Hello..I'd like to know how these leads are made. pretty much through the whole track but You can hear them at around 5:50.
I think it is a combination of the following, but I'm not sure .
High pass, band pass filters...High pitched notes, fast LFO rate modulating pitch, FM, maybe some portamento .. and then processed through effects, distortion etc..
Parasense makes a lot of great leads. I'm wondering what techniques they use.
ANy advice will be helpful.
Thanks
frisbeehead
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Posted : Jul 26, 2013 21:07
I don't think you need the high pitched notes. Ear piercing highs seem to come from the "FM" modulation. Try modulating the pitch of the carrier (I think) with an envelope, or make the envelope modulate the rate that an LFO is modulating the pitch. it's got some clever modulation going there and I agree it's an awsome sounding lead! don't think of the FX before getting a cool sounding patch on it's own!
if you don't get it, I'll try this one myself when on studio!
great track btw! didn't listen to this for a while!
Hi.Howz it going ?
Did You get a chance to try making these leads ?
frisbeehead
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Posted : Jul 30, 2013 23:48
yes, but felt like I didn't quite get it - at least totally!
it's certainly an FM lead and maybe what failed was - but will have to try it first (so I'm not sure), taking the "keytrack" out of one of the oscillators (either carrier or modulator) and experimenting with the keys. As I feel there's some "slow" modulation that gets faster, that's why I suggested making some pitch modulation in one of them. I bet it's something like making one follow the note you play with some pitch mod going, and the other with keytrack off.
cool thing is on the mean time we get litteraly hundreds of usable sounds... I think the synthesizer used has a very distinct character to! I'm thinking maybe Nord Lead or DX7 (the real FM deal), as both of them imprint a certain sound to FM that's tricky to get anywhere else. FM8 could be handy, will have to check, I tested this on the Virus!
nutrinoland
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Posted : Aug 1, 2013 02:12
Hi.
Not sure but I guess if You took off the Osc/pitch key track on the modulator, then the modulation speed would not change when a pitch envelope is used on it.If You are hearing a change in the rate of the modulation, its probably the carrier whose key track is off.
But there are pitch changes I hear on the lead...which would mean that the carrier is being Osc key tracked too..Unless that is coming from the resonant filter being modulated.
Why do You think key track is off on one of the oscillators ?
Yes definitely, trying to recreate one sound, leads us to creating so many interesting sounds along the way..If You can. save some patches and send them over as You come across some interesting sounds. I use a Ti snow.
I also have Discovery vst, which is an emulation of the nord. But I find that Sytrus and FM8 have a much more detailed and deep FM matrix than any of these synths.I have not used DX7. Massive also has some decent FM and Filter FM.
Alright..Lets Keep trying
Thanks.
frisbeehead
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Posted : Aug 1, 2013 06:02
yep, that's spot on! that way you get different rates of modulation by hitting different keys. listening to it again, I think fast lfo modulation of pitch may come handy - not with drastic amounts, just a touch to get the scratchy texture. will try it out tomorrow. I'm pretty sure we can nail this...
yeah, haven't tried to do it on discovery... the fm of that works very different from the virus, albino or fm8... albino could do the trick - many times it does eheh...
but I think it's down to the right key, setting the fm right - if it was dx7 it's only got sine waves on it - and some other kind of modulation. there's some filter envelope mod to, but that's the easy bit... the timbre is what's so special about it...
nutrinoland
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Posted : Aug 1, 2013 06:40
I am kinda getting close, but still not so close ...I tried a bandpass filter, but a high pass sounds closer. MIdi Playing around middle note..c5 to c6 range..medium speed LFO modulating the modulator OSC with LFO trig phase set half way so it triggers the lfo at the same point each time a note is played. FM amount 90 % ... the problem is I keep ending up with bubbly rounded FM sounds rather than scratchy. I also tried adding a bit of Noise osc to the sound.. maybe using noise as a FM modulator or some of the spectral waves as a carrier ?
