A lot of sound‑design tutorials focus on the technical aspects of the tools at our disposal — how they work and what they do. Whilst it’s always an advantage to have a theoretical understanding, this article will take a less analytical approach. Instead of designing a sound from scratch by working through the basics, we’ll discuss a way to design sound by working with an existing phrase or loop directly. The advantage of this technique is that it ignores the screen and relies on your ears and brain to feel the right settings.

We’ll be mapping hardware knobs, faders and buttons to various sound control parameters in order to manipulate them in real time. Which sounds pretty straightforward and basically what analogue synths have always done... but there are some subtleties that bring this to life and (I’ve found) make the whole sound‑design process far more fun — and productive.

READ FULL ARTICLE (FOR FREE) ON SOUND ON SOUND WEBSITE:
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/midi-mapping-intuitive-sound-design