Trying to recreate this FM lead sound...

[willrjmarshall]

Hey guys!

The title explains it all, really.

There's a track by Neurodriver that has a specific acid/FM lead sound I think is the most AMAZING thing in the universe. It's a sound I hear in psytrance a fair bit: but I have absolutely no idea how to get something similar.

I've spent a lot of time trying to work it out, but I've made no progress.

Does anyone know how I might produce a tone that sounds something like this?

The effects and the notes are easy, it's just the "tone" of the lead sound that I can't recreate.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3533944/Acid...Sidewinder.wav

(I have a Virus TI Desktop)

Thank you!
-W

[TweakHead]

Hey there,

I can't test it right now...

But two sine waves (try semitone values for the second) and Fm type in "postri" is a good place to start, also High pass filter with some envelope modulation going and some resonance to... you can try adding some ring modulation to...
and the good old sub osc to taste... and you'd be pretty much there already...

almost forgot! try and sync the oscillators to!

good luck! (and the sound you posted sounds like a virus to me...)

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Publi...mp3?w=1dca963f

you can get a lot of those, fairly easily - that was done with albino here on the laptop I also like those a lot eheh

[willrjmarshall]

Hey man,

Unfortunately your example link is borked

I have a copy of Albino - would it be possible to toss me the patch so I can poke around and transfer it across to the Virus?

I've been playing around with FM a lot, but it's not working as well as I'd like. I'm getting sounds that are similar but much more "buzzy" - they lack the "ripping" sound I'm looking for.

Any thoughts on that?

[boreg]

Originally Posted by willrjmarshall

I've been playing around with FM a lot, but it's not working as well as I'd like. I'm getting sounds that are similar but much more "buzzy" - they lack the "ripping" sound I'm looking for.

Any thoughts on that?

You're right, FM on Virus quickly turns into noisy mush
The trick is to do FM on a synced oscillator.
(IIRC, I learned it from 'killer leads' tutorial by Cosmosis. Anyway, it's been a real mind opener, and made FM actually useful for me!)

[willrjmarshall]

Originally Posted by boreg

You're right, FM on Virus quickly turns into noisy mush
The trick is to do FM on a synced oscillator.
(IIRC, I learned it from 'killer leads' tutorial by Cosmosis. Anyway, it's been a real mind opener, and made FM actually useful for me!)

Syncing the oscillators makes a big difference. I'm getting close, but I'm still producing things that are more metallic-sounding and less liquid.

It's surprisingly tricky. Hmm.

[namnibor]

Originally Posted by TweakHead

Hey there,

I can't test it right now...

But two sine waves (try semitone values for the second) and Fm type in "postri" is a good place to start, also High pass filter with some envelope modulation going and some resonance to... you can try adding some ring modulation to...
and the good old sub osc to taste... and you'd be pretty much there already...

almost forgot! try and sync the oscillators to!

good luck! (and the sound you posted sounds like a virus to me...)

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Publi...mp3?w=1dca963f

you can get a lot of those, fairly easily - that was done with albino here on the laptop I also like those a lot eheh

I do not have a Ti, but do have a KB and KC, however, this sound is easily emulated by my Waldorf Microwave XT using FM on one osc and an obvious "vowel-based" sine a few semi-tones off with perhaps ring mod routed to aftertouch. Seems there' a dash of glide. However, not sure if it is unison. But there's definitely a HP filter going on by my ears! Will try later today on KC and/or KB. I mentioned this because your Ti indeed has wavetables and that vowelish sine wave very well could be found in your wavetables as well. A little bit of FM goes a long way...kind of like when using salt to cook with--less is best and only very gradually add more. Peace!

[TweakHead]

Yes, there's some High Pass filter going on for sure. The juicy movement of it can come from filter envelope modulation combined with a fair amount of resonance on the filter. And nothing prevents you from running two filters in parallel: a low pass filter could remove part of the metal hiss of the sound...

But what I think is important here is so find the right pitch relationship between the two Oscilators to begin with, then the FM amount parameter is obviously important. Sync makes the sound much more precise in a synthetic manner.

So you should get pretty close to what you're looking for with just sine waves, really. Work on the oscillator two semitone, try different keys on the keyboard and see what happens, with a reasonable FM Amount - or go crazy and push it all the way and really listen to what happens when you move the oscilator 2 semitone knob up and down.

Then listen to what Ring Mod does, you can even turn the volume of all oscillators down completely - and maybe should if haven't before, and notice one modulates the other sort like if there was an LFO going on.

For the sound we're talking about here, you can use this to get more grit.

Sub Osc I think is also important to give some body to it... And it somehow just blends togheter nicely on the virus...

I wouldn't even mess with unisson before getting the right timbre and filter settings...

Yeah, I can get you a patch for albino latter on, for sure...

Cheers

[willrjmarshall]

Hey guys!

Thanks to your wonderful advice, I've managed to get something in the ballpark: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3533944/Liquid%20Acid%20FM.aif

(I actually made this on Albino since I was away from the studio, but whatever).

It's very close: but not quite "thick" or "liquid" enough, although I think part of that might be psychoacoustic effects from the pad sound in the background. Changing around the FM and tuning doesn't make much of a difference at this point: I seem to have found the sweet spot.

Does anyone have any tips on how I could nudge what I've got even closer to my reference sample? I'm guessing that the next stage is probably fiddling with the highpass envelope and maybe some EQ work.

More than anything, I want to sanity-check that this sound is "close enough" before I start doing post-synth work. I often jump too soon to the EQing/compression/distortion phase of sound design, instead of really perfecting the sound at the synth itself.

[namnibor]

I listened to your new sound over and over while comparing with original in first post in thread. I think you are *close* however, your posted creation sounds notably more "metallic" and am thinking it needs some low pass filter to "warm it up" save from any other words brain can come up with. I certainly do not claim to be any guru expert either, just another person that likes to delve deeper than most in designing sound. What I wanted to suggest is mentally think of what a "MOUTH HARP" mixed with clavinet with resonance turned-up....that's what I at least am hearing in your new created sound, if that helps at all. Did you take Tweakhead's suggestion and use filters in series and/or parallel? Hope this collectively helps with other's posts! I hope too, that you do not take this as criticism, as is not my intention.
Absolutely LOVE this forum as have been reading everything from past postings and hope to get same great assistance when needed on this end!

[namnibor]

I should have added the original sound definitely sounds like there's some sample and hold/ring modulation going on, especially when in original when there's a slight holding of an eighth or dotted eighth and was only reason I thought having that routed to after touch/key pressure....just a thought!