Creating sci-fi sounds with Conflux

Sci-fi sounds are fun to make. From laser blasts to roaring spaceship sound effects, via cosmic pads, forbidding drones, and abstract textures, the future inspires some of the most exciting sounds in modern music. And you don’t need to be working on the next Dune movie to get involved: wide swathes of modern audio use sci-fi sound effects, from indie video games to avant-garde club music and pop.

But creating a sound that’s never existed can be difficult. Good sci-fi sounds take imagination, technical skill – and the right tools. This is where Conflux comes in. This bold new Kontakt instrument is primed for making compelling sci-fi sounds. Conflux lets you seamlessly blend organic sounds with powerful wavetable synthesis, harness extensive modulation options, and deploy a battery of effects. It’s the ideal tool for crafting futuristic, otherworldly audio.

In this article, we’ll show you how to make some impactful sci-fi sound effects with Conflux. We’ll also walk you through the key features of this new hybrid instrument for Kontakt 8.

Jump to these sections:

• What instruments make sci-fi sound?
• How to create sci-fi sound?
• How are space sounds made?
• How to create sci-fi sounds with Conflux

Follow along with this tutorial using Kontakt 8.

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What instruments make sci-fi sound?

With a bit of imagination, any electronic instrument can be used to make sci-fi sounds, but some are better suited to the task than others. To make an effective sci-fi sound effect, you’ll need an instrument with extensive sound-shaping possibilities. It will need powerful synthesis features, modulation options, and out-of-this-world effects. Conflux is just such an instrument.

How to create sci-fi sound?

To create compelling sci-fi sounds, you need to start with clear sound-shaping goals. Are you designing laser sound effects for a space battle scene, writing an evocative soundtrack for a sci-fi video game, or making abstract textures to enhance your next electronic track?

Next, find a synth, sampler, or other electronic instrument that has the right features to achieve this goal.

In the below examples, we’ll walk you through this process with four different sci-fi sounds, from cosmic musical elements to futuristic foley.

We used Conflux to create our sci-fi sounds. Conflux offers a number of features that make it ideal for this task. A powerful wavetable synth engine – including the coveted wavetables from the legendary PPG wave – is primed for evocative sci-fi textures.

Extensive modulation options make it easy to twist and sculpt sounds in bold ways – particularly the frequency, pulse, and ring modulation capabilities.

Finally, a battery of pro-level Native Instruments effects make it easy to dial in cosmic delays, outer-space reverbs, and other futuristic sonics.

How are space sounds made?

Space sound effects are made using a combination of synthesis, sampling, clever modulation, and potent audio effects. A little imagination doesn’t hurt either. Below, we’ll walk you through the steps to make four futuristic sounds: a cosmic pad, a laser blast, the wailing klaxon heard on an evacuating spaceship, and an FX texture that evokes the vastness of space.

How to create sci-fi sounds with Conflux

1. Cosmic pad

Here’s how to use Conflux to create a cosmic pad sound, perfect for soundtracking epic outer space scenes.

To start building sounds with Conflux, head over to the Edit tab. This is where most of the magic happens.

Let’s start by shaping the pad’s timbre in the Source module.

Source is where sound begins in Conflux. It offers two sound layers: a powerful wavetable synth and a versatile sample layer. Combining them creates rich, distinctive timbres. When you throw in wavetable modulation and the additional Audio Mod module, the timbral possibilities become extremely broad.

There are four wavetable menus to choose from, shown by the four blue dot symbols. Each menu contains a wide range of wavetables, from synthesis mainstays to weird oddities.

We’re looking for a complex wavetable that varies a lot when we change the wavetable position. The evocatively titled “Yonder” does the trick.

Now to spice up the timbre using the Audio Mod module. This module is key to the power of Conflux. With the help of new synthesis capabilities introduced in Kontakt 8, Audio Mod lets you further shape the Conflux wavetable oscillator with frequency, pulse, and ring modulation. We added some FM synthesis for extra bite.

Next, let’s combine our synth sound with a sample. Conflux offers four menus of samples (accessible via the purple dot symbols), including strings, pianos, and abstract sound design textures.

We can combine our synth with a voice sample to give the pad an uncanny, almost-human feel. Conflux excels at combining synthetic and human sounds.

The vocal samples are in the third sample menu (denoted by three dots). We chose the SingSang sample.

