Acid Percussive Sound

This sound happens a lot in Aphex songs from around the RDJ era, it's in inkey and towards the end of bouncing ball. Anyone know how this sound is achieved. It's kind of when the percussive elements take on an acidic sound, like their being run through a TB 303 or something, I dunno. Just be cool to find how this is done.

Which tracks do you mean from RDJ album? But I guess the sound you're talking about is the result of mixing an acid line (preferably with a notable percussive character ie a short decay and maybe a fair amount of resonance) with some percussive samples which sound kind of metallic. Recently I made a track featuring that kind of sound, maybe it's close from what you mean at some places : Dartz3

Maybe is the Syro track also close from what you describe?

I guess you're probably right, it is just an acid line blending well with the percussion. It was songs like 'Carn Marth' and 'Peek' that I was talking about. Those acid lines sound very unique and not like a 303 or 202 etc, any idea as to how they are made? Enjoying your song a lot! especially the rhythm of the bass. Are you just matching your basslines to your drums in rhythm and pitch? and then making slight variations now and then separate from the drums? hope that makes sense? I tend to try and achieve some kind of counterpoint with my bass and drums but maybe it would be better to keep them almost as one entity?

Antape that track is pretty hawt. I like the beat and rhythms :) Well done.

His choice of textures is very good in Carn Marth and Peek. No doubt he's just listening and mixing glitched out percussive bits with the acid. It's definitely an acquired ear for the sounds. It's easier to do that kind of stuff now. Like say, if you use a dub delay (such as the one on this website, sorry you have to dl all the vsts, they're good though http://mda.smartelectronix.com/) ona kick that has interesting upper frequencies, and you mess with the delay and feedback, the feedback can sound like acid which it's not. It's what I did on this track starting at 1:33. I am talking about the hits btw, the 'lead' is pitch bended textures that are so close together they sound like a synth patch but they're really not. They do sound like acid though sometimes.

https://soundcloud.com/evoava/chromatic-hush-very-wip

Basically it's a delay, but with the way the feedback works, it sounds like the texture is pitch bending like a mo-fo, kind of like acid. No acid patches on the track though :)

good tip brisbot! i didn't try many of those plug ins but i particularly like the "mj roto delay" by Magnus, pretty cool if you want to use pitch modulation on your delays. it also have a MS inverse option which performs a nice reverbery sound if that makes sense.

@ ceiling -> that's exactly what I did for the dartz3 track : i played with this metallic percussive sound (sampled from a recording from a John Cage's piece, I was very happy to find it!) and make it follow the melody of the acid line (well actually I did it the other way around, that's how I started the track). It was an try at doing the breaks / beats and acid line go together most of the time. I usually go more contrapuntal and it definitely worth it to go for that more straight forward sound which sometimes makes brain dancing so fun. But hey the two aesthetic are interesting and I guess you have to know both if you want to master them!

using FM will probably get you somewhere good too

hey Antape, thanks for the VST recommendation. It's always handy to have older vsts that do basic things since it saves TONS of cpu in the long run.

Didn't wanna start a new thread but I got another question. Anyone know how that bendy acid line in mangle 11 is achieved? is it just a square wave with some slow LFO on the pitch or something? I just got renoise recently (what a revelation, was using Logic before) and I was trying with using the pitch down like D1,D2,D3 and then U3, U2, U1, just wondering if that would be the best way of doing it?

Hmm, not sure I can spot exactly how this acid line is done but I don't think it only involves tb303-like "slide" pitch bends. On some notes it sounds like the note is already detuned when it starts so I think he rather used a manipulation of the general pitch of the synth (maybe live recorded Pitch Wheel? Or a lfo on the Pitch which mod amount is being tweaked live? dunno). I would say there's also modulation on the pulse width of the wave but I don't know how exactly.

Those acid lines are so full of life!..

sounds like ovecompressed short delay.

or spring reverb. thats why its so 'wet'