How do you make this whiney synth sound? (IDM)
http://soundcloud.com/riseorfail/test-notmystuff
“Leraine” by Secede. One of my favourite tracks 
Anyway, obviously I’m not doing a really in-depth analysis of the sound here, but the synth itself does not seem that complex to me. It appears to be based on a sawtooth type oscillator which is naturally very rich and has a lot of nice harmonics. Then there’s a lowpass filter being applied, to reduce the harsh edge and give it a much smoother/softer sound, with perhaps a little bit of resonance on the filter just to make it a little bit more interesting.
You’ll find that this type of basic lowpassed sawtooth is the basis for many, many electronic synth sounds, including leads, basses, pads, etc. As I said, it is very harmonically rich and can be filtered into almost anything you want really. If you find yourself wondering how certain sounds are made, it’s fun to just start with one of the basic analogue style waveforms like sawtooth, square/pulse wave, etc., and then experiment with applying basic filters like lowpass and highpass. You’ll quickly figure out how many sounds you’ve heard before are created.
Slightly off-topic, but I find that with many songs like this, the “sound” and the way we perceive it (how pleasing it is, etc) comes more from the musician playing a beautiful melody, than it does from the actual type of sound being played.
100% agree with that!
about the sound, as dblue recomended, playing around with the standart waveforms is a good way to understand how things are working. it`s not all that magical as it sounds first 
Just for fun I took a quick bash at recreating a very rough version of the gorgeous melody from this song, using the basic chipSaw instrument that comes with Renoise plus a few native DSPs:
I’m not saying it’s perfect, and I probably (definitely!) got some of the notes wrong, but it’s pretty close(ish) 
this is indeed very close good work !
Wow!, thank you very much man, I just got home to these replies. Let me read them now
This track though is one of my favorite tracks of ALL time.
Edit: Yeah, I definitely agree. It’s interesting yoo say this, because I am also a Popper(dancer), and a lot of the time what will happen is an amazing dancer will freestyle to a song very well.Then, everyone will want to download the song the dancer danced too lol. Yeah, this is very close . For some reason I thought there maybe was a rotary speaker or a lfo lol.
Trying to get similar synth sound definitely starts with trying to get the basic wave first. You can sometimes tell how rich in harmonics a a certain sound is, and then go from there.
that whole album is amazing
one of my all time favourites
Yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot more extra processing going on in the actual song, but getting a sound that’s pretty close is easy enough. The important thing is to then take it a little bit further and make it your own unique sound. It is an interesting phenomenon though, how we possibly perceive things as being more complex than they really are, depending on how much impact it has or how it makes us feel. I know that’s often the case with me anyway… I’ll hear some beautiful melody being played and then the emotional aspect tends to distort my view of what it really is. You have to kind of step away from it and try to view it more objectively, then you can sort of deconstruct it logically and think “ok, it’s just a dude playing a synth… I can figure this out!”, haha.
dblue - there’s a slight pitch modulation in your example instrument that I can’t pin down. Where the hell’s it coming from!? It’s not from the DSPs, nor apparently from the Instrument or Sample settings, nor from pattern commands. It’s probably obvious, but it’s doing my head in now!
Oh never mind, I see it now Hidden away…
haha, yeah… Instrument Editor > Pitch > LFO
A bit too much perhaps? Probably. I just quickly chucked it in there for a bit of extra character.
I was originally doing this with a sawtooth patch in Arguru Voyager synth btw, where it sounded a bit nicer with some legato/glide action on there and some other gubbins. I just switched it to the sample based instrument later and couldn’t quite be arsed to program the equivalent stuff into the pattern, haha.
Fun, fun, fun.
Absolutely not, it fits perfectly. As on-the-hoof reverse engineerings go, this is spot-on!
Yeah, since I don’t use Renoise for my chippy stuff, and therefore don’t go a bundle on sample-inst tweaking, I sort of forget that the enable/disable tickbox is just for the envelope and not for that entire section (Volume/panning/pitch). Always good to be reminded
Wow, that pitch LFO thing is awesome! I never knew that, very inspirational again dBlue, thanks!
lol, I decided to expand my horizons, and see other people.
i didn’t see that. thanks for the “mini tutorial”.