Now to add some movement. Conflux offers extensive modulation tools to give sounds life and energy.

Modulation can be added by clicking one of the four-way arrows – like this one, for LFO 1.

Once clicked, modulatable parameters will show up in orange. Drag up or down on the orange symbol to add modulation. Here, we’ve assigned LFO 1 to Wavetable Position and Audio Mod tuning. The modulated parameters are marked with solid orange lines.

Finally, let’s add a few finishing touches to our cosmic pad.

A high pass filter with the resonance turned up will give the sound a thin, otherworldly sound.

We can add character using the powerful toolkit of effects available in Conflux, ranging from classics like compression and chorus to daring sound shapers.

The more extreme effects modules are particularly handy for sci-fi sound design: like Radio (for noisy interference), or the Raum reverb set to cosmic mode. We also added some swirly phasing.

2. Laser blast

Next, let’s use Conflux to create an impactful laser sound effect – perhaps to add to a space battle scene.

In this case the sound source doesn’t matter too much – it’s how we modulate it. An equal blend of a synthetic and an acoustic source should give us a nice rich sound to work with.

We want to use the amplitude envelope to create a tight, punchy sound profile: short attack, medium decay, no sustain.

The key to creating a blippy laser sound effect is pitch modulation. Conflux features a modulation envelope that’s perfect for dialing in this kind of effect.

We can assign this envelope to wavetable and sample pitch so that they swoop down each time a note is played. In this screenshot, the envelope modulation is marked with orange lines.

Now for some extra sound design spice. For this we’re going to use the “random” input at the bottom of the interface.

This spits out a random value every time a note is played. We can assign it to different parameters to make them jump around with each note, adding chaos to our laser effect.

We assigned the random input to the pitch, wavetable position, and asym controls in the Source Module. This makes the timbre vary with each laser blast.

Finally some FX. compression to add punch, the digitize module for extra bite, and delay and gated reverb (from the space module) to make our laser sound like it’s echoing through a claustrophobic spaceship.

Here’s our laser sound effect.

3. Spaceship klaxon

Next, let’s use Conflux to create the spaceship sound effects for a crash scene. We want to make a shrill, urgent klaxon that signals imminent evacuation.

The ability to layer synthesis and samples in Conflux is particularly handy here. We can use it to create a piercing timbre with depth and personality.

To start, let’s choose a wavetable. Among Conflux’s trove of wavetables you’ll find the original wavetables supplied with the PPG Wave. This legendary, defunct wavetable synth is coveted for its rich sound – and now you can explore it right inside Conflux.

You’ll find the PPG wavetables in the fourth menu (shown with four dots). “Robotic” gives us what we’re looking for: a rich synthetic sound that alternates between shrill and muted timbres as the wavetable position knob is turned.

We layered it with a detuned string sample for extra depth.

Now to turn this steady tone into a blaring klaxon. We can use the animator module for this. Animator is a powerful modulator that lets you program sequences of modulation changes and assign them to various parameters in Conflux.

We want a simple “up-down” pattern for our klaxon, so we drew this pattern into the animator interface.

Here’s our spaceship sound effect.

4. Spooky FX

Finally, let’s use Conflux to create a spooky space sound effect.

We’re just going to use the wavetable sound source with a simple Sin-Square wavetable. No sample layer this time. We’ll add timbral interest by varying the wavetable position and ring modulation amount with an LFO.

Here you can see LFO 1 is hooked up to the wavetable position and audio mod tune parameters (marked with orange lines).

We want our FX to roam randomly instead of holding a single pitch. So we also assigned the LFO to wavetable pitch.

We then made the sound even more unstable by assigning LFO 2 – also with a random waveform – to modulate the frequency of LFO 1.

Now for some effects. Phat adds gnarly distortion, phaser heightens the mystery, and shimmer (with some detune) sends the sound into outer space. We also added plenty of reverb using the space module.

Here’s our space sound effect. Cold and spooky.

Start using Conflux to create sci-fi sounds

In this article, we’ve shown you how to make sci-fi sounds with Conflux, the bold new hybrid instrument for Kontakt 8. Using powerful wavetable synthesis, evocative sampling, smart modulation, and more, we showed how this instrument is ideal for making futuristic sonics.

Now it’s time to start using Conflux in your own sci-fi sound projects. Conflux is available in Kontakt 8, the industry-standard sampling platform from Native Instruments.

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