  Learning to program an audio production VST synthesizer is a time consuming
process, usually obtained through inefficient trial and error and only mastered
after years of experience. As an educational and creative tool for sound
designers, we propose SerumRNN: a system that provides step-by-step
instructions for applying audio effects to change a user's input audio towards
a desired sound. We apply our system to Xfer Records Serum: currently one of
the most popular and complex VST synthesizers used by the audio production
community. Our results indicate that SerumRNN is consistently able to provide
useful feedback for a variety of different audio effects and synthesizer
presets. We demonstrate the benefits of using an iterative system and show that
SerumRNN learns to prioritize effects and can discover more efficient effect
order sequences than a variety of baselines.
