Effect you use to make digital sound more organic

Unless you like the sound of your digital VST what effects do you guys use to make a digital wave or clip sound more analogue or even organic?

I dont like the clean cut sound Im getting.

then buy some analog gear

  On 11/17/2011 at 10:41 PM, chassis said:

Unless you like the sound of your digital VST what effects do you guys use to make a digital wave or clip sound more analogue or even organic?

 

I dont like the clean cut sound Im getting.

Very subtle overdrive with a lowpass filter to roll off some of the harshness is a good start. I also like to put the whole track through a subtle, slow (~0.5Hz) pitch modulation to produce a slight warped/psychedelic sound.

One other technique I've used in the past is to record the sound of the track being played through speakers (perhaps with a decent mic, depending on how lo-fi you want it to sound) and then mix that recording in with the original, sounds pretty great. Really good with highly artificial sounds--I did it with a super-digital sounding noise track, it made it sound like the noise was actually being generated by some kind of machinery.

Record it to tape, cover tape in dirt, moss and manure

  On 11/17/2011 at 10:51 PM, sirch said:

then buy some analog gear

Ye with the money that comes out of my bowls.

  On 11/17/2011 at 11:19 PM, modey said:

  On 11/17/2011 at 10:41 PM, chassis said:

Unless you like the sound of your digital VST what effects do you guys use to make a digital wave or clip sound more analogue or even organic?

 

I dont like the clean cut sound Im getting.

Very subtle overdrive with a lowpass filter to roll off some of the harshness is a good start. I also like to put the whole track through a subtle, slow (~0.5Hz) pitch modulation to produce a slight warped/psychedelic sound.

One other technique I've used in the past is to record the sound of the track being played through speakers (perhaps with a decent mic, depending on how lo-fi you want it to sound) and then mix that recording in with the original, sounds pretty great. Really good with highly artificial sounds--I did it with a super-digital sounding noise track, it made it sound like the noise was actually being generated by some kind of machinery.

Ive actually the mic thing before, I quite liked the result. I think my mic is fucked now though.

  On 11/17/2011 at 11:20 PM, Dan C said:

Record it to tape, cover tape in dirt, moss and manure

I don't have a ready source of manure, will my own shit do?

I used to record to tape and record back I sounds nice in my experience.Also as stated you cant go wrong with recording it from the speakers and using that as a type colouring along with the actual track.

  On 11/18/2011 at 12:15 AM, chassis said:

  On 11/17/2011 at 11:20 PM, Dan C said:

Record it to tape, cover tape in dirt, moss and manure

 

I don't have a ready source of manure, will my own shit do?

Only if you eat 100% organic food.

Digital sounds lovely, why would you do that to digital

But yeah, it's easy to get the stereotypical wobbly scratchy sound with digital, but there's a certain "fullness" to analog synths which is harder to replicate (and really that sounds like it would be nice but I find in most tracks it's just too dominant to be practical compared to its digital brethren). Filters might do the trick for you. I find digital through an analog filter takes on that sorta organic "real" sound, & analog through a digital filter takes on the thin ethereal sound of digital without losing its trademark wobble.

edit: for reference, this is digital through an MS-10 filter:

http://soundcloud.com/cryptowen/lambent-vector

and this is MS-10 through a digital filter:

http://soundcloud.com/cryptowen/a-big-wobbly-cube

  On 11/18/2011 at 12:47 AM, Cryptowen said:

Digital sounds lovely, why would you do that to digital

 

But yeah, it's easy to get the stereotypical wobbly scratchy sound with digital, but there's a certain "fullness" to analog synths which is harder to replicate (and really that sounds like it would be nice but I find in most tracks it's just too dominant to be practical compared to its digital brethren). Filters might do the trick for you. I find digital through an analog filter takes on that sorta organic "real" sound, & analog through a digital filter takes on the thin ethereal sound of digital without losing its trademark wobble.

