The "how do I (re)create a particular sound" Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No More Drake > Musician's Lounge > The "how do I (re)create a particular sound" Megathread

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Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

There's a chime in the middle of this which is an incredibly ubiquitous sound in the real world, but I haven't been able to find a sample of anywhere at all. I figure it's a digital sound made with cheap equipment and synthesizing it should be relatively simple, but I have no idea how to go about it.

An approximation can be made by having two sine wave oscillators, one pitched up an octave and using an amplitude envelope with everything set to zero, except decay around 2 seconds.

Maybe mess a bit with detune for a cheaper feel. If you can inject a slight impurity in the sinewaves otherwise (nudge it towards a square wave), that may be worth experimenting with as well.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2012 15:44

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 23:15

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

I tried this and it ended up sounding pretty weird relative to what I was going for.

Yeah, ok, that was a ballpark guess based on theory, so I had another go at it. Analysis of the original sound brings me to two rounded square waves, one at 800Hz and another at 2400Hz. So if you want to be nitpicky, the base note is between G and G# and the other part is between 19 and 20 semitones up or something. Technically.

In practice, that sounds like rear end in a musical context and you're better off playing a G and transposing the second oscillator the whole two octaves up. You can more or less approximate rounded square waves by using normal square waves and filtering a tad off the top afterwards.

So, start from an init patch and do this:
OSC1: SQUARE WAVE, 0dB
OSC2: SQUARE WAVE, -6dB, +24 semitones
AEG: A: 0; D: 2sec; S: 0: R: 0
FILT: F: ~4000Hz; R: 0

I'm getting things like this. (squares, filtered squares, sines, original)

I'm not sure what gives you "weird" results, but without further clues as to what you're doing, what tools you're using or what you're going for, I can only guess, obviously.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2012 14:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

Listening to them side by side, I think the thing that I'm hearing is more high-end on the samples you've made. Still, wow, that's an amazing analysis.

Well yeah, if you take into account that the bus chime probably plays back on a crappy small (piezo?) speaker and then was recorded on something like a cellphone, perhaps from a few feet distance, you'd expect to lose some fidelity.

If you want to simulate that, the best way of replicating that, is just going through that process yourself: play the sample through the speaker of your phone for example and record it with a mediocre microphone. Alternatively, look into lo-fi and/or impulse response plugins.

Not saying this sample is worth all that when a bit of equalizing might do, but it's something you shouldn't be afraid to do in general. It provides interesting results that are hard to replicate exactly otherwise.

As for the analysis, a good parametric equalizer with very narrow Q options helps pinpoint frequencies pretty exactly. With a decent boost, poo poo just starts to ring when you hit the jackpot.

# ¿ Aug 30, 2012 00:19

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Barn Door posted:

What is making this delightful noise???

Every General Midi compatible module or soundset has a Bird Tweet preset (patch 123 or 124). It kinda sounds like that, mangled a bit. Slow LFO on pitch bend, maybe.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2012 16:06

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I just hear a bunch of creative wide range pitch bending + some filter automation. There's an LFO affecting the pitch in there that has it's speed linked to key follow, which gives you that 'It's a sample!' notion, but in my opinion it doesn't have to be.

Massive is always a good shout for Deadmau5' stuff, though.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2013 10:25

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I am the M00N posted:

I have been trying to make guitar sounds in FL Studio 10 for a while, and nothing seems to get me what I want. I have tried using FLslayer since it is the only thing that gets me guitar sounds to begin with, but it seems to lack....something.

If you have something that produces decent clean guitar sounds (maybe Slayer's better at this or you've got some samplebank), you can throw some decent amp simulators over it yourself. Here are some good free ones.

