How do I not make a synth based rap beat sound generic?

[D1G]

I got something where there are a bunch of retro synth emulations on it, but every time I use it, it sounds either generic, like crap, or too bell sounding. Even if you don’t use Syntronik, this is just in general. does anyone have a solution to this.

 

[RizzakBeats]

I'm not a synthi-expert, but in my cases the synthis sounded whack because they were too clean. They had too good of a tune, they had a too clean soundn and maybe these points will help a little (if you can actually make changes on the presets):
- if there is an "Analog" knob, pull it up to your desire, the analog knob will randomly choose pitch and filter cutoff to a certain amount
- if there are two oszillators, make the one +6 cent and the other -6 cent in tune, it will be veeeeryyy slightly different and gives a little bit of thickness imo
- watch the FM and the Resonance knob. you can mess up the sound depending on what you want to do. if you want some more craziness and some uncontrollable swinging in your sound play with these two buddies
- ADSR of the Amp should be in your desired positions and the ADSR of the filter too, if it is properly adjusted you can man that wah-wah sound on your synthesizer just with the ADSR of the filter
- use effects like distortion, echo/delay, reverb but like a room reverb with a short decay to give a different feeling to it
- layer the synthi with another synth sound and hipass/lowpass/bandpass the best out of everyone to create your own sound
- "Glide"-Knob is useful when you want that 90's gliding westcoast synthi

Hope something works for you, if not, maybe you can show a picture/screenshot of your synthi and his knobs you are using

 

[Fade]

I know what you mean. Synths are great but can sound too "clean".

Tricks I've used:

• Effects. Anything helps.
• Tweak the synth's settings. Sometimes you'll come across something by accident.
• Apply a "dirty" filter to your final mix (or whatever synth part is too clean). There's vinyl emulators that have hiss/crackle.
• Sample yourself playing the synth. Convert it down to a lower bitrate. Then chop all that up and make the beat like a sample-based beat.

 

[Armani]

This never happened to me or if it did , i never found out . But my only advice is Sometimes the simplest is the most special .
Example : the sound dre used in "nuthin but a G thang" , i looked for that sound Alot until i found out what dre used was just a triangle waveform .

 

[TjombaBeats]

Ussually hmm wel to really start experimenting. Yes there are some techniq with synthesis. And yes triangle = one waveform here a pic of my 19 inch rack module of roland system 1 m plug out synth you can see different waveforms. There's indeed allot of ways but i would say really just experiment