The Acid in Rushup i Bank 12/ Circlont14A?

[Brisbot]

A kind of stem off the DSP topic also on the forum. I've been wondering if anyone might have any insight into how the acid lead in Rushup i Bank 12/ Circlont14A was made, whether it be from their own experience or not.

The ONLY thing I've gotten from interviews with Richard is that it's being gated. Okay that much makes sense, but what about the timbre of the sound? How does he have so much control over it? I've tried similar things with clicks, by 'adding' on harmonics to them with dub-delays, delays, comb filter/delays, anything with feedback.

But that results in a different sound all together, as I'm sure he's making these sounds straight from a synthesizer.

[Guest Chesney]

You cannot get that variation straight from the synth unless he's got some elaborate CV shenanigans from a sequencer. I always thought it was edited from a larger jam and the melody made from snips. That's why you can never recreate it. As for the sound I thing it's just EQ'd a lot. And there is layers tightly knit to make it sound as if it's one complex sequence.

I could be way off the mark though. It's not as if anyone actually knows for sure.

[psn]

It's carefully tweaked FM with a lot of modulation going on (mainly of the FM index, I think). I also think there is low pass filtering with a bit of resonance to enhance the fullness and bubbliness of the tone, as well as tame the high frequencies and make it more percussive and funky.

 

Cirklont14A uses the Intellijel Rubicon VCO which has through-zero FM. A quick youtube search led me to a similiar bubbly/farty timbre towards the end of this video:

 

Cirklont6a has a similar tone on the bass line, and on that track he uses the DPO. This video is in the ballpark, but lacks the crafty modulation and filtering:

[Lucas]

I would also say it's FM but don't know enough different synths in that area to give more insights than psn (but intuitively I would say modulator's feedback plays its part). I'm not sure it's relevant to the thread but I found kind of similar sounds on a subsynth (Novation Bass Station 2) using a S&H LFO modulating both Pulsewidth and LPF Cutoff freq (with pretty high resonance). I use this sound in this track (the LFO modulation start to slowly fade in after 1:30). It's far from having this particular resonance and general sound character like the acid leads in those two RDJ tracks but as for the most obvious part of the sound (this random "bubbly" modulation) it brings the same kind of result to my ear.

[Guest]

[Brisbot]

I've actually pretty much got the patch dialed in, about 80%. IT was using S and H as antape said to get the bubbley, gurgly sound. Though I've been using an arp odyssey emulator to do it, I'm thinking about translating it over to FM as psn suggested, since I imagine I'd have more control over it that way. That said, I believe after the patch is dialed in or whatever, it'll require sampling/ cutting up bits and whatnot, as Chesney said.

But in the end I just downloaded the fartburpatron, which was exactly what I needed.

So everyone was right.

[Lucas]

nice, feel free to share some snippet so that we can hear your attempt!

 

while we're at it, I'd like to ask what "it's being gated" actually means. In my vague imagination of what good analogue synths can do, it means that you use the CV output of a unit to trigger an event on another machine but maybe I'm wrong or not exact? If it works like that, how is it exactly : is it so that you can make every note on of a synth or drum machine retrigger say the phase of a LFO (in this case S&H so every note on coming from the CV out would give the LFO a new random value) ? Or trigger an envelope or whatever?

 

sorry for the newbie question thanks!

[psn]

Gating usually means that once the amplitude of a signal falls beneath a certain threshold, it is completely silenced.

[Herr Jan]

Or:

 

http://youtu.be/_aRu_3WvE6c?t=30s

[Brisbot]

Sure, here's what I did yesterday. I haven't put any work into it or anything, I just made a quick thing to test the bass out as a melody:

https://soundcloud.com/evoava/2017p7

The bass starts at :30, before then is just me having fun with ring modulation.

gating is basically what psn said. You can do the gating thing with any synth, it's just that making it sound appealing requires a bit of skill, which I'm willing to bet Aphex has.

In the track in my siggy, I'm 'kind of' gating by having midi with 0 release making the formant sound "trigger" on and off quickly. That's one way ta SKIN A CAT , but I'd like to figure out how to make similar sounds straight from a synth as I'd have a whole different class of sounds at my finger tips.

The s&h is REALLY just stepped modulation, but it can be random or you can sync it up. The s&h is literally JUST the gurgling bit in the synth patch. Because the stepped modulation is freaking out, it makes the gurgley sound but what I'm missing are the upper formant-y harmonics, which makes me think I should translate the patch I got from The Oddity over to FM. IF anyone wants to try, then feel free!

IF someone has done a much more faithful bass than this please share :))

[Brisbot]

Nice video Herr Jan

[Lucas]

oooh you meant that kind of gating, didn't even think about it for some reason I thought about CV/Gate! seems pretty clear now how he used gating on those kind of acid bits on SYRO (the fast acid of Syro u473t8+e or even the gating of every instrument (on the master probably?) in Circlont6). I wonder if he triggers the gate with the classical threshold on input signal approach or uses another technique.

