Compressor. Harmonically rich material like arps, modulated basses, and white noise work well as source material when using this technique.[^10] Formant-shifting can also yield cool digital effects.[^9] [^2] Time-stretching can add useful artifacts.[^9] Try bitcrushing, sample rate reduction, or mp3-style data compression too. [[Formant shift stuff for glitches]]. ## Vocoders and resonators A [[Vocoder]] modulating itself can make things sound watery.[^4] A vocoder can also be used to pitch unpitched sounds. Resonators like Chroma can result in similar timbres and can be used for similar pitching purposes (I like EB-Resonator and [[Saike Partials]]).[^9] ## Filters Phasers and notch filters can create lossy, drop-out effects. EQs with LFOs controlling parameters can create some neat randomness too.[^9] You can also [[Ping a keytracking resonant filter with a sample]] to pitch to an unpitched one shot or noise.[^11] ## Arrangement You can then arrange these as samples in the arrange view, like a sound collage, or you can [[Perform the arrangement instead of drawing it]]. Use a granular sampler with a randomized start position on a [[Make a mud pie|Mud pie]] sample.[^9] Using a JS MIDI plugin, I could route certain notes to only play one channel, then I could perform the samples almost as if they were auxiliary electronic percussion. Fade in and out different foleys and swells for variety.[^5] Foleys and pads can be used as swells and impacts or as sustained ambiences.[^12] You can pull some of your single-note pads into a sampler.[^13] [^1]: [How to Botanica (Like phritz, shameless.) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn0TLRVe9ko&t=266s) [^2]: [Botanica Music: What it is and How to Make it - Blog \| Splice](https://splice.com/blog/what-is-botanica-music/) [^3]: [how to make holy swell/impact for botanica - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hlpDfY1nA) [^4]: [how to botanical sound impacts - from a nintendo logo - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6N8FCmsyDY&t=470s) [^5]: [How to make botanica/petalcore (Like linkedwinters, awe, kadenic) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jIlQ2ir3pM&t=248s&pp=ygUIYm90YW5pY2E%3D) [^6]: [How to botanica - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj5Ytt2PqAs) [^7]: [How to Design Impact Sounds for Botanica + Free FLP - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAzN0onnTxY) [^8]: [how to make organic foleys for botanica - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56gMfekrTeE) [^9]: [MAKING SAMPLES FOR RESAMPLING (botanica???) - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z110gKWc-RM&pp=ygUIYm90YW5pY2E%3D) [^10]: [How I make Botanica ! - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaowcOp6IZw&pp=ygUIYm90YW5pY2E%3D) [^11]: [MAKING CRYSTAL FOLEY FROM WHITE NOISE - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt1XNLz0oT4) [^12]: [how to make botanica shameless style + FLP - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urLdcqZyQEI) [^13]: [How To Make Botanica Pads 100% From Scratch - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz3p2sBdFBs&t=68s)