ANyway..gonna keep trying. Let Me know if You come any closer.
Thanks .
frisbeehead
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Posted : Aug 1, 2013 19:03
yesterday I made some interesting sounds on Albino. Don't know how close they sound to this lead - will have to check as I got totally carried away, ended up adding kick and bass to the equation and took it for a walk kind of deal XD.
I know I had a fast saw LFO modulating pitch with a very tiny amount like +2. On Albino you can adjust the symmetry of the LFO's wave, sort like what you do with PWM, but for all the waves, you can adjust if it spends more time up or down with any wave, so I turned it left so that this pitch mod was really just scratching the waveform a bit (this is to osc1). If you're on the Virus, if you're after the DX kind of sound, you need to set the FM kind to "wave", and turn the Oscillator 1's wave to "sine" and do the same on the other one. But the rest of it is totally doable: you can adjust the contour of the waves on the LFO's or make use of the spectral waves - Howard Scarr has a little text on what "contour" does to the main waves on the "programming analogue synthesis" you can download from access's website.
Was using two filters in series: one of them an High Pass 24dB slope with resonance mid or something, some saturation there, negative polarity for the envelope mod - from highs to mid; then the low pass to get rid of the excessive harshness on the highs, where it gets almost wissle like highs, so I shave those off. I had the oscillators like: -12, +24 and was playing with c3 notes - so if you're on the c5 range, it's pretty much where it took me to, except the c3 keytrack makes fm mod much slower. Cross that grain texture mod with the fast scratchy thing and you have your timbre very close to the one on this track. Yeah, have the LFO retriggering on each note I don't know about 90% of FM amount on the Virus - I'm sure there's always like 2 or 3 sweet spots for each patch, and sometimes modulating the amount is the way to go to.
Distortion sounds cool to: specially bitcrush like distortion makes the sound mroe scratchy and in your face. Careful about the settings of course. After that it's all down to imagination I guess: we can modulate all this parameters to taste, assign them to soft knobs (if we're talking virus) or mod wheel or have envelopes change the lfo rate speed or whatever. I think getting a nice gritty and grainy fm timbre is a must: the filter envelope with negative polarity adds some movement to it (I know I automated the attack on this envelope eheh) then the other filter is making the lead sit more on the low and high mids (shaves off the excessive highs), a lot of saturation on the filters (could be static or not), the lfo with a fast enough scratchy pitch mod and that's it!
We got remarkably close in settings (both of us) so this must be the right path. I think it's down to the filter movements and the modulation can be made more alive (rather then static) with building upon this basis. We seem to have the basic timbre going with the extra buzz the lfo brings...
nutrinoland
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Posted : Aug 6, 2013 05:53
Hi.Thanks for trying to create this sound. I'm gonna keep trying to make such sounds. If You do too, then please let share the sounds and how You went about making it.
I'd love to hear some of Your work too.
I'll be back soon with more sounds,We could try to make.
Thanks
nutrinoland
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Posted : Aug 19, 2013 00:44
Hey...Howz it going ?
Try this synth..Maybe You have already...tell Me what YOu think...I'm getting some nice FM lead sounds and even nice psy bass outta this synth...and really easily !!
Vermeee
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Posted : Aug 19, 2013 03:43
Quote:
On 2013-07-26 20:08:46, nutrinoland wrote:
Parasense makes a lot of great leads. I'm wondering what techniques they use.
ANy advice will be helpful.