 

nice excerpt Brisbot, sounds pretty close already

[Brisbot]

Thanks, I think though that he may be doing micro-edits in rushup. IT also seems like he's high passing the bass with resonance. I also also think my bass actually sounds more like Shiz ko e than rushup.

[Guest skibby]

i used to think that the bubbly farty sounds were made using FM proper,but then i figured out i could get more farty results from putting a fastish LFO on the cutoff of a resonant lowpass filter. the same thing is happening though, which is phase modulation. FM is a funny word and the differences between FM and PM are almost impossible to explain. just for example, all the Yamaha FM is actually 'from-zero' phase modulation, and they named it wrong and prevented anybody else from using the term FM.

[Brisbot]

I forgot I had your PM plugin Skibby! I actually used it to good effect for a few sounds, but I was confused by the different options I had and couldn't quite figure it out based off the diagrams. I wish I had arrows pointing me where the audio signal was going. That's all I was confused by.

The fastish LFO is what the s&h is doing but it's switching very quickly between random points on the 'lfo', like using a square or pulse wave to modulate the LFO I suppose.... a pulse wave would be better to emulate the effect. There's actually a togglable LFO -> s&h option where you switch between the two, but the s&h is definitely more gurgly.

I have no clue what the difference between PM and FM is. I read about it once and didn't understand it.

[Guest skibby]

for all intents and purposes, theres not really much difference between PM and FM. especially since Yamaha patented PM as FM.

 

for the Voltage Phase Module plugin, the first algorithm uses the left channel of audio to modulate the right channel on a stereo source.

the second algorithm makes the stereo channel mono and uses channel 3 and 4, also summed to mono, to modulate the aforementioned mono sum.

the third algorithm leaves the source audio stereo, and uses channel 3 and 4 separately to each modulate channels 1 and 2 respectively.

 

best way to come to grips with the plugin is to start out with sine waves. its useful to mute the modulation source audio from the mix (while routing it to channels 3 and 4 of the track that VPM is on) if you want to hear the effect on the audio you want to modulate. its pretty much an open engine chorus modulation, that uses any other audio as an 'LFO' source. defo not a bread and butter effect, but one that i've wanted to have handy enough times that it needed to be made.

[Brisbot]

Thanks for the info Skibby! I actually tried using it again yesterday and had lots of fun with what came out!

Basically I had another channel set up to where the summed mono bit was coming out and I gated the sample and held lead from the beginning with it and came out with the section at :30 and again later on which I think sounds pretty IDM. It's private so you'll have to click the link assuming it works.

https://soundcloud.com/evoava/i-will-lick-your-soul-5/s-rADaA


This was just me jamming yesterday, it's pretty bare in places it could be dressed much more. My main goal was to explore different uses for the lead and I figured I'd use your VPM thing and I liked what I heard :).

As far as the lead goes, the one that starts at the very beginning and plays periodically thruout, since I'm using S&H on the filter, the filter IS very random, Sometimes it's resonant around the bass, sometimes in the upper registers. Assuming I wanted to use this bass I'd have to first record each variation for each note that I can and place them accordingly. I did it for a few parts, but most of the notes you hear are random.

I can't find a place on the Synth to control these parameters. So that's a bit tedious.

[awepittance]

this classic farting noise to me sounds best on a moog filter aka as the stolen arp2600 filter. Arp2600 is where i first discovered this sound in the form of R2D2 as a child (in between the bleeps and bloops there are some arp2600 filter farts)

[Brisbot]

Oh yeah, I was reading about that the other day. The Oddity, the synth I'm using, is an ARP 2600 emulator and I'm using the s&h similarly. I got some r2d2 noises at some point, from the self resonating filter in addition to the sample and hold.

[m0rb1d]

Delicious FM + delicious filter + delicious preamp distortion.

[Guest skibby]

one thing i will add is that when feeding the VPM plugin, a LPF reduces the noise ocurring from the phase changing faster than the sample rate of the project or something like that i reckon. the noise can be a used as an intentional effect tho, but i feel like its a bit in uncharted waters DSP-wise cause theres not too many plugins that exist that externalize the FM/PM mechanism as a modular entity.

[Brisbot]

Heh, again it's funny you should mention that because I did exactly that (use a LPF). Though I thought it was because the higher frequencies where producing higher frequencies in the summed mono...channel...thingy. Good to know :)

MAYBE I SHOULD GATE THE LPF UGH SO MANY POSSIBILITES.

[Guest skibby]

did you try it just using sine synths on each other on mode 2?

[Brisbot]

woops. I forgot to mention that I used fairly simple waveforms Skibby. I Used massive actually, for the modulation, and I had a wavetable which was neat. The wavetable is freaking out at that point in the track, changing its position every time you hear a new bit.

Edit: no I haven't, I will try that next time for sure.