WANTED - Crunchy Electronic sounds

[MrMackie]

Hi All. Just wanted to say what a great community you have hear!

There is an awesome amount of information and help for my R3 and ESX!, in fact too much as im spending valuable playing time surfing the forums,

Ok, Im a total Nuewbi when it comes to Synths, so my learning curve is steep so appologize for a question which may seem simple BUT....

Id like to create an electronic chunky bass/lead sound, similar to Deadmaus's - Not exactly, OR Yuksek's - Tonight (These are just examples of the sound i would like to hear out of my R3).
Ive tried messing by selecting BASS or VINTAGE BASS, then choosing one of the 8 types of preset than i thnk would make a good starting sound, then i mess about about with OSC1 & OSC2, selecting FORMANT and then adjust the parameters. I also have selected DRIVE/WS and played with setting there to try and resemble something similar to what id like to emulate, but its still missing real electronic sound that gets in your spine.

I guess my question is for those who know the R3 inside out and the type of fat bass sound im after:

Can this type of sound be acheived from standard presets + adjustments in the R3, or do i need to load in a patch that has been edited by either myself or from a download site?

Any help would be welcome. Im having fun experimenting so dont expect anyone to give me the exact answer but a steer in the right direction might just save alot of time if there is something i have to load into my R3 in the form of a patch etc to acheive this.

Cheers in advance

[tpantano]

see, nothing in a patch is set in stone... any patch can become completely different. so one method is to mod a similar sounding patch until you get the sound you like.

I prefer to start with scratch.

Anyways, for electronic sounds, use your saw and square waves, sometimes sine waves for basics. Use your decimater waveshaping, use your drive waveshaping. always set EG2s sustain to full for most electronic sounds lol. to 'digitize' a sound- give it that NES, the Sega chiptune feel- use a bit crusher, such as the R3s stereo decimator effect.

For pure sounds, you use a sine wave. For comptuery sounds that are pure with a punch, use a square wave. For textured sounds, like any rave lead, u'll need saw waves. For special effects, you play with moving filters and noise.

If you give us a specific sound, we can guide you on how to dissect it and recreate it with your R3. Link us something. Just saying 'deadmau5' is very hard to do, cause take ghosts n stuff for example. theres a whole TON of sounds in there.... phaser driven organs, portamento induced square waves, saw bass backing.... its complicated.
on not exactly, were you talking about the sound at 0:15 ?

Also, here's a VERY useful program for getting started:
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2008/ ... thesizers/

I'd do an init patch (shift+2) and get to work rather than mod patches

[MrMackie]

Thanks tpantano for your reply.

Il def give your recommendations regarding waves, sustain and decimators a go. And if there is a particular patch i can start bending that closely resembles what im looking for id be most grateful.

Regarding a link of what im after check this one. Its of the Deadmua5 'not exactly'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTcopp-mpmo

The sound id like to emulate starts at 0:30 (main riff of the tune - Not Exactly). I guess its that 'Digitized' sound ive been talking about.

p.s. the link you posted on analog synths was great!

[X-Trade]

That's definately a square/pulse wave, probably with PWM and/or a bit of chorus.

fairly low cutoff on a 24dB/o filter with a small amount of resonance - maybe somewhere in the region of 0-25. Then the cutoff is driven by a fairly snappy envelope.

Use the drive to boost it to give it a really analog sound - the sweep spot is usually around 18-28. Could be higher to give a bit of saturation and bite.

I personally use a limiter IFX or MFX on most of my analog sounds, but it's not necessary unless you're after a lot of power and punch.



Edit: I just made this patch.
In addition to my suggestions above, I used a seccond unmodulated pulse/square waveform set an octave (-12 semitones) down on the second oscillator, and a bit of noise (about 20). I don't think I used any resonance but you'll want to use some. For IFX I used a limiter and an amp simulator, but I don't think the amp-simulator was a good idea. You're better off with a slow-phasing chorus effect.
Also used drive and the 'punch' parameter to make it really kick.

It is definitely a PWM sound.

I only used Filter1, set to LP24 (24 decibel per octave low pass/moog type filter)

[MrMackie]

Cheers X-trade, il give those settings a crack when the working day is over!

[Timo]

Definately a load of decimating happening in a lot of Deadmau5/Yuksek stuff. Radias/R3 has decimator available at the waveshaping stage, and also as an effect insert too. You could even try digital clipping (hard clip waveshaper), which can sound good in a Deadmau5' type context.

Mild distortion on bass and lead lines too, lends a slightly grittier dynamic compression element to them. Try the multi-band distortion if you can. Allows you to attenuate or increase distortion and heavily sculpt the sound with full parametric EQ to accentuate various bands of frequencies. The Cabinet Simulator (guitar amp modelling) effect can give you a really grungy, heavily sculpted sound too that could fit right in the mix along with drums.

I think Deadmau5' stuff would sound strange if you soloed various parts, but actually only comes together when it's all mixed.

[MrMackie]

Keep it coming guys, this stuff is fantastic! and has realy helped me to fast track and understand certain synth elements and get to where i want to be.

Having a guitar back ground and mainly into rock music many moons ago, i used to diss synth/dance music (shame on me!). How ive grown since then,

I use my electribe ESX for the beat side of things so not realy soloing the synth at the moment.

Thanks again guys for your valuable time and help. Thumbs up

[darthballs]

+1 thanks for all the tips.. I'm still pretty new at the whole patch editing (R3 defaults are awesome sounds and I haven't found a need for much tweaking), so this all was very useful

[tpantano]

Having a guitar back ground and mainly into rock music many moons ago, i used to diss synth/dance music (shame on me!). How ive grown since then,

dude.... all music is the same deep down

take any pop song for example, then try to hear the song without the vocalist... it's always a trance tune, or a nice house beat

as for rock, rock and electronica are the two best genres and when you combine them you get MGMT, Muse, etc.

just listen to songs some times, you'll see that genres are a lot more similar than you thought.

the generally 'ambient rock' group coldplay's song talk is pretty much the same as electronic band kraftwerk's computer love for example

[MrMackie]

dude.... all music is the same deep down

take any pop song for example, then try to hear the song without the vocalist... it's always a trance tune, or a nice house beat

as for rock, rock and electronica are the two best genres and when you combine them you get MGMT, Muse, etc.

just listen to songs some times, you'll see that genres are a lot more similar than you thought.

Ditto Tpantano.

When I said that was 'many moons ago' im talking 20 years + The collaboration of Rock & Dance music i.e. MGMT/PNAU etc are great modern day examples.

Go back to 88' when I was going through uni and you’ll see the distance and attitudes between rock and dance allot greater than what they are today. Thank goodness for progress in a person’s attitude towards music!

You will always have an undertone from certain musicians (Guitarists, Drummers etc) who believe electronic music (i.e. Synth/Drum-machine dance) is not really music. I share company with members from some local bands around town and some of them still have this negative attitude today.