Field guide 14 · Serum 2 · sound design for house & techno

The sixth
decision

The synthesis guide argued that every sound is five decisions — waveform, filter, filter envelope, amp envelope, one moving thing. Serum 2 doesn't change that. It adds a decision in front: which of five synths to be — wavetable, sample, multisample, granular or spectral. Everything dangerous about Serum 2 lives in that first choice, because the other four invite you to skip the five that matter. This guide is the ninety-per-cent path: the module map, the fixed build order, twenty-two recipes with exact settings, and the discipline of leaving most of the synth off.

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Section 01

The map

Serum 2 is three oscillators (each one of five engines), a sub, a noise oscillator, two filters, a mixer with flexible routing, four envelopes, up to ten LFOs, eight macros, a modulation matrix, an effects rack with splitters, an arpeggiator and a clip sequencer. That sounds like a lot because it is a lot. The map below is the signal path; the tables after it are what each module is for and what to ignore.

OSC A · B · C

Each is one of 5 engines: Wavetable · Sample · Multisample · Granular · Spectral. Plus warp, unison, tuning modes.

→

SUB + NOISE

Dedicated sub osc (keep it 1 voice) and a noise osc with its own pitch & envelope.

→

MIXER

Per-osc channels: level, pan, route to Filter 1, Filter 2, both, or direct out.

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FILTER 1 · 2

Dual filters, series or parallel. Analog models, Clean mode drive, drag the curve directly.

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FX RACK

13 effects + L/H, L/M/H, M/S splitters. Order is a decision. FX buses in the mixer.

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OUT

Master. Watch it — unison and drive push it hot long before your DAW fader can help.

ENV 1–4

Env 1 is hard-wired to amp. Env 2 → filter cutoff is the most important assignment in the synth.

LFO 1–10

Drawable shapes, chaos modes (Lorenz/Rossler), path mode, up to 1000 Hz. One or two, rarely more.

MACROS 1–8

Performance layer. Wire the patch's whole gesture to Macro 1 and automate that in Live.

MOD MATRIX

Every arrow in the synth, with aux curves and per-slot bypass. Read it top-to-bottom to deconstruct any preset.

ARP + CLIP

Arpeggiator (12 slots, chance, MIDI out) and a piano-roll clip sequencer. Sketch here, sequence in Live.

The five engines, and when each one earns its place

  • Wavetable — the default, and the right answer for roughly eight recipes in ten. Basses, leads, plucks, stabs, pads. If you cannot say why you need another engine, you need this one.
  • Sample — one-shots and loops with set points, slicing and FM/PM warp. Use it for kicks, vocal chops, and resampling your own patches back in for a second pass.
  • Multisample — SFZ instruments across zones and velocity layers. Pianos, real basses, mallets. In house it mostly plays chords you then filter like any other oscillator.
  • Granular — up to 256 grains of any sample. Texture pads, shimmering drones, broken vocal atmospheres. The engine where "wrong" settings are often the good ones.
  • Spectral — plays the spectrum of a sound rather than the sound. Frozen vocal drones, evolving pads, resynthesised chords that never loop audibly. The most breakdown-shaped engine in the synth.

