EKT Share Your Secrets

hello watmm. There is some good discussion in a thread about emulating a synth patch in AFX's Fenix Funk, where some people are posting screens and soundcloud samples of their attempts. It's a cool thread and I like seeing how everyone works. So, this is a thread where anyone can post their ideas for synth patches, a place where users can basically show a screen of their latest idea or a sketch of a track arrangement. This thread can include anything, really. unique FX chains, a 10 second sample of a super idm beat you slaved over, or a super simple synthesis technique. The posts can be long or short, in depth tutorials or just quickies. This is for modular synth experts and noobs alike. Hardware and software, analog and digital. Electro or acoustic is fine too (but keep it production related, instead of "hey I wrote this pop song, acoustic + vocals"). It would be fun to see how everyone here likes to work.

Think of it as Your Latest Creations Lite. The benefit is that it's easier to get people to listen to small sketches than full tracks (so this is a good place for people like me who like to work on many small ideas but dont finish whole songs. haha.) A lot of songs start from noodling with one synth or creating one drum loop so maybe this thread can provide us with some inspiration as well :) I'm no expert and I've only been doing this for a few years, so dont feel afraid if you dont have something mind-blowingly original to post. it's just a fun thread to show off in.

Here's a video I made showing how I like to tweak chorus effects to make a performance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLk67mpzr4

And here's the track I made based on this. It isn't much (just drums, fx, and strings) but I want to share it anyway.

http://soundcloud.com/iamabe/bday

Delay, shit loads of delay. And warp some shit to make drums.

lol. they track in your signature sounds like Loscil. nice work.

shit loads of delay

Today, I worked out how to make a very cheap and nasty sounding reverb: vocode with white noise as the carrier and as many bands as possible; increase the vocoder's decay; mix dry/wet to taste.

As far as I understand, vocoding with lots of bands and white noise as the carrier pretty much makes the vocoding transparent. I gather this was why it was originally invented, to make it possible to use less bandwidth for making phone calls. Turning up the decay just makes the vocoder slower to fade out each band. Not every vocoder has a decay setting, but if it does, then this produces a fairly interesting smearing/smudging of the sound that, curiously enough, does sound quite a bit like a cheap reverb effect.

For extra nastiness, you can use sample and hold for the white noise, and slow down its frequency to get pretty abrasive sounding effects, if you like that sort of thing.

if something doesn't sound right, reverse it.

loop 4-on-the-floor kick only with tons of reverb, maybe a few notes of lead, consider it done

  On 8/1/2010 at 11:30 PM, ZoeB said:

Today, I worked out how to make a very cheap and nasty sounding reverb: vocode with white noise as the carrier and as many bands as possible; increase the vocoder's decay; mix dry/wet to taste.

 

As far as I understand, vocoding with lots of bands and white noise as the carrier pretty much makes the vocoding transparent. I gather this was why it was originally invented, to make it possible to use less bandwidth for making phone calls. Turning up the decay just makes the vocoder slower to fade out each band. Not every vocoder has a decay setting, but if it does, then this produces a fairly interesting smearing/smudging of the sound that, curiously enough, does sound quite a bit like a cheap reverb effect.

 

For extra nastiness, you can use sample and hold for the white noise, and slow down its frequency to get pretty abrasive sounding effects, if you like that sort of thing.

that sounds cool. there's a book on the vocoder that i've been meaning to read. link.

Sidechaining stuff to your kick drum

Mmmmmm

I microsample parts of other songs, use a drum machine and I process them so much with effects that it sounds like a very smooth synth.

Example:

http://soundcloud.com/oliviercyr/himmenntaa

in Adobe Audition or Cooledit pro if you type negative values in for the Hz rate on the Phaser effect, you get really weird stabbing percussion sounds

in Adobe Audition or cooledit pro if you use the parametric equalizer, type a Q rate in of .01 and turn it up extremely loud. The EQ gets these interesting glassy like timbers that no other EQ i've used is capable of, you can make drone music with this baby by itself

  On 8/2/2010 at 2:53 AM, Awepittance said:

in Adobe Audition or Cooledit pro if you type negative values in for the Hz rate on the Phaser effect, you get really weird stabbing percussion sounds

in Adobe Audition or cooledit pro if you use the parametric equalizer, type a Q rate in of .01 and turn it up extremely loud. The EQ gets these interesting glassy like timbers that no other EQ i've used is capable of, you can make drone music with this baby by itself

shhh!!!! us cep/audition users gotta keep our secert weapons quiet!

Kidding...

I didn't know that about the eq. But i've experienced that with the phaser. Something about cool edit/audition, it's like a really uniquely voiced synth (ie: waldorf synths) nothing else goes quite there. Granted you may not want it for certain stuff. But yeah. Cool edit ftw.

