Serum Sound Design Basics: Your First 808 and Pluck

Serum can look intimidating the first time you open it. Oscillators, a filter, a wall of modulation, and a spectrum display that means nothing until someone explains it. You only need three sections to start building your own sounds.

This guide covers those three, then builds two patches from scratch, a sine 808 with glide and a pluck, with the settings for each.

The whole patch on one screen, which is the reason Serum is usually the first synth people learn. Screenshot courtesy of Xfer Records.

Serum 1 or Serum 2?

Xfer released Serum 2 in March 2025 as a free upgrade for Serum 1 owners. It adds a third main oscillator with five modes (wavetable, multisample, sample, granular and spectral), dual filters, more LFOs and envelopes, an arpeggiator and a clip sequencer.

Serum 1 presets load in Serum 2, but Serum 2 presets do not open in Serum 1. Both versions install side by side, and old projects keep using Serum 1 until you swap the plugin yourself.

Everything below uses controls both versions share. The friction is collaboration, because a Serum 2 patch sent to someone still on Serum 1 will not open, so agree on a version before you trade sessions.

Step 1: Start With Wavetables

The oscillators at the top load wavetables, which are collections of waveforms you can scan through.

Turn the WT POS knob and watch the waveform morph. That morphing is the core of Serum's character. A basic analog wave gives you a warm, simple tone, and a complex digital table gives you movement and edge.

Start with one oscillator only. Play a note and sweep the position by hand. The trap is that big digital tables sound exciting solo and harsh inside a beat, so most hip-hop basses and keys start from simple shapes.

The wavetable position knob moves through the frames of that surface, which is where the tone starts. Screenshot courtesy of Xfer Records.

Step 2: Shape the Tone With the Filter

Below the oscillators sits the filter, the most important tool for making a raw wave musical.

A low-pass filter removes high frequencies, which warms and darkens the sound. Turn up resonance and you get that vocal, squelchy emphasis right at the cutoff point.

The filter only processes oscillators routed into it. If a cutoff sweep does nothing, check that the filter is switched on and your oscillator is sent to it.

Step 3: Add Movement With Envelopes and LFOs

An envelope decides how a parameter changes from the moment you press a key, using attack, hold, decay, sustain and release. ENV 1 is wired to volume by default.

Drag ENV 2 onto the filter cutoff and the tone opens and closes with every note. Drag an LFO onto WT POS and the sound morphs continuously.

Because almost any knob accepts modulation, patches get messy fast. Stick to one or two routes until you can hear what each one does.

Walkthrough 1: A Sine 808 With Glide

Choose Init Preset from the main menu. On OSC A, load the Basic Shapes wavetable and turn WT POS down to the first frame, the sine. Set RAND to zero so every hit starts on the same phase and the attack stays consistent.

With Mono and Legato on, notes glide only where they overlap in your piano roll, so you place every slide by hand. Legato also stops the envelopes retriggering mid-slide, which keeps glides smooth.

For the punch, drag ENV 2 onto OSC A's CRS knob, then raise the amount until each hit starts with a short downward chirp. Finish on the FX page with Distortion set to Tube.

Phone speakers barely reproduce a sub this low, so the distortion adds harmonics they can play. Push Drive too far and the low end turns into a buzz that hides the root note.

Walkthrough 2: A Pluck

Init again. Keep Basic Shapes on OSC A, sweep WT POS until you hear the bright saw frame, and set Unison to 3 voices with a low Detune.

Switch on the filter and choose a low-pass such as MG Low 12 with the cutoff pulled down. Drag ENV 2 onto the cutoff and each note now snaps open and closes fast, which is the pluck.

Unison sounds wide on headphones but can thin out when a phone sums the beat to mono. Check in mono and drop to 2 voices if the pluck collapses.

For a lo-fi version, move WT POS back toward the softer sine end, lower the cutoff, and drag an LFO onto OSC A's FIN knob at a slow rate with a tiny amount. That wobble imitates worn tape. Serum still sounds clean, so add dust and hiss with a tape plugin afterwards.

Learn by Reverse-Engineering

The quickest way to improve is to open a preset you like and take it apart. Look at which wavetable it uses, how the filter is set, and where modulation is routed. Change one control at a time and listen.

Good hip-hop Serum presets double as lessons in how experienced designers build patches. The annoyance is that many lean on heavy effects and macros, so switch the FX off first to hear the raw patch underneath.

Spend a week designing instead of only browsing and you will start hearing beats in terms of what you could build. When you want a second synth to learn, compare the options in our VST synth roundup.