A free synth for bass, pads, leads, keys and bells
Answer in brief
Open Odin 2 or TAL-NoiseMaker for bass, Vital or Surge XT for pads, Tyrell N6 for leads and Dexed for electric keys and FM bells. Keep Pendulate for the times you want something less predictable.
Bass
Its maker pitches Odin 2 at “earth-shattering basses”, and its models of the Moog ladder and Korg 35 filters are a good place to shape one. TAL-NoiseMaker is light on the computer, and its three oscillators with sync and FM cover most synth bass. Podolski’s single oscillator with glide suits a plain mono line.
Set the synth to mono or legato with a short glide and keep the filter envelope quick. Then listen to the bass in mono. If the low end shrinks, unison or chorus is spreading it too wide.
Pads
Vital’s spectral warping and stereo modulation make wide pads that keep moving. Surge XT holds two scenes in one patch, so a soft pad and a brighter layer can share a preset. Zebralette 3 lets you draw smooth modulation curves, which u-he suggests for pads and sweeps.
Give a pad a slow attack and a long release, and let an LFO move the wavetable position or the filter very slowly. Leave the lowest octaves to the bass.
Leads
Tyrell N6 offers unison of up to eight voices and a filter related to an early version of u-he’s Diva. TAL-NoiseMaker has chorus, delay and reverb built in, so a lead can sound finished on its own. Odin 2 also names soaring leads among the sounds it is for.
A lead has to cut through without fighting the vocal. Try a little unison detune, a short delay and a filter that opens as you play harder.
Keys and electric pianos
Dexed is closely modeled on the Yamaha DX7, the source of many familiar 1980s electric piano sounds, and it loads DX7 and TX7 SysEx banks. Surge XT also has FM2 and FM3 oscillators if you want FM inside a subtractive synth.
Start from a preset and adjust velocity sensitivity first. FM keys come alive when harder playing makes the tone brighter.
Bells and glassy plucks
FM is the classic route to a bell, because frequency ratios that are not whole numbers give the clangy overtones a bell has. That makes Dexed the first stop. Zebralette 3’s spectral decay lets each harmonic fade at its own rate, and u-he suggests it for plucked tones.
Keep the attack at zero and the release long. Add reverb on the track after the synth so you can change the space without touching the patch.
Something less predictable
Pendulate’s oscillator follows the motion of a double pendulum, so it can drift from a plain sine into chaos. After it come a wavefolder and a low pass gate modeled on Buchla designs. It plays one note at a time, so use it for a single line or a sound effect rather than chords.
Sources for this page
- Studio 56: Studio 56’s official website, the publisher of this reference.
- Vital: Vital’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Surge XT: Surge XT’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Dexed: Dexed’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Tyrell N6: Tyrell N6’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Zebralette 3: Zebralette 3’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Podolski: Podolski’s official page, the source of its description here.
- TAL-NoiseMaker: TAL-NoiseMaker’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Odin 2: Odin 2’s official page, the source of its description here.
- Pendulate: Pendulate’s official page, the source of its description here.
The practical advice here is our own. A maker's description of its product is not a test of how it performs.
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Cite this page
Best Free Synth VST. “A free synth for bass, pads, leads, keys and bells.” Studio 56 Reference. Content reviewed November 8, 2026.
https://bestfreesynthvst.com/free-synth-for-each-sound/