SynthMag - Creating cinematic impacts for film & video games

Create larger than life impacts with Arturia Pigments

Just like the booming sound of a thunder strike, cinematic hits have a way of evoking an immediate emotional and physiological response in us. But unlike chaotic and unpredictable natural phenomenon, an impactful low-end hit conveys a controlled sense of energy and force.
Useful in a wide range of scenarios from epic, dramatic moments to tension and horror filled encounters, both standalone and layered under other cinematic hits increasing their depth and low-end, it is an incredibly versatile sound.

In this article I’ll show you how to create a modern cinematic bass hit using Arturia Pigments.
You’ll also get a couple of programming tricks, unique to Pigments that I picked up over the years to make presets sound larger than life!

Here's an example of what we'll be creating.

Final Sound Credit: Jens Kiilstofte

Complete Arturia Pigments preset with all 4 macros assigned available for free at the end of the article.

Default Patch

First we need to make sure we have the same clean slate to work from, go to the “Presets”, then choose the “Template” category and select “Default”

Default Patch

Creating the Low-End Hit

Now that we have the same default patch to work from, let’s get started creating the fundamental bass hit.

Engine 1: Pitch & Unison

First we’ll setup the unison section while also pitching the overall sound down by 24 semitones and then setting the Engine 1 volume to max as we want the signal to run hot into the filter and the effects thereafter.

Finally we change the filter routing to Parallel instead of Serial, as we’ll need to split the transient off from the bass hit, using one filter for each, in the final section of this article.

Pitch & Unison

Unison Voices 3 | Detune 100% | Stereo 0%

Course Pitch -24 Semitones | Engine 1 Volume 100%

Amplifier & Pitch Envelope setup

Next we’ll setup the envelope’s that’ll be used for the amplifier as well as pitch modulation to create the punchy, low-end impact of our cinematic hit.

Hold down CTRL while click-dragging to fine tune the value of any parameter in Arturia Pigments.

Envelope VCA

Attack 2 ms | Attack Curve 1.92 | Decay 750 ms | Sustain 0 | Release 920 ms

Envelope 2

Attack 0.3 ms | Decay 120 ms | Sustain 0 | Release 100 ms

Envelope 3

Attack 1 ms | Decay 300 ms | Sustain 0 | Release 100 ms

Modulating the Pitch

Modulating Pitch

Envelope 2 modulates the Course Pitch by +24 semitones.

Shaping and Effects

Here comes the fun part!

Processing the simple bass hit we’ve created so far through all the effects like Reverb, Multiband Compressor and Distortion to create the iconic cinematic boom.

Inserting the soft clipper before the multiband compressor is very important and it is my “secret” go-to trick for creating larger than life impacts, hits and bass sounds.

EQ

First we’ll add a ton of bass EQ to skew the weight of the whole frequency spectrum to be low-end heavy. This is especially important once we add the soft clip distortion and compression.

Low Shelf (LS) | Low Fc = 150 hz | Low Gain 9.40 db

Peak 1 fc 257 hz | Peak 1 Gain -11 db | Peak 1 Q 1.23

Super Unison

This effect adds a very subtle sense of depth and punch.

Super Unison

Dry/Wet 0% | Voices - Max | Detune 90% | Rate 0.126 Hz | Retrig = true

Envelope 3 Modulates Dry/Wet by 0.15

Soft Clip Distortion

Next we’ll use the soft clip distortion module to make our cinematic hit louder and more aggressive.

Soft Clip Distortion

Soft Clip | Dry/Wet 100% | Drive 0% | Auto off | Output -7,26 db

Modulate Drive by 0.11 from Envelope 3

Insert Reverb

This is where our cinematic hit really comes alive with copious amounts of Reverb!

Insert Reverb

Dry/Wet 60% | Pre-Delay 3ms | HP 0 | LP 174 hz

Multiband Compressor

Arturia Pigments answer to the OTT compressor from Xfer Records, making it super fun and easy to create epic hits!

For this part we heavily process the lows and mids, decreasing the high-end band to eliminate unwanted click sounds.

Double clicking any parameter will reset it to it’s default value, for the “Out High” it sets it to 0 which is what we want.

Multiband Compressor

Low Below Ratio 101/1 | Low Above Ratio = 2.50/1

Mid Below Ratio 101/1 | Mid Above Ratio = 4.50/1

High Below Threshold -61db | Out High 0

Amount 60% | Release 0.5

Send Reverb

Select “Hall” Preset | Dry/Wet = 100% | Send = -11 db

Filter 1

I encourage you to experiment with the filter in this section as the sound and feel of the cinematic hit changes quite a lot depending on which type is selected, especially after adding the noise transients at the final section of this article.

Filter 1

SEM | Cutoff 834hz

Filter 2

Multimode | Cutoff 516hz | Resonance 0.252

Modulate Cutoff with Envelope 3 by 0.12

Transients

Function 1 Noise Envelope

For Function 1 we’ll draw a double transient for a flam like effect, to control the volume of the White Noise generator.

Function 1 Noise Envelope

Play Mode = One Shot

Noise 1

Set Filter Mix to F2 | Volume 0%

Modulate Volume by 100% using Function 1

Noise 2

Select Transients → Drive | Volume +10db

Final Sound Credit: Jens Kiilstofte

There you have it, the classic cinematic "boom" hit.
I encourage you to experiment, changing various parameters like waveform and filter types to see what interesting cinematic hits you can come up with!

Free preset with all macros assigned

Here’s the final preset I made, I’ve added a few extra features to the sound and just like our other Arturia Pigments sound sets, this free preset has all macros assigned to multiple parameters, so that you can easily change the sound to your needs.

Arturia Pigments Cinematic Boom Hit Preset