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-- how to make this particular sound... (gated pad)

how to make this particular sound... (gated pad)

hello every1... this is pineda from mexico city... i've been browsing this forums for some years but never really thought of signing up... but i can pretty much say im used to this place already...

so ill be postin here from now on. trying to learn and help as much as i can.

so here's my first topic... im desperate about trying to recreate this sound...



the very first one... the gated pad/lead... i've heard this sound a thousand times... and i think it must be some hw synth preset, but i got no hw yet so i could not tell for sure.

the very first time i heard it was in Paul oakenfold's southern sun like 10 years ago but i wasnt into music production as much as i am now...

so far i've tried fm synthesis and subtractive with no success... and i even tried microdelay with no success either...

i know how to gate sounds... and in general i consider myself good in synthesis. but i just cant get this metalic texture which i'd love to explote in the form of new sounds..

any clues will be appreciated


greets from mexico!

Set up three or so sine-wave oscillators and space at least one of those oscillators up one octave.

Use a square LF oscillator sync'd to 1/2 (maybe 1/4) with depth at 100% and route it to control the amplitude. Set the delay on the oscillator so that it starts after the keys have been played for a whole note, or so.

Set the attack on the ADSR envelope controlling the filter, which should be Low Pass, high. Set Decay to 100% but tweak it suit the sound. Set Sustain to around 65% and set Release to nil. Depending on the synth, you may need to monkey with this.

Attack on the amplitude control envelope should be set to about 30%, Decay to 100%, Sustain to around 75-80%, and release to nil.

That should give you a functional starting point to develop that sound.




Return with results.

no success like that... it doesnt sound as metallic...

anyother suggestion?

Try sync'ing or ring modulating one of the sine oscillators with a saw-tooth. I'll try and replicate it, tomorrow, on one of my synths, just for giggles.

here are two more songs that use this texture...

both are old songs... like i said this sound is not new...





and the aforementioned:




thanks for any help...

bump!

Well it's deffo a gated saw.

You'll also need to filter it with either a high pass filter or a band pass filter to give it that "thin" sound. Experiment with cutoff and resonance to suit the sound.

Then try messing with reverbs, they can add a lot of metalic sounds to things.

thanks for your response... im gonna try saws again... the first time i got no success...

never the less i isolated the sound and by looking at the waveforms you can tell it doesnt have a sawish waveform..


here i place 2 pictures of what im talking about

bump

you have your answer.

saw pad volume going on and off. Cut down on the siestas and try harder.

quote:

Originally posted by Mad for Brad you have your answer. saw pad volume going on and off. Cut down on the siestas and try harder.

im gonna quit on the siestas and you should quit being a white trash...

i already tried all given answers and it wouldn't work.

help or gtfo would you?

well perhaps this sound is not within your reach for the moment. Try again next year.

quote:

Originally posted by Mad for Brad well perhaps this sound is not within your reach for the moment. Try again next year.

could as well just be...

im gonna try harder anyways...

Hi Pineda,

My first post on the forums too

I'm trying to replicate this gated sound from scratch. This is what i came up with so far after 1 hour of work:
Download Link

Let me know what you think of it, it still needs some fine tuning. I can tell you for sure this sound is composed of 2 elements, one pad and one gated sound (which is created from static waveform). The pad im not sure, thats a difficult one.

If you like it i will post more stuff on how i started, for one thing, listen carefully to the sound you want to replicate, and listen to it over and over again

hey it sounds in the right direction...

would you explain to me how to achieve that sound?

Thanks.

I'll try to explain it as good as i can. I used fruityloops btw and 2 layers of the VSTi Sytrus (FM synthesizer), although i rarely use the FM capabilities of sytrus. Anyway it doesn't matter the principle is the same.

First you try to hear what kind of sound(s) are used. What mostly works for me is to analyze the waveform (which you already did, thats good), this will give you a raw picture of what it looks like. Next you repeat the sound over and over again, this way its almost as if you hear the sound more clearer.
At this point i realized a fat EQ'ed noise waveform is used as a stutter (gated) sound. The second sound you can hear clearly is the pad more or less as a background sound.
A frequency analysis is also usefull and important, mostly you can do that by ear.
Moreover you can hear a sidechain is used, a panning effect and some delay/reverb. Later i realized an inverted sidechain is used, which makes it a gated sound again..

Okay time for some practical information:
-Create a noise waveform, add a volume envelope on it with full attack, and make it mute after a short time (to create the stutter-effect).
-Apply a BP (bandpass filter), route that filter to a LP filter and then to a HP filter. The LP/HP combination is also used as a raw EQ to finetune it more.
-Apply a WaveShaper effect to distort the noise.
-Apply a Chorus to make the noise more rich.
-Apply unison with only phase/vol/pan modulation for the voices.
-What finally did the trick for the noise, is to add an EQ and crank up the mid-frequency's (1K .. 2K) and cut the low and high frequencies. Listen to the sound again to match this as good as possible!
-Next add a reverb and delay and use it subtle with little feedback for the delay and little decay for the reverb.
-Lastly add a balance and control it using a LFO with a square wave. Preserve the stereo with a stereo shaper or any other plugin.

For the pad:
-As you can hear this one is difficult to reproduce. I used 4 oscillators with custom wave shapes based on sine waves. Make sure all oscillators are one octave higher to get the frequency right.
-Use a gentle envelope (rapid buildup, slow decay/release).
-Get a rich sound using chorus, unison, reverb and delay (again, listen to the sound in those songs you provided and try to reproduce).
-Finally the EQ did the trick to make it sound more like the sound in those songs (some ppl underestimate how important an EQ is ).
-Make a chord with 3 notes from C4 to C5 octave.

Make the pad and noise play together. Now apply a gate (control the volume of the pad with the volume of the stutter. I used the formula:

0.3+(Input*4)

The 0.3 is just the start-volume for the pad. The multiple of 4 for the input value is because the volume of the pad is quite low, so this makes sure the volume of the pad is almost equal to the volume of the noise.

Oscillators for the pad i created:


Envelope for the noise:


Unison, EQ and Matrix for the pad:


Let me know what you got, if you need any help let me know, i will respond tommorow.

Goodnite (its late atm here)

-SuicideFunky

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