 

edit: for reference, this is digital through an MS-10 filter:

 

http://soundcloud.com/cryptowen/lambent-vector

 

and this is MS-10 through a digital filter:

 

http://soundcloud.com/cryptowen/a-big-wobbly-cube

I really like the 2nd one.

Once again I'm gonna point to my EP 'Galaxy of Moving Objects' as a reference:

http://pselodux.bandcamp.com/album/galaxy-of-moving-objects

This was entirely digital, I used a couple of the techniques I mentioned earlier in the thread. Except for the room recording trick. So it was entirely digital processing, and in my opinion it sounds pretty analog in places (particularly tracks 1 and 3). Part of it is due to the amazing Saturn plugin in Buzz, it has a range of effects for dirtying up the sound.

kinda a weird topic. but maybe I'm taking the header too seriously. Do you mean organic as in alive like a plant, or simply that you don't want stuff to sound digital, more analogue?

I think, trying to trick listeners into thinking a sound is from an analogue source rather than a digital one is not too difficult, depending on the sound of course. A mono bass line for example is a pretty easy illusion, a complete mix is something very different.

with synth parts I think part of the illusion is being consitent in the reproduction. what I mean is, simply adding some oscillator drift so a massive patch or whatever might sound kinda right, but you get much better results if you try to be more specific.

For example, say you're trying to get a rolling acidy type bass line, like a 101. You might want to use the architecture of that synth as the basis for your patch. Look at what features that synth has and limit yourself to those. what type of filter, oscillator shapes, tuning options etc. Also think about how that synth can be sequenced and what behaviour you can expect from it.

I guess you could compare it to trying to program realistic sounding drum beats. You wouldn't for example have 3 toms being hit at the same time, as no drummers have 3 hands.

take this same approach with each step of the chain. How would that piece of hardware be connected to your computer/mixer, what kinda gain structure your mixer has, any effects in there? Also think about the eccentricities of the kit your imagining, line hum, noisy power supplies, inaccurate pitch wheel. it all adds up to making that illusion complete.

using 808 samples is a really good example of this actually. have heard so many times people using 808 samples to make beats with, and it's immediately noticeable since the beats are not programmed in such a way that a real 808 would play.

I think if you're consistent and clear about what you want to achieve, you can easily get something which, when in with the rest of the mix, is indistinguishable from the real thing.

as for making things sound organic, I guess if you mean like they're from the real world, rather than inside yr computer, there's loads of little tricks. as a couple people already mentioned, recording the speaker output with a mic works well. You can gent similar result by being clever with a reverb. even using some old school panning and filtering tricks can give sounds a bit more life. I suppose in the same way as thinking about how actual synths work can help you emulate them, thinking about how your ears work can help you to trick them.

i've been playing around with throwing an entire track (like one track in a project, not the entire song) into a sampler and playing it from start to finish while subtly modulating the pitch bend. if you do it fast enough you start getting this really lofi sound that is just awesome. that and throwing a compressor on top sidechained to some random track that's not actually playing through the master. with the right attack and decay settings you can get some very quick pumping that comes out very organic sounding imo.

  On 11/18/2011 at 5:58 AM, ryanmcallister said:

that and throwing a compressor on top sidechained to some random track that's not actually playing through the master. with the right attack and decay settings you can get some very quick pumping that comes out very organic sounding imo.

I usually get that effect by running a track through multiple light amplitude modulation effects, in series, and each at a different speed. Very good for psychedelic effects on a string sound, imo.

I think the simplest answer would be to take things off the grid. Once you are happy with your sequences turn off quantization and zoom in plenty to subtly shift things around by hand. If you have tons of repeated one shots, it couldn't hurt to give each one a unique volume envelope.

PSP vintage warmer

TechDiff is right, you have to build your project from the limits of analogue gear from the ground up - not the other way around. So start off by learning the characteristics of the gear/sound you want to emulate, then carefully reproduce it as good as you can.

