Ableton Forum

This is a small sample from a Liveset I found on Soundcloud...
http://www.sendspace.com/file/eaaue8

How would you do this? Is this coming from a sample or a synth?
If it's a synth, which one should I try to recreate it (operator, analog, massive maybe)?

Cheers for any help on this

I believe it's from this track, (that upsweeping sound at 23ish):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_40A6_Z ... ed#t=0m21s

To me it sounds like a synth and a bass kick layered. You could try for example recreating the synth sound first (how it is at the end) and then try to create the bass kick you hear at the beginning. Then just layer them.

I can't help with which synth to use, I'm sure there are people here who recognize those things too however... but my wild guess would be Massive. You can find this kind of bass kicks in the Live's "Drum machines", I think.

Yeah there happens to be a drum kick at the same time... but I only want the upsweeping sound.
I've been playing around with operators' pitch envelope and filter envelope and a saturator but I don't get the right sound as shown in the example...
Also I dunno which routing and which waveforms should be best for this.

Ah, I see... well, anyway a good starting point would be trying to find the sound that it becomes at the end. The sweep is probably generated by the synth having a side-chain compressor (listening to the bass kick). So if you can at least find a sound something like at the end of the sweep, then the sweep shouldn't be so hard to generate.

the synth sound is using oscilator sync.. so any synth able of osc sync is a start point..

one oscilator stays on pitch while the synced one get an upward pitch modulation..

the oscilator waveform seems to include noise.. but this also could have been added later..

the freq shifter plug might be used to create similar fx over samples...

Thanks for your hints, but I dunno what you mean by synced osc... two oscs with identical frequency and just one being affected by pitch envelope?

Found this by Googling:

Oscillator sync is a feature in some synthesizers with two or more VCOs (or digital emulations of VCOs). One oscillator will restart the period of another oscillator, so that they will have the same base frequency. The timbre can be altered on the synched oscillator by varying its frequency input.

A synched oscillator that resets the other oscillator(s) is called the master, and any synched oscillator that is reset by another oscillator is called a slave.

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillator_sync

Thanks.
I only see a sync button for the LFO in operator.... Or is the sync already done by activating the oscs and not detuning them/same octaves?

I just read about operator in the manual...do I need to activate R(etrigger) for osc sync or are they already in sync when set to the same frequency?

Seriously folks. On such a complex waveform, how can you tell just by ear how this sound was "probably" made. Not only you identify it as a synth sound, but even determine the number of oscillators and techniques applied??? I could think of a gazillion ways to achieve a similar sound based on my personal interpretation of it, but to figure out how the artist might have achieved it... All I could do is guess.

Based on that, my first approach would be to use a vocal sample (of a scream) and reverse it with a bit of distortion and a touch of reversed reverb applied... already, it sounds close!

am i right in saying that this sample is from a prodigy song?

Z3NO wrote:Seriously folks. On such a complex waveform, how can you tell just by ear how this sound was "probably" made. Not only you identify it as a synth sound, but even determine the number of oscillators and techniques applied??? I could think of a gazillion ways to achieve a similar sound based on my personal interpretation of it, but to figure out how the artist might have achieved it... All I could do is guess.

Based on that, my first approach would be to use a vocal sample (of a scream) and reverse it with a bit of distortion and a touch of reversed reverb applied... already, it sounds close!

maybe drive over a cat and record that ..with a little bit of chorus it should sound even closer

To make the exact sound is always a bit tricky, but if you search for some tutorials on how to create a 'Reese' bass sound (there's plenty around), that at least will get you pretty close.

It does just sound like a Reese sample/synth, but with a slight pitch decay at the tail end and some filter modulation. Sounds very 'chorusey' if you know what I mean. And there is something happening to the dynamics of the sound so maybe it's been sidechain compressed against that kick, though you could achieve that with the autopan set to 0 phase - though it will probably be easier if you do it with clip enveloping.

The base sound needs to be something with a lot of frequency content, that's why I'd suggest a Reese. Give it some distortion and phasing effects before filtering then play with the dynamics.

Here's a little live set showing you an example of what I mean:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/4kybzwnv2 ... te%208.alp
The origninal bass noise I resampled from the ReeseBassline vst taken from here:
http://vst.hotelsinus.com/

Its not exactly the same but I don't think that its too far off really

Hope it helps. Enjoy!