DRUMS
Note: before drum programming with mono read this:
MNM oscillator properties:
When VA appears in 1995 this was the ultimate feature to have ina synth, because “each notes sounds different than the other, like in a real analog”
I checked it and found that even true the change isn´t that bad as you can´t use the mono for drums...I hate my kicks phasing and loosing attack but having a good and stable kick out of the GND-SIN machine isn´t big deal.
Other synths like the nord modular (G1) has free running oscillators too and is very difficult to make a solid kick that don´t oscillates and loose attack in a cyclic way. In this synth I use the LFOz as oscillators because you got note.on retrigger as an option in some of the LFOs
In the MD you can hear some little oscillation (phasing) in some kicks too (TRX-B2),It isn´t that bad because the heavy and pronounce ramp and the “tick” attack mask the phasing. Try a 4×4 kick on that machine and remove all but the basic tone and you could hear what I´m talking about
808 style:
You can get a reasonable result by using the GND-SIN machine :trig a low note, set the hold / decay parameters suitably & I think I’ve also used an LFO on PITCH set up several octaves, to be trigged on each hit to get the MD-type ‘ramp’. Its a fairly ‘soft’ kick,but nice & low & boomy.
I didn’t mention the GND sin but I tried it too, the most simple way to make that sound, but the main “problem” is that the kick is quite soft. I’ve tried to use the envelopes and the filter to make it more punchy but it get “clicky”, a click made by the env. I’m trying to do it with FM but I think the main problem is caused by the env section that is good for synth sounds but not for percussive synthesis, so even with FM will be quite problematic, I should understand how to set the envs right...to be punchy but not clicky. Even the snares ( made with the gnd-noise) are not so snappy, that’s caused by the env. I Try a light dose of exponential curve on EQG and/or vol for added punch. The filter page is key with drums, tweak the attack, decay, BOFS and WOFS.
I agree with you that FM machines are very good at percussive synthesis… I tried from the beginnig messing with the filter, as I do on my MS20, get the Q to the top and play with the env amount. The result was a good powerful “909style” kick but with a kind of oscillation that turns every kick a bit different... quite unstable.
Try some layering to get some attack, thats the classic way to create a full drum hit. Maybe add some filternoise, and or some fm attacky to the sin.
I’ve used the “cross-trig” function to play two sounds with a track but the problem is not the harmonic content but the clicky/fluctuant sound... If I use the sin the sound is quite clicky , but I cannot get the click off cutting the freq with the filter, cause the click is produced by the env, is not generated by the oscillator.
My conclusion is that you can produce rhythm sounds with the mono, but they need external processing or sampling for a uniform kick, as its difficult to get a consistency between the different triggers in a sequence (eg same bass drum, same settingsm, slight variation in sounds over a bar).
I focused on getting the Q high to achieve the most powerful/rounded Kick but I was quite wrong. Using the Square or the TRI wave and using the EXP LFO(full amount on the volume parameter) instead of the amp env I got the sounds punchy and not clicky, and for the Kick instead of Q at full amount the Qs are at zero, and the kick is SOLID and STABLE! the speed of the EXP must fit the lenght of the env but a bit faster so the click does not appear and the sound is more punchy. I used a too slow LFO to get this result..
Using the SID with a TRI wave (as oscillator), wdth turned to 0 and the HPQ to 0 LPQ to 127, wofs 36 and decay 43, LFO1 →amp-vol →trig one , wave EXP, speed (as you like) , dpth 64 (THIS IS THE KEY TO GET THE PERCUSSION PUNCHY!!!) LFO2 →filt-hpq →trig one , wave saw, mult2, dpth 55 LFO3 → amp-dist →t one, wave sqr ,mult 2x , dpth 64
Playing with the env, the Qs and the speed of LFOs you can obtain a great variety of kicks.
using the same settings but; the LPQ turned to 0 filter dec 100 , wofs to 25 , the kick has a more harmonic feel- more 808 I forgot to mention that the amp ahdr is : 0 0 64 0 and dist is 0 and vol is 64.
SNARES
Id say the SID and GND noise machines are your friend for these (along with the bbox snares which you can tweak into nice sounds). If you don’t mind using 2 tracks for a snare then layering a combination of these is an option too. If you param lock a SID machine you can make a bass and snare on the same track, providing of course you dont want a long decay on either sound.
(In fact if you get the filters right for the Bass drum Im pretty sure you can get a nice kick with the GND noise too...)
Interesting and digital lo-fi snares could be created by using the SID machine I was trying to get some equivalents of analog snares but using more digital texture ti get something like the synthetic drums in some early digital home organs, like casio VL-1, SK-1 and the like. So I use the classic model of a short tuned spike attack followd by a noise burst with longer decay If you use an exponential decayed LFO in on-shot mode to modulate the wave of the SID you get a sound that could go from the triangle wave to the noise one very quicly, so this makes a really close aproximation of the model I described... Try move the speed and depth of the LFO to get more “membrane” or more “snare”...you can further process them with both filters to make a more restricted band of noise.
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— tIB 2009/01/12 01:52//
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