That's probably not much help, but then I haven't touched a guitar in my life. It does give you a lot more control over the sound, but then you still have to be able to emulate actual guitar playing in midi. Some chopped up powerchords should be doable, though.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2013 21:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Highpass filter everything, especially snares. Tune snares up a bit. Use envelope decay to cut as much of the tail of percussion samples as you can get away with. You want just the initial transients and a tiny 'psh'; just enough to help identify the different sounds. On 'plip' sounds, put a small EQ peak on the frequencies already most prominent in the sound. Or, depending on the source, you might have a filter envelope to gently caress with to put a bunch of resonance on the right frequencies to make it 'pop' literally. If you want reverb on some of the sounds, use the gated reverb approach. Leave the sounds dry otherwise.

Then try not to fill up all the gained space with overly complex patterns, obviously

# ¿ Apr 11, 2013 23:56

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

ynohtna posted:

Edit: A good trick for effecting sharp ticky percussion is to parallel process it so that one channel has just the dry transient attack, whilst the second buss is the pure sustain - without attack - that is fed to your chosen effects chain.

That's a pro tip!

I guess I could get by without transient designers by just starting off with two separate sample tracks; one for the transient and one for the sustain. That gives me the power to pick two different samples, one for each role.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2013 18:06

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

This is a percussion sound. Typical of a percussion sound is that it can roughly be divided into two sections: the transient (group) (left of the red line) and the tail (right of the red line).

The transient is the part that snaps, ticks, pops; the tail is what provides texture, space, room. If you're using a sampler, you can easily hear what each part does by increasing the attack/start position value of a sample to hear the tail or by adjusting the decay value to something small to hear the transient.

Transient Designer type processors attempt to provide control over the balance between the two. Some do this by having peak detection algorithms (like in a compressor) coupled to an envelope (like in a synthesizer), others use compressors, equalizers, perhaps even exciters in their internal processing. What they have in common, is that they differentiate between transients and tails (well, restfraction) and process them differently.

Which is a useful concept for the purposes of minimal percussion, because you can separately accentuate the popping element of the sound without affecting the tail.

The suggestion to use a partially closing gate works from the same idea. The initial transient will open the gate and pass through. Because of the fast timing and the lowering sound level, it will then immediately close. But because it doesn't close entirely, the tail will pass through as well, but severely attenuated. Thus giving you some control over the relative balance between the two by adjusting how much the gate stays open. Note that not all gates have this option. As a crappy alternative, you could prepare some samples in a wave editor, by selecting the tail part and scaling it down a bit.

The last tip is to start out with two prepared samples: one that provides the transient, the other the tail. They play the same pattern and would be perceived as one percussive sound. But should you choose so, you're free to adjust their levels individually or route them through a separate processing chain. You have ultimate control over that aspect.

The thing with reverb for example is that if you route the entire percussive sound through it, that the transient will give the reverb an almost delay-like quality (on a theorethical level). This will fill up empty space between notes with ghosts of that note, thus muddying up the empty space between notes you need for minimalist percussion. If you only route the tail part of the sound through the reverb, you severely reduce that problem and end up with a softer ambience that won't interfere with the pattern, but will just provide some space.

You could in a similar way tighten up the blurring effect distortion can have by applying it either to the transient or the tail only (depending on the style of distortion and the effect you want to achieve; snappier or crunchier). Or apply a filter selectively; higpass the tail of a snare to avoid overcrowding the low end without losing punch in the transient. The sky's the limit if you put in the work.

Now admittedly the line between transient and tail isn't always going to be that black and white and that part about the reverb is almost metaphorical, but I don't know how to explain it better. Hope it at least helps with the understanding of some of the aspects of it.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2013 00:07

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Popcorn posted:

Any tips for recreating the famous chime-like synth sound for the main melody in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence?

There's basically three sounds layered there. A wooden xylophone, a glass/bell type sound and a panflute/wind type thing. Each with their own envelope settings.

Since this song was made in 1983, I'm going to assume there's a way to actually synthesize this sound and I'm going to guess it's probably within the possibilities of a fully fledged FM synthesizer.

