Authoring a pluck

A pluck is a short, percussive note with a sharp attack and a quick decay. It is the opposite of a pad: where a pad swells and holds, a pluck speaks and is gone. Plucks work well in arpeggios and fast rhythmic parts.

Voice

Set Voice to Poly so you can play arpeggios and chords of plucks, with each note ringing out on its own.

Oscillator

Karplus-Strong is a plucked-string model, and it is the most direct route to a pluck. Pick Pos sets where along the string it is plucked and Brightness sets how hard, while Damping sets how quickly the note dies away. A Wavetable also works for a pluck if you shape it with a fast filter decay, described below.

For a richer pluck, give each of the three oscillators its own Mod Envelope, so a sharp transient, a fuller body and a long ring each decay at a different speed. Layering a fast-decaying click over a slower-decaying tone is what makes a pluck feel struck rather than simply switched on.

Filter

Use a low-pass filter and turn Env up so the filter snaps open at the start of the note and closes again as it decays. This filter movement is most of what makes a pluck read as plucked.

Amp envelope

The envelope is the whole identity of a pluck. Use the fastest Attack so the note starts instantly, a fast Decay so it falls away at once, a low or zero Sustain so nothing lingers while the key is held, and a short Release. Hold this shape and almost any oscillator becomes a pluck.

Movement

Add a Fade out modulation on the cutoff so the pluck darkens as it decays, the natural behaviour of a struck or plucked string losing its brightness as it rings down.

Route velocity to Level and to the cutoff so soft notes are quieter and darker and hard notes are louder and brighter, the way a real plucked instrument responds to touch. This is what keeps a fast plucked passage from sounding mechanical.

Effects

Add Delay and Reverb to give the pluck space to ring into without lengthening the note itself. The dry transient stays short and defined while the wet tail extends behind it, and keeping those two apart is what lets a pluck sit cleanly in a busy mix.