Help identifying keyboard sound?

[jmwilkes]

Hello!

I don’t know if I am doing this correctly, but I have been needing help with this for a while and thought I’d try here. There is currently no instrumental/karaoke version of the song “You Have Loved Enough” by Leonard Cohen, from his album Ten New Songs. It has a really catchy, beautiful keyboard riff between each line of the lyrics. However, I can’t seem to find a keyboard/synth sound that recreates this! 

Any ideas? Help is much appreciated!

[guitargo25]

to me it sounds like a sound almost any analog modeling, analog synth or any synth with a filter and filter envelope can make. Filter is like a guitar wah wah pedal and can make the sound basically say 'wow' if used all the way from closed to open then back to closed in a continuous sweep/turn. 

The envelope of the filter basically is a few knobs/sliders/adjusters that can automatically sort of press the wah wah pedal for you in certain ways, like as soon as you press a key it can have it as if the filter is all the way open then closed and anywhere in between and can set how fast it's opened or closed, and the sound you linked to me sounds sort of a quick setting to this is some combination. Some synthesizers have cute names for the preset sounds and sometimes some call the sound you're talking about 'wasp' , there is a synth just named The Wasp but it doesn't just make this sound, again, basically any synth with a filter and filter envelope should be able to make the sound, even free software synths, just keep playing with the filter cut-off and resonance and then the filter ADSR and you might find the sound. 

Also there's only a few main synth waveforms which do sound quite different but I guess most synth sounds you hear are saw tooth waveform, there's also square and triangle and sine as the main 4. Sine is like sub bass that kinda just has no tone other than a deep booming bass but if used in high notes can sound like whistle, square sounds sorta like vintage nintendo 8 bit in a way, triangle sounds sorta very digital sort of bell-like or almost raspy - it depends on there's also way to modulate each waveform too and make them brighter or darker, but if you stick to a saw wave and play around with the fitler and envelope it should be good because some of the other waveforms if you modulate the pulse width etc of them too far to a certain way the sound can sorta go away or become too digital/belly/raspy etc and not really give the note/tone coming through. 

 

There's also ADSR envelopes for Amp(volume) and Pitch.

Basically with Amp again it's like the envelope ADSR is pressing something for you, For amp/volume you can just manually use a volume know to the same sort of thing for example a 'pad' sound like the orchestral strings first notes of 99 luftballons is a 'pad' you can hear the volume slowly rising which is basically like setting the first slider Attack of the ADSR upwards so it slowly comes into volume. If Attack is all the way down/fast then it gives it full volume right when you press a key like a 'stab' sound like the intro to break my stride. 

Then there's the Release (R) at the end, again most stab sounds are set to stop making noise as soon as you let go of the key but a pad usually the R is set so it still swells away as some of the note/pad fading out.

(S) Sustain is basically if you hold down the key it'll sustain the full volume of the sound / or it'll not play it as loud depending on how much sustain is set. 

 

Pitch ADSR envelope also basically can be set to sound like the pitch is sliding up or down from several Octaves, Basically if you youtube "clown whistle sound effect" that's a 1 octave pitch slide and you can set the Pitch envelope ADSR to do sort of any variation of that up or down or a combo of both and how fast it goes up/down, this (and the filter ADSR) can be set very fast hence your wasp sound doesn't sound too wah wah-like but it sounds to me there's some filter envelope play in there.