On the other hand, the sensible approach here is going to be finding samples or samplebanks of the aforementioned three types and layer them rompler style. Even some General Midi type soundfont would probably contain enough to make a reasonable approximation if you're not to anal about it being exact. A nineties rompler would work at least equally well.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2013 22:49

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

oiseaux morts 1994 posted:

If you're talking about the VST, then Styrus appears to be a drum machine.

I think he's talking about Sytrus, FL Studio's FM synth.

Which for the record isn't physical modeling based either.

My hunch is that physical modeling isn't involved in the pluck sound in the video, but that it is indeed a saw pluck, maybe with unison or supersaw, but I haven't had a chance to verify that idea yet.

I'll agree physical modeling is a great source for plucks though and definitely worth a look.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2014 19:57

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

wayfinder posted:

I'm currently producing a soundbank for Massive. What do you guys look for in a bank?

I don't even have Massive, but I guess I'd appreciate attention to detail in things like a couple of sensible performance controls in the macro section. Like, if you've got a pluck sound, there could be a knob dedicated to amplitude envelope decay + filter cutoff, with proper ranges set (this is a thing in Massive, right?), or highpass freq + reverb wet/dry + a touch of noise level for some trancey lead; combos like that.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2014 13:04

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Sizone posted:

Rompler, sitar patch. Serioulsy, it's sample playback with a looped portion in the middle. Wavetable synths are also -really- good for getting drones like that.

Plucked string synthesis could get pretty close too, I think. But that's by no means a shortcut, it's just another way to get a sitar-like sample.

Popcorn posted:

I just went out and bought an issue of Computer Music but I think I got some kind of special issue for morons because the CD doesn't have Zebra on it. I guess I'll look tomorrow and see if there's a "normal" edition.

Talking out of my rear end here, but maybe check out the website and see if you can download it with the help of a code in the magazine or something like that. I doubt they include everything they ever gave away for free on every cd with every magazine.

Or maybe I'm wrong about how that works.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2014 15:35

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Popcorn posted:

e: biggest mystery so far is that setting the sustain to maximum doesn't actually seem to infinitely sustain the notes.

Sustain will set sustain level, rather than sustain time.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 23:02

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Popcorn posted:

Uh... can I get it to sustain the level... over time... for as long as I hold the key?

Well, that's generally how it works. Not sure if you're reporting that you just figured that out or if you're telling me that with that preset that isn't the case.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 23:31

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Might be that Zebra presets aren't 100% compatible with Zebra|CM and weirdness is happening. Suggestions above are good though, check those first.

Popcorn posted:

e: oh wait, I think I figured out what you mean about level and not time. right, hm.

Whenever you can set some sort of fixed sustain time, that's called a hold phase in envelope parlance. Hence, if it's called sustain, it sets the sustain level.

Just general bit of trivia, because that's not what you were talking about after all.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Feb 4, 2014

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 23:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Flanky posted:

Particularly, the nasty, gated sawtooth-y sound that starts at 0:21 and the heavily automated sound at 1:32 (starts a bit earlier, but the automation really gets going around then).

I think the second sound is just the first sound with lowpass filtering and a phaser on top of it, from listening to the run-up to it.

I don't have my gear here, but it wouldn't surprise me if the main idea of the first sound consists of unison saws/squares (I don't know) through a waveshaper/clipper kind of thing.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2014 13:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I AM NOT THE MOON! posted:

The second one is the clapping sound that plays at 6m00s.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9JVLffbOG4.

Not sure what specifically to focus on in the first one, but the second one isn't too hard: layer a bunch of different claps. Offset them from each other by ~15-30ms. Just to give the illusion there's more than one person clapping. Or sample the clap from Queen's We Will Rock You and speed it up a bit, whatever

Then: bitcrush a fair amount.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2014 21:48

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

wayfinder posted:

You can probably find that XM somewhere on the net and rip the exact sample he used.