The fft filter, and the eq with some ridiculous curves, and the dynamic eq, and the dynamic delay, and everything really. I think there's a lot of people that came into abelton/reason post cool edit are missing out on.

I still use Cool edit.

  On 8/1/2010 at 11:02 PM, iamabe said:

hello watmm. There is some good discussion in a thread about emulating a synth patch in AFX's Fenix Funk, where some people are posting screens and soundcloud samples of their attempts. It's a cool thread and I like seeing how everyone works. So, this is a thread where anyone can post their ideas for synth patches, a place where users can basically show a screen of their latest idea or a sketch of a track arrangement. This thread can include anything, really. unique FX chains, a 10 second sample of a super idm beat you slaved over, or a super simple synthesis technique. The posts can be long or short, in depth tutorials or just quickies. This is for modular synth experts and noobs alike. Hardware and software, analog and digital. Electro or acoustic is fine too (but keep it production related, instead of "hey I wrote this pop song, acoustic + vocals"). It would be fun to see how everyone here likes to work.

 

Think of it as Your Latest Creations Lite. The benefit is that it's easier to get people to listen to small sketches than full tracks (so this is a good place for people like me who like to work on many small ideas but dont finish whole songs. haha.) A lot of songs start from noodling with one synth or creating one drum loop so maybe this thread can provide us with some inspiration as well :) I'm no expert and I've only been doing this for a few years, so dont feel afraid if you dont have something mind-blowingly original to post. it's just a fun thread to show off in.

 

Here's a video I made showing how I like to tweak chorus effects to make a performance.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLk67mpzr4

that sounds great dude!

i did something similar a few weeks back:

http://soundcloud.com/ryanmcallister/tek

fucking good track!

  On 8/1/2010 at 11:30 PM, ZoeB said:

Today, I worked out how to make a very cheap and nasty sounding reverb: vocode with white noise as the carrier and as many bands as possible; increase the vocoder's decay; mix dry/wet to taste.

 

As far as I understand, vocoding with lots of bands and white noise as the carrier pretty much makes the vocoding transparent. I gather this was why it was originally invented, to make it possible to use less bandwidth for making phone calls. Turning up the decay just makes the vocoder slower to fade out each band. Not every vocoder has a decay setting, but if it does, then this produces a fairly interesting smearing/smudging of the sound that, curiously enough, does sound quite a bit like a cheap reverb effect.

 

For extra nastiness, you can use sample and hold for the white noise, and slow down its frequency to get pretty abrasive sounding effects, if you like that sort of thing.

Vocoders were originally developed to encode speech for security purposes

  On 8/2/2010 at 4:29 AM, Brandi_B said:

On every track.

  On 8/2/2010 at 5:46 AM, hautlle said:

Vocoders were originally developed to encode speech for security purposes

I stand corrected, thanks. Still, they do save bandwidth. :)

  On 8/2/2010 at 12:53 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

one rule i stick to: perfection is boring. nothing organic is perfect and to the human ear, a perfect sound (like a plain, static sawtooth wave) sounds clinical and lifeless. modulate everything subtly with lfos and/or envelopes.

 

also render multiple copies of a sequence played with subtly different synthesiser patches and effects to create a realistic and warm chorus effect. I do this all the time, layer layer layer.

hey, what's up with those vst's you were gunna share?

why can't you just upload em?

  On 8/2/2010 at 12:53 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

one rule i stick to: perfection is boring. nothing organic is perfect and to the human ear, a perfect sound (like a plain, static sawtooth wave) sounds clinical and lifeless. modulate everything subtly with lfos and/or envelopes.

 

also render multiple copies of a sequence played with subtly different synthesiser patches and effects to create a realistic and warm chorus effect. I do this all the time, layer layer layer.

These are excellent pieces of advice, thanks! The first avoids sounding like it's done on a NES (which gives you listening fatigue anyway), and the second pushes it even further in that nice, subtly out direction. If you listen to a choir or a group of violinists, they're not all playing the exact same note correctly, which is why they sound so good, the whole better than the sum of its parts.

I'm still trying to get into the habit of playing things live, and making the velocity affect something meaningful, to further add to the level of expression. Doubling these parts should make them sound richer still.

  On 8/2/2010 at 1:01 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

at the moment my free time is spent watching arrested development

At least we won't have long to wait then. <g>

you could do the same thing with an ER-1 like 12 years ago.

  On 8/2/2010 at 2:15 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

because they're not 100% tested so some may not be working correctly plus I want to have descriptions on every parameter.

ahh, i understand

  On 8/2/2010 at 2:48 PM, mafted said:

you could do the same thing with an ER-1 like 12 years ago.

this thread is just for anyone who wants to show ideas, whether or not they are new. so, don't be a jerk.