How do you create a "rasper" sound?

Share your favorite Ableton Live tips, tricks, and techniques.
Post Reply
mrdelurk
Posts: 471
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 8:45 am
Location: Pahoa
Contact:

How do you create a "rasper" sound?

Post by mrdelurk » Mon Jul 26, 2021 8:28 pm

Sax players have a trick where they increase the rasp (grit, growl) of a sustained note gradually to turn it into the functional equivalent of a synth riser. I'd love to recreate this pleasant rasp build-up with a synth sound, but I can't figure it how to do it. Any ideas?

If I just envelope the filter or the resonance, that only adds sizzle and whistle to the sound. What adds rasp? I tried to speed up the tremolo or the trance gate, but the frequency doesn't go high enough for the result to begin sounding like what I want. Hmmm...

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Re: How do you create a "rasper" sound?

Post by Angstrom » Mon Jul 26, 2021 9:02 pm

Sax rasp sound is an intermodulation. The sax player sings a low raspy note while they play a note on the sax. It's very like the digeridoo technique. To do it on a synth you need a low sound which feeds into your main pitched note sound.
Beyond that becomes more difficult to explain.
Look into amplitude modulation with a fast LFO, about 100 Hz modulating the amp of a sound, then raise the speed of that up to about 500hz.

mrdelurk
Posts: 471
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2007 8:45 am
Location: Pahoa
Contact:

Re: How do you create a "rasper" sound?

Post by mrdelurk » Sun Aug 01, 2021 9:45 am

Thank you Angstrom. I'm still tinkering with my "bass riser" half note :-)
Now trying to get it to resemble that growing "rrrrrrrrr" of a suspicious bulldog

Post Reply