I like your thinking.

Here's a download link to the xm. I'd use SchismTracker to play/edit/rip that stuff.

And to save you some trouble, here's the sample in question converted to 44.1/16 wav. Just for the hell of it.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2014 22:28

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I'd be very interested in seeing that too, because I wanted to help out and hosed around with plucks in Synth1 all evening and couldn't get nearly that close.

Now I'm wondering if that's because of my relative ineptitude or if the filter or envelopes of Synth1 just don't allow it.

Got some pretty sweet sounds and the start of a new track in the process though.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2014 20:36

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

snappo posted:

Ah, sweet. I was just starting out from the wrong osc shapes alltogether and did no eq'ing at all.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 18:21

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

dr. blanky posted:

Probably an easy one.. I've been looking for this drum sound, I swear it's off some old drum machine but I haven't been able to find it. It's the higher pitched sound that starts within 5 seconds in this song. [video]

The free sampleset here has it. It's a TR-808 Cowbell sound.

If it sounds too crisp, maybe make it 12bit/22KHz or something or use some other trickery to simulate it being run through various stages of sampling in a hardware sampler.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 22:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

I AM NOT THE MOON! posted:

What is the name of that EQ?

Cockos ReaEQ, looks like.

EDIt: Well, don't I look like a fool.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2014 21:18

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

stickyfngrdboy posted:

Is there anything (preferably quite cheap) that can recreate the TB303 to a reasonable standard? I can't find anything with a cursory google but I thought you fellas might have some clues. I will one day purchase one but not yet. Not yet.

Check out some demos of the Roland Aira TB-3. That's as cheap and as to a reasonable standard as you're going to get, I think.

e. for hardware, that is.

e2. It's actually being slagged off as we speak in the Synth thread, so maybe ask there for alternatives.

Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Aug 4, 2014

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 21:37

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

HotCanadianChick posted:

Ignore the guy above that mentioned the TB3, they're terrible as far as 303 clones go.

It really depends on definitions of "to a reasonable standard" and "quite cheap".

# ¿ Aug 4, 2014 22:13

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Eh.

I think you're being unnecessarily harsh on the thing. It does some of the sounds okay and kits aren't for everybody.

I'm not seeing the harm in suggesting to check out some videos as I did. If it's as bad as you seem to believe, he'll go 'oh god no' on his own soon enough.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2014 01:17

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Popcorn posted:

In Daft Punk's Girgio by Moroder, how do they achieve that kind of pitched scratching sound that's linked to the drums? You can hear it really clearly around 7:50.

It's probably literally someone scratching a turntable. Sampled, manipulated for pitch, I dunno. The exact sound really depends on what record you're scratching. I vaguely remember a plugin that let you load an audio file and then let you draw envelopes that emulated your hand going up and down, but that was maybe ten years ago. Really no idea how you'd fake it.

Fuckabees posted:

Ok, serious question though. I have been struggling to get a 90s piano sound that I want to do real bad. For lack of a better term, its like the 90s house crossover piano that can be viewed in literally any video featuring white and black people dancing in black leather against a white background while someone diddles the camera zoom back and forth.

A few essential aspects to the sound: piano with a fast, bright attack. Slightly chorused and/or honky-tonk type detuned. Unrealistically short release time. Most importantly: highpassed to hell. Like anything below 400Hz should be gone. Maybe bitreduced to 8/12 bit and lowpassed under 11KHz for that vintage sampler feel (optional). If the piano you're using wasn't multisampled or only uses one sample per octave, so much the better.

Part of it is the playing style as well.

Once you've got EQ and effects chain set up, try a few different piano sounds. It works better on some than on others and it's hard to explain what you should be listening for.

Please note that in the video a sinusoidal bass is layered under the piano afterwards to give it back some of its body. The actual piano sound is pretty hollow.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 19:45

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Anae posted:

Korg M1 piano.