What to ignore until it asks for you

  • Osc C. Two oscillators plus sub cover almost every recipe below. A third oscillator is for layered pads and hybrids, not for basses.
  • Eight of the ten LFOs. One LFO doing one clear job beats five doing vague ones. The set's rule stands: one moving thing.
  • The clip sequencer, while designing. It is excellent for sketching, but a patch auditioned through its own sequence hides its flaws. Design on your actual part, sequence in Live.
  • Filter 2, at first. Series high-pass after a low-pass is the main reason it exists in this genre — cleaning the floor under stabs and pads. Add it when mud appears, not before.
  • Hybridize in the browser. Fun, occasionally brilliant, and a slot machine. Use it to break a creative jam, never to learn.
ModuleWhat it is for in house & technoThe mistake people make with it
Oscillators A/B/CRaw material. In this genre: a saw-family wavetable, something an octave up or down, and a warp mode doing one audible thing.Scrolling wavetables for an hour. Pick within three tables; character comes from the filter and envelopes.
Sub oscillatorWeight below the character oscillator. Sine or triangle, one voice, often routed direct out past the filter.Detuning it, or filtering it with a modulated cutoff so the low end pumps unpredictably.
Noise oscillatorTransient click on plucks and keys, air on pads, hats, risers. Has its own pitch — tune it.Leaving it looping and loud. One-shot mode, short envelope, −20 dB is usually the job.
Dual filtersFilter 1 low-pass makes the instrument; Filter 2 high-pass in series cleans it. Parallel is for formant/comb colour.Using neither drive nor resonance, then wondering why the patch sounds like a spreadsheet.
Mixer & routingDeciding what gets filtered and what doesn't. Sub direct-out while the saws get filtered is the classic bass move.Never opening it, so every oscillator hits every filter and the low end swims.
Envelopes 1–4Env 1 = amp. Env 2 = filter cutoff. Env 3 = wavetable position or FM amount. Env 4 = spare.Shaping loudness (Env 1) when the sound needed shape in timbre (Env 2). Same mistake as every synth.
LFOs 1–10Movement: cutoff drift on pads, fake sidechain on volume, pitch wobble, wavetable scan.Assigning three LFOs before deciding what the sound's one movement is.
Mod matrixThe wiring closet. Aux curves let velocity or a macro scale another modulation — that is where expressive patches live.Treating it as write-only. Reading it top-to-bottom is how you learn from any preset in a minute.
Macros 1–8The performance layer. Macro 1 = the patch's one gesture (open/close, clean/dirty). Automate macros in Live, not raw params.Wiring all eight, labelling none, and never touching them again.
FX rackHalf the sound. Order matters: shape → dirt → space is the default. Splitters make dirt mono-safe (distort the mids, not the sub).Reverb on a bass without an M/S or L/H splitter in front of it.
Arp & clip sequencerSketching motion and auditioning patches musically; chance and transpose patterns for hypnotic techno sequences.Shipping the arp as the part. Drag the clip to Live as MIDI and edit it like you mean it.

Serum 2 vs the previous guide's synth. Everything the Synthesis field guide's lab does maps one-to-one: its two oscillators are Osc A/B in Wavetable mode on "Basic Shapes", its filter is Filter 1, its filter envelope is Env 2 routed to cutoff, its LFO is LFO 1, its drive is the Distortion effect. Build any of that page's ten patches in Serum 2 first — they all work — then come back here for what only Serum 2 can do.

Section 02

The 90% path

Six moves, in a fixed order, take any Serum 2 patch to ninety per cent. The last ten per cent is taste — but the first ninety is procedure, and doing the moves out of order is why patches take three hours instead of fifteen minutes. Every recipe in section 4 follows exactly this order.

Choose the engine, then the material

Ask one question: does this sound come from a note or from a sound? Notes → Wavetable. Sounds → Sample, Granular or Spectral. Then pick the raw material with the filter wide open and unison off, so you hear what you actually have. Ugly is fine; static is fine; wrong engine is not recoverable later.

In Serum 2: Osc A on, engine menu top-left of the oscillator. Start on Basic Shapes or Analog-family tables for anything you plan to filter.

One timbre device per oscillator

Give the oscillator one thing that changes its tone: a warp mode, a wavetable position, FM from another oscillator, or grain settings. Not all four. This is the Serum-specific decision — the previous guide's synth had nothing here, and most Serum presets have too much.

In Serum 2: Warp menu (Sync, Bend, PWM, FM, RM…) with the Warp knob, or WT Pos. If you used a warp, leave WT Pos alone, and vice versa.

Unison and the octave below

Width and weight, decided together. Voices and Detune on the character oscillator; a single-voice sub underneath it, because detune cancels itself below 100 Hz. If the patch is a bass, route the sub direct out in the mixer so the filter never touches it.

In Serum 2: Unison 1–16 per osc. 5–7 voices / 15–25¢ for width; 1 voice for anything that carries low end. Sub osc → Mixer → route Direct Out.

Filter, then envelope the filter

Find the cutoff by ear with no envelope. Then assign Env 2 → cutoff and shape it: fast attack, 60–200 ms decay, low sustain is the plucked-bass shape that runs half of house. This is still where the instrument appears — nothing in the new engines replaces it.

In Serum 2: drag Env 2's handle onto Cutoff (or matrix: Env 2 → Fil 1 Cutoff, 2–4 octaves). Try MG Low 24 with Drive at 15–30% before reaching for EQ.

Amp envelope and one movement

Env 1 sets length and gate — usually shorter than you think, sustain lower than you think. Then one moving thing, chosen deliberately: an LFO on cutoff, an envelope on WT position, chaos-LFO drift on pitch at 2–4¢. One. If the patch is boring, fix Env 2 before adding movement.