Thanks
of course..... he together with xenomorph were the fathers of dark trance leads. http://soundcloud.com/bgos
Vermeee
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Posted : Aug 19, 2013 03:58
there are many ways to do that sound...
you can do this with FM or with high pass filter bein quickly modulated by lfo ....and a few other ways.... but the key point of this sound is to use ur hands to do that quick dynamic which the lead is doin... the dynamic s part of the hand modulation( you can try it with the pitch , with the lfo rate, with the filter etc it depents of the synth u usin ) the texture s part of the synthesi ( be it with fm or with fast lfo )its very easy to do those kind of sounds coz all you have to do is turn the knobs in the synth....the hard part is how are you going to show this sound to the world ? staticly ? then yea is no fun at all... give dynamic and u give life.
http://soundcloud.com/bgos
frisbeehead
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Posted : Aug 19, 2013 21:37
yeah, but you can assign the lfo rate to the mod wheel coupled with pitch and whatever it is you want to modulate. gained this habit from using the Virus - assigning stuff to the "soft knobs".
frisbeehead
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Posted : Aug 20, 2013 19:24
Quote:
On 2013-08-19 03:58, Vermeee wrote:
there are many ways to do that sound...
you can do this with FM or with high pass filter bein quickly modulated by lfo ....and a few other ways.... but the key point of this sound is to use ur hands to do that quick dynamic which the lead is doin... the dynamic s part of the hand modulation( you can try it with the pitch , with the lfo rate, with the filter etc it depents of the synth u usin ) the texture s part of the synthesi ( be it with fm or with fast lfo )its very easy to do those kind of sounds coz all you have to do is turn the knobs in the synth....the hard part is how are you going to show this sound to the world ? staticly ? then yea is no fun at all... give dynamic and u give life.
I assume you're saying just a small amount of LFO>filter modulation with a very fast LFO rate. if the LFO's are capable of reaching audio range, like Waldorf does for example, the results can be even grittier.
I think very fast pitch modulation with a short amount can also produce very nice scratchy timbres to work with, again if the LFO's can reach audio range, then you're talking real FM - this is a stapple sound of the Nord Lead.
As for the movement and dynamics: many times I like to use a sample and glide LFO to modulate the filter cuttoff position a bit. We're talking mono LFO (same modulation for all the notes) and without it recycling for each note played. If you happen to have a nice arp or sequencer with nice parameters, short notes and longer ones coupled with such mod can create almost instantaneous fun with such kind of leads.
But the point you made about the "human touch" is spot on! If you react to a sound in the context, and you're sort of modulating it to sound cool for each part, then you establish a direct connection with it, you're "in the zone".
Lately I've been trying to implement this "performance" needs into the patch itself. I find that when you're turning a knob you usually need to turn another one as a response to that. The sweet spots are on the interactions between parameters. I like the idea of sliding exponentianly from one to the other and having those values locked in the modulation matrix in a way that makes sense. Even for hugely complex sounds, you can get away with the mod wheel and a knob imo!
If we're talking software synthesizers, automation can come in hand - but I usually use it for knobs that can't be assigned in the mod matrix (if there's one!), otherwise use the available performative options within the instrument.
Take a look at Howard Scar's patches on many instruments: they always tend to have some kind of performance features, like he makes use of the "aftertouch" many times. Regardless of the genre (and sounds) I think that's a very good physolophy!
And I always like people who talk about "turning knobs" eheh
let's not forget the hard sync oscillators... LFO>PW (PWM) with fast rates can also be cool of course. making good use of the "beating" between two (at least) detuned apart oscillators. On ACE you can even sync the beating to song's tempo - quite a unique feature. And the LFO's have such a huge range that I think it's a good one for this kind of sounds. Plus, sync between two oscillators is done with a knob there - from none to soft to hard sync!
Another thing: phase modulation or distortion, where possible can also produce interesting results. My Korg Prophecy has a very unique take on that - wasn't called FM on that machine so as to avoid having trouble with Yamaha that held the patent for it back then; but was a very ugly instrument made by Dave Smith with some very unique features on it.
Last but not least: FM8! Very nice envelopes for all carriers or modulators plus pitch mod and this and that - all the waves from Yamaha's most famous FM synthesizers, not just the DX7 1 and 2 but also the TX series and common analogue like waves. I bet a lot of Parasense's sounds came from the original DX7.
I don't know about 90% of FM amount on the Virus - I'm sure there's always like 2 or 3 sweet spots for each patch, and sometimes modulating the amount is the way to go to.