Figured the guy didn't have one. But then apparently you can just download the samples here. Helps to have the name.

Sjoewe posted:

All of the above, but also just sample a piano chord, throw it into a sampler and play it from there.

Also deffo this.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 20:41

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

That would be the difference between a bad guess and sheer genius. Bra-loving-vo. No arguing with that.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2014 15:57

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Crankit posted:

How do I use Synth1, I downloaded it and it appears to be some kind of plugin, what does it plug into?

A plugin host. Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) are most often vst hosts. You could take a look at Reaper, it has a very generous trial (basically don't need to pay until your conscience plays up).

It will be a bit overwhelming at the start, but all DAWs are and Reaper has plenty of beginner youtube tutorials.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2014 17:53

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Luigi Thirty posted:

Are Fairlight samples still available somewhere? I'm looking for this specific bass sample for something I'm working on. I've heard it in a million songs, but here's where it can be heard clearly. At least I'm pretty sure it's a Fairlight sample.

[video]

I just went through the bass samples of this, and it's possible one of them is it, but my preview program doesn't recognise sample loops (if they are even in there, that is), so it's hard to tell. They are Fairlight samples, in any case.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=61626

Popcorn posted:

I absolutely love whatever the synth sound is at the start of this is. Any guesses as to how it was made?

[video]

This is the sort of detuned mess I get when trying to make a FM synthesis patch from scratch, because I don't understand how it works. So maybe it's that.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 15:21

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jotun posted:

This is probably gonna be a really stupid one, but do any of you guys know specifically how Odesza might've done that main driving synth riff/effect at the beginning of "Don't Stop" that continues throughout the song?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFW_Mxefvig

My first guess was probably some kind of sample looping in reverse, but could it be a synth organ or swell or something instead? If so, is there anyone who could point me in the direction of a good synth VST/Massive instrument or something that produces a similar kind of sound, or help me figure out what kinds of settings/effects tweaks I should be looking for on instruments to move in that direction in general?

I think it might be a single long note with a tempo synced sawtooth LFO modulating the amplitude, rather than a couple of reversed notes or something.

LFO like this:

I'm also thinking that's a fairly generic organ sound below that, that should be reproducable with some kind of drawbar organ plugin, ballpark like this:

These guys have a (32 bit, Windows) good drawbar organ emulation in their free legacy donationware package at the bottom of the page, called Organized Trio. You can also easily make organ-type sounds in Massive with the Flenders or Additiv type oscillators and mixing in sines at the right intervals, but it'd take a bit more experimentation to get that same sound. I don't have Massive, so what do I know.

If you want the exact same thing, you're probably going to have to throw some effects over it that make it sound like it was recorded on tape, like gentle saturation and a mild rolling off of the highs.

Anyway, that's how I would go about trying to recreate something like that.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 12:22

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Jotun posted:

Hey, many thanks for the helpful reply! Sorry, I didn't forget about your post or anything, just got really busy with other stuff and hadn't had too much time to play around with things yet. Your method sounds like it's definitely along the lines of what I suspected might be going on, but I'm having a little trouble actually getting it working, I guess mostly because I'm not really sure how to set up something like the sawtooth LFO as an external effect over something else in Ableton (i.e. if there isn't already an effect like that built-in as one the parameters of the plug-in or something). If you (or anybody else) could go into a little more detail on how this works/how I might go about setting up something like this I'd certainly appreciate it.

I don't have Live and I'm on mobile now, so I can't do much better, but I think clip envelopes are what you're looking for. Possibly a looping one, possibly in a separate clip modulating the volume knob of the plugin in tempo sync, so you would just have to activate the clip and it would be applied automatically to all notes you play to the vst recorded in another clip.

https://www.ableton.com/en/manual/clip-envelopes/

The link doesn't contain a lot of how-to, but it will at least point you in the right direction and have the vocabulary to help you google a tutorial.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2015 11:48

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Can't do an effortpost on this, but some keywords: formant filters, vocal wavetables or sampling and looping a few cycles of a choral sound. There are vocal synthesis oriented vstis as well.