In Serum 2: Env 1 A/H/D/S/R on the main panel. LFO 1 drag-assign to the target; BPM-sync for rhythmic jobs, Hz for drift.

FX in shape → dirt → space order, then a macro

Default chain: EQ/Filter → Distortion → Chorus/Hyper → Delay → Reverb → Compressor. Splitter before the dirt if the patch has low end. Then wire the patch's single gesture to Macro 1 — cutoff plus one FX mix — and stop. Resist the second gesture; that is what Macro 2 is for on the day the track asks.

In Serum 2: FX tab, drag to reorder. Splitter L/H at ~200 Hz, distortion on the H path only. Right-click any knob → assign Macro 1.

Fifteen minutes, then resample. If a patch is not at ninety per cent in fifteen minutes, the engine choice or the material was wrong — start again rather than adding modules. And when a patch is done, bounce it to audio and put the audio in a Sample oscillator or Simpler: Serum 2's own Sample engine makes resampling a first-class citizen, and committed audio is what finishes tracks. The Build Order guide's argument applies inside the synth too.

Section 03 · interactive

Hear it

Serum 2 cannot run in a browser, so these six demos rebuild its core moves with a live synth engine — the same one the Synthesis guide uses. Each demo is an A/B: A is the patch without the move, B is the patch with it. The settings under each demo are the real Serum 2 instructions. Headphones recommended; two demos live below 150 Hz.

What these prove. Every one of these six moves is audible in isolation — which means when a preset impresses you, you can name which of the six is doing it. That is the whole skill of preset deconstruction: not "how was this made" but "which move is carrying it".

Section 04

Twenty-two recipes

Every staple sound in house and techno, as exact Serum 2 settings. Each card is written in the six-move order: engine & material, timbre device, unison & sub, filter & Env 2, amp & movement, FX & macro. The red line is the move that carries the sound — if you only do one thing on the card, do that one. Values are starting points, not scripture: ±30% on any number is still the same recipe.

22 recipes
Nothing matches that search.

How to practise with these. One recipe per session, built twice: once reading the card, once from memory an hour later. The second build is the one that teaches. After ten recipes you will notice they are all the same six moves wearing different numbers — at which point you have stopped needing recipes, which was the point.

Section 05

Wavetables, warp & unison

The mental model behind the knobs — enough theory to predict what a control will do before touching it, and no more.

What a wavetable actually is

  • A wavetable is a stack of single-cycle waveforms (frames). WT Pos chooses the frame; modulating WT Pos plays the stack like a flipbook. That is the entire trick.
  • Serum 2's smooth interpolation crossfades between frames continuously, so a table scans like morphing rather than clicking through snapshots. Old tables sound new with it on.
  • A table is only as good as the difference between its first and last frame. A table that goes dull→bright duplicates your filter; a table that goes sine→formant→metal gives you something the filter cannot do.
  • Modulate WT Pos with Env 3 for attack character (bright frame at the hit, plain frame after) — this is the wavetable equivalent of a filter envelope, and stacking both is the classic Serum bass.
  • Import: any audio, or a PNG into the Spectral engine. Your own voice as a wavetable is a renewable source of hooks nobody else owns.

Warp modes worth knowing by name

  • Sync — classic hard-sync scream; aggressive leads, rave stabs. Envelope the warp amount, not just the cutoff.
  • Bend + / Bend − — squashes the waveform toward its edges; subtle harmonic tilt. The polite warp for basses.
  • PWM — pulse-width on anything, not just squares. Slow LFO on warp = instant vintage string/organ movement.
  • Mirror — folds the wave on itself; cheap wavefolder-style buzz, good for techno rumble tops.
  • Quantize / Crush — bit-reduces the waveform itself. Lo-fi electro flavour before any FX are touched.
  • FM (true FM in Serum 2) / RM — Osc B modulates A's frequency/amplitude. The tech-house growl lives here; envelope FM amount with Env 3 so it barks and settles.
  • Rule of thumb: one warp, audibly used, or none. Warp at 15% "for interest" is how patches turn to soup.

