Help wanted. I don't know the first thing about synth sounds. The vast majority of the music I record is done on real instruments or at least sample libraries of real instruments. I'm recording a track for an artist who wants a certain sound in their track. I wouldn't have the first clue as to where to look. Wouldn't know what category of synth sound it is. I don't know my Saw from my Sine or Square from my Poly. Don't know what any of that means so I'm finding it really difficult finding what I'm after. 
 
Any chance some kind synth expert could point me in the right direction. All I hear is it sounds a bit 80s but that doesn't narrow it down when it comes to synths I know. Could someone tell me "oh yes that's this type of sound" or even better say if I have that sound in any of the included SONAR synths. Or if not what to look for in free downloadable synths. 
 
You'll hear it on Spotify or wherever you listen to music. It's on the track "It's All Good" by Superorganism. It's the lead line between 0:35 and 0:52. 
 
Thanks in advance.

Sounds to me like a pretty standard sawtooth put through a tape simulator for the wow/flutter and then doubled with guitar. A couple of oscillators stacked in octaves -  Z3TA (either 1 or 2) can get that sound, no problem. Just about any synth you have should be able to do it if you go through the sawtooth selections and get your filters set just so.
 
I got reasonably close to it in Z3TA+2 using a few oscillators set to to "Vintage Saw 2" and spread over a couple of octaves. Filter on 24 db/Octve around 600-700 Hz.
 
For the tape sim, though, I think you'll need to look elsewhere.

Hi Mike
 
Thanks for this answer. Remember I haven't the first clue what I'm doing here.
I'm in z3ta+. I've chose Vintage Saw 2 for the first two oscillators (whatever that means) and turned the others levels down. One is an octave down. Sounds promising, however the is an arpeggiator going on and I don't want it. How do I get rid of it? Don't know my way round z3ta or what most of the things mean. Can't find anything that says arpeggiator. What am I looking for?

I clicked the Options button in the bottom right corner and there is an option to Disable Arpeggiator. However when I do that it completely changes the sound. I had a nice sound that was close to what I'm looking for but when I disable arpeggiator now I have a horrible growly sound. Why? Why does that happen when I disable the arpeggiator. Now I can't find how to get back to the sound I had without turning the arpeggiator back on which I don't want. Help!

Hey there,
   It's hard to know exactly what's going on without seeing it, but if disabling the ARP causes bizarre behavior, there must still be some settings hanging around from an old patch. Make sure you're starting from a fresh program (Go to "Program->Initialize"). In z3ta, the Arpeggiator is (I'd say somewhat confusingly) grouped with the Low Frequency Oscillators. In the top right pane of the interface, far right button should be "AR". Click that and make sure pattern is set to off.
 
You'll also need to make sure your oscillators are routed to the filter that you're using. In each oscillator there's a slider for "Bus" - make sure it's all the way at the top if you're using filter #1. 
 
If it still sounds funky, it could be because Zeta is defaulting to a low-quality mode to save CPU. Mine defaults to draft-quality, which does cause it to sound pretty gritty. To fix that go to "Options" and make sure both Real-time and Render Quality are set to at least 1.0, or even 2x oversampling.
 
That ought to do it...

Syntorial is a game that helps you learn to match sounds.