My money's on the sampling being the easiest and most flexible. There's a bunch of gregorian chants out there barely using chords, if at all, which would be a good source. You want to play with the number of cycles you need to loop to make it sound uncanny valley-like, human but not quite. In your exaples it sounds a bit grainy, so maybe granular resynthesis is involved as well.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2015 01:00

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

There are enough tape and tube emulations that you can drive into the red for that. Bonus if the tape emulation can introduce some hiss. You'd also need to do some old timey bandpassing before and after with an equalizer, probably, where the curve type will matter a lot.

Getting a vaguely similar effect is easy. The difficult thing is balancing it out so it sounds good and credible. You're never far away from overcooking it. Retro gear will sort of give you that in a package, but then with less flexibility to tune it to the timbre of your voice.

You could look into Audio Ease's Speakerphone if you want a comprehensive software solution, but like most all in stuff with this type of function, it costs a couple of hundred bucks. But then so might dedicated retro gear. It's worth experimenting with combinations of free plugins if you just want to add a subtle edge though.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 13:37

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Even though more complex envelope shapes are available on some synths, I wouldn't try to cram this into an envelope at all. This is part of the performance; the player is blowing harder and softer, you're not going to want to apply this effect to every note -definitely not with the same amount with the same timing anyway. Just enter this as automation or record with aftertouch or an expression pedal tied to the volume or something like that.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2016 11:33

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

The Waldorf Blofeld has (among others) these neat envelopes:

ADS1DS2R in the picture is showing as doing exactly that brass stab + fade in thing.

To me these pictures are self explanatory, but if Popcorn has questions; glad to add a couple of words.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 00:03

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

stuart scott posted:

In "Awful Sound" by Arcade Fire there is this super thick, warbly sound with a really long sustain that is just gorgeous and I've never quite been able to replicate. It comes in at 1:54 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bIfHnmu7dA&t=107s

It sounds like maybe an electric piano with a lot of slow vibrato maybe? I'd really appreciate any pointers.

Reminds me a bunch of what this guy calls the double band pass technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXqrJEX8r9Q

Peaaaaow. With the wah-like, formant filter like thing in the basic timbre. And then a bunch of tempo synced vibrato on top.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 15:55

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

It's the simplest two operator FM sound. The essence of it is two sines detuned from each other an octave + a couple of semitones (not sure how many) and the concept of one of the sines having a linear and the other an exponential envelope.

The third operator here doesn't do anything really significant, but can be used to enhance the click at the start if so desired. The click occurs without it if all attack values are set to zero anyway.

I've been sitting on this for a while, because I can easily recreate it (ballpark) in the FM Synth in Caustic, which is of no use to anyone, and the only other FM synth I have is Dexed, whose interface baffles me.

You can recreate this in a VA subtractive synth as well with FM on the condition that you can give both oscillators separate amplitude envelopes.

It's possible the sound was sampled at some point, but we could easily be listening to a gated noisy synth or even purposefully mixed in noise. If it was part of the sample, you'd hear the 'pitch' of the white noise change on changing notes as well. I can't tell either way.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 14:51

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 23:15

Flipperwaldt: Nov 11, 2011; Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?

Oh, Caustic is great. I just don't expect someone will be happy to switch to it from a fully featured DAW on account of a single sound.

Making a full track in it works great, but it's always working within the limitations it has. Plus you need a pretty beefy tablet or switch over halfway through to the free Windows version to actually finish something. (and then export tracks and mix in an actual DAW)

I suppose one could use the Windows version to make the sound, export it as wav and then import it into some sampler. Technically.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2016 15:44

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > No More Drake > Musician's Lounge > The "how do I (re)create a particular sound" Megathread

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