Unison numbers

  • 1 voice — anything below 100 Hz, all subs, most FM growls. Mono-safe by construction.
  • 2–3 voices, 6–12¢ — thickening that still reads as one instrument. Deep house chords, garage bass tops.
  • 5–7 voices, 15–25¢ — the classic wide stab/lead. Check mono: if it vanishes, the detune is doing the width your panning should be doing.
  • 9–16 voices, 25–50¢ — supersaw territory. Costs CPU linearly; sounds best with the filter taking the top fizz off.
  • Detune curve, Blend and Stack (octave/fifth stacks) reshape how the voices spread — Stack "+12" is a free octave layer without touching Osc B.
  • Width comes after weight: set the single-voice sub first, then widen the top until just before the low end goes hollow.

The other engines in one paragraph each

  • Sample: set points and crossfade define the loop; slicing maps hits across keys; FM/PM warp lets a sample modulate like an oscillator. Think "Simpler that lives inside the mod matrix".
  • Multisample: SFZ zones and velocity layers. Load a real bass or keys, then treat it exactly like a wavetable: filter, Env 2, done. Its job is realism entering a synth workflow, not replacing it.
  • Granular: grain size sets texture (short = grit, long = smear), density sets thickness, scan rate is your playhead — modulate scan position with a slow LFO and any sample becomes a pad. Window amount rounds the grains when they click.
  • Spectral: plays frequency content over time; scan freezes and stretches without granular's texture. Timbre shift moves harmonic character independent of pitch — the "vocal drone from one syllable" machine.
Section 06

Modulation cookbook

Ten routings that do most of the work in this genre. Each is one matrix row plus a sentence of why. The format is source → destination, amount.

RoutingSettingsWhat it does & where it belongs
The pluckEnv 2 → Fil 1 Cutoff · +2 to +4 oct · D 60–200 ms · S 0–15%The single most valuable row in the synth. Plucked attack on any material. Every bass, stab and pluck recipe uses it.
The barkEnv 3 → Warp (FM/Sync) amount · 40–80% · D 50–120 msTimbre attack independent of the filter: growls that bite then sit down. Tech house bass, electro leads.
Fake sidechainLFO (saw, falling, 1/4 sync) → Osc level or FX Mix · 30–60%Pumping without a compressor, phase-locked to the bar. On pads and rumble tails it is cleaner than real sidechain. Draw the LFO with a flat notch at the start so the kick's transient window is silent.
Analog driftChaos LFO (Lorenz, ~0.2 Hz) → Fine tune · 2–4¢, and → Cutoff · 3–6%The "hardware" smell: nothing repeats, nothing is audible as movement. On everything sustained.
Velocity means itVelocity → Cutoff · 20–40% and Velocity → Env 2 amount (aux) · 30%Ghost notes go dark and soft like a real instrument. This row is why the Groove guide's velocity maps translate into synth parts.
The riser inside the patchMacro 1 → Cutoff +, Reverb Mix +, Delay Mix +, Fine −5¢One knob that performs the transition. Automate Macro 1 across 8 bars in Live instead of four separate lanes.
Note-position colourNote (keytrack) → WT Pos or Warp · 20–50%High notes get a different frame, not just a higher pitch. Keeps 16th-note sequences alive across octaves. Hypnotic techno's secret.
Humanised repeatsRand (per note) → WT Pos · 5–15% · and → Cutoff · 5%Every 16th is minutely different. The machine stops sounding like a machine at amounts you cannot consciously hear.
Wobble that breathesLFO 1 (sine, 1/8 dot) → Cutoff · 40% · LFO 2 (slow) → LFO 1 rateAn LFO modulating another LFO's rate — motion whose speed itself moves. Dub techno chords, bass music crossovers.
Aux-curve expressionAny row → Aux source: Macro 2, curve expMacro 2 scales how much another modulation applies — e.g. mod-wheel decides how hard velocity drives cutoff. This is the difference between a patch and an instrument.

Reading order for any preset: open the matrix, sort by destination, find the row with the biggest amount — that is the sound's engine room. Then look at what touches WT Pos and Warp, then the FX rack order. Sixty seconds, and you know how it was made. The mod matrix in Serum 2 shows live previews per row, which makes this faster than in any other synth.

Section 07

Diagnosis

Symptom → cause → the fix, in the order to try them. The first column is the word you would use out loud.