To make everything sound less clean and perfect, just introduce many subtle elements of instability. Tweak your oscillators' pitch veeery slightly to simulate pitch drift. Use samples of acoustic instruments in ways they weren't intended, so they don't sound like identifiable instruments, but they do retain the instability of pitch and timbre. Tweak other things very slightly too, such as the filter's cutoff point, the envelope generators' settings, anything and everything. Just make sure that you're always changing at least one or two settings of each patch constantly, so that everything's always subtly evolving, never static. This is simple enough to do in both software and hardware, and adds quite a bit of character and charm to a piece of music.

This is why it amazes me when some people into analogue gear say they don't like MIDI because the timing's not good enough. As far as I can tell, the charm of analogue gear is precisely that it is slightly unstable, just enough to pick up on subconsciously. Some music sounds good when perfect, but most music sounds better when it's slightly imperfect. It makes it more human, more expressive, more emotional... and for most music, making an emotional connection between the musician and the listener is the very point.

Running the signal out of the computer & back in through a good old fashioned analog filter helps a bunch.

I use to have a 1/4" reel to reel that would allow monitoring off the tape head & that was nice - I could run the signal out of the computer, into tape machine, then send the signal back into the computer - all in one step. So, if you wanted to modulate the tape reels to get that sound, you could do it in real time & listen to it with the whole song playing.

That effect is kind of limited to though - you can only do that trick so many times. But try running your signal through just about anything old - play with the input volumes & see if there is a magic spot where the circuit starts to open up.

Get dirty.

I really don't think sequencing to the limits of what old hardware would be capable of is a good mindset for making your music sound more warm, smooth and lively? That's different in my opinion, just like having dynamic velocities and having grooves off the grid a bit in the pocket makes your music sound more humanistic but that doesn't mean it will sound any less sterile from turbo digital sounding production.

i like the idea of organic sound more than analog sound, as in making things blend together, change and be abit erratic and alive. you can't change the 1's and 0's into an analog signal (yet), so it's never really analog, but you can make the sound as organic as you wish. pitch drift, 12db or 6db filter (the lower the pole the smoother the filter will be, this works well for subtly smoothing out the treble), reverb with low size and decay but high wet, very subtle chorus/phasing/distortion. virtual tape hiss goes a long way. some of the most interesting audio comes out of completely wrecking the sound, and there's myriads of ways to go about that. adding hiss, background noise (maybe even sidechain that background noise in fun ways), everything to make the sound flow like waves rather than static bits of audio, which essentially is the difference between analog and digital but on a larger scale than we're usually talking.

for some reason shitty sampled audio sounds believably old school, so there's that too.

Pretty sure this will help you learn how to 'PUT SOME STANK ON IT'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wlI4BPTcIw

  On 11/20/2011 at 1:15 AM, chimera slot mom said:

for some reason shitty sampled audio sounds believably old school, so there's that too.

Yes, it doesn't really matter if something's analogue or digital. If an effect is extreme enough, it's going to colour the sound in some way, leave its own distinctive mark. This applies to bitcrushing (such as unintentionally done in old school samplers and trackers) as much as to the kind of smearing of sound you get with low speed tape. If you want something to be coloured in a distinct way, then old, cheap equipment will help with this. Curiously, the reason the SID chip sounds so good is both how well it was designed and also how cheaply it was made. These things are interesting and distinctive because they're imperfect.

The only problem with purposefully invoking an old or cheap aesthetic is that it's essentially the electronic musical equivalent of what hipsters do with photographs, purposefully using old cameras so that things such as the frame number and bleached out look are part of the photo's style itself. I still can't tell whether this is a bad thing or not, but I like the sound of equipment that can't quite keep up, and I guess whether it sounds good is all that matters, so it's probably nothing to be ashamed of. Probably.

The opposite method being to use the latest technology, which doesn't impose its feel or character on your work at all, but I guess that leaves the creator of the work feeling exposed, naked and cold.