It sounds…Usual cause in Serum 2Fix, in order
ThinNo sub, or unison detune cancelling the fundamental.Sub osc on, 1 voice, sine, −6 dB under the mix. Then check character osc: if it carries low end, drop its unison to 1 and re-widen an octave up.
MuddyLong release, everything routed through one low-passed filter, or two oscillators in the same octave.Shorten Env 1 release. Route sub direct-out. High-pass Filter 2 in series at 150–250 Hz for everything that is not the bass.
HarshResonance + drive peaking at 2–5 kHz, or unison fizz.Cutoff down or resonance down 20%. EQ effect: wide −2 dB at 3 kHz. Hyper/unison blend down. Only then reach for the DAW EQ.
Static / lifelessEnv 2 doing nothing; no drift.The pluck row (cookbook #1). Then Lorenz drift (#4). If still flat, the material is flat — change frame or table, not the mod count.
Huge in phones, gone in the clubWidth made of detune and stereo FX below 120 Hz.Mono-check. Sub 1 voice direct out. M/S splitter: keep sides high-passed at ~150 Hz. Dimension/Hyper after the splitter, not before.
Loud but smallInternal levels clipping the FX chain; compressor doing nothing but padding.Mixer: osc levels to ~70%. Drive at the filter instead of level into distortion. Multiband compressor last, gentle, or off.
Like a presetEvery module on, nothing decided.Bypass the FX rack entirely. If the dry patch has no identity, rebuild from move 1 — FX were carrying it. If it does, re-add FX one at a time and stop early.
Expensive (CPU)Unison × 3 oscillators, HQ chorus/reverb, 1000 Hz LFOs.Unison only on one osc. Convolve → algorithmic Reverb. Freeze/flatten in Live, or bounce to the Sample engine and play the bounce.
Section 08

Housekeeping

Serum 2 inside a Live set

  • One instance, one job. A bass instance and a pad instance, not one instance being both on different channels of the clip sequencer.
  • Automate macros, not raw parameters. Macros survive preset tweaks; a lane automating "Fil 1 Cutoff" breaks the day you redesign the patch.
  • Sidechain properly in Live (Compressor on the Serum track, kick as the input, per the Kick & Bass guide) — and use fake-sidechain LFO inside the patch only when you want the pump as part of the sound design.
  • Freeze early. A frozen Serum 2 track costs nothing and commits you the way the Build Order guide keeps arguing you should be committed.
  • The arp's MIDI out can drive other Live instruments — sketch in Serum, send the notes to Operator or a sampler when the part outgrows the patch.

Gain staging inside the synth

  • Oscillator levels around 70%, master around −6 dB: leave room for unison summing and filter drive, which both add level you did not ask for.
  • Resonance above ~50% with drive is a level bomb — the acid recipes below do it on purpose; nothing else should do it by accident.
  • The FX rack is pre-fader from your DAW's point of view. If the limiter in your master chain is working hard, the fix is inside Serum's mixer, not on the fader.
  • A/B at matched loudness: toggle the FX rack while riding output down to compensate. Louder always sounds better, and the rack always makes it louder.

A preset library that teaches instead of accumulating

  • Save your own patches with the move that carries them in the name: "Bass — FM bark 2:1", not "Bass 47 final".
  • Rate ruthlessly in the browser; five one-star sounds you know beat five hundred unrated ones.
  • Deconstruct one factory preset per session with the sixty-second matrix read (section 6). The factory library is a synthesis course nobody opens.
  • Hybridize two of your own saved patches, not two factory ones — the collisions land closer to your taste.

Versions and honesty

  • This guide describes Serum 2 as of 2026 — five oscillator engines, dual filters, ten LFOs, four envelopes, eight macros, thirteen effects plus splitters, arp and clip sequencer. Xfer ships updates steadily (Linux beta arrived mid-2026); knob names may drift, the six moves will not.
  • Numbers on the recipe cards are starting points at 124–128 BPM in A minor-ish keys. Faster tempos want shorter decays; lower keys want less resonance.
  • Everything here works on the audible principle, not the brand: the same recipes translate to Vital, Phase Plant or Wavetable with different knob names — which is the real test that you learned the sound and not the screenshot.

The argument, one last time. Serum 2 is five synths and a small modular system in one window, and the update cycle keeps adding rooms to the house. The producers who get world-class sounds out of it are not the ones who visit every room — they are the ones who make the same six decisions, in the same order, and leave everything else off until the sound asks for it. The synth got bigger; the craft did not.

Audio demos are synthesised live in the browser with a subtractive/FM engine — they demonstrate the moves accurately and will not replace Serum 2. Settings on the cards are field-tested starting points, not factory documentation.