How's this sound/effect made ?

Hey guys, I have a couple of questions :

I'm into Trance and I especially like sounds/effects like the one in the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAHt45Mx4ow . It starts at 2:46 -3 :00. I'm wondering how this sound is made. Is it like an arpeggio or LFO or...? I'm still new to synths. I have an SH-201 but doubt it can make such sounds/effects. Any recommendations on a used inexpensive synth, or even a soft synth that's good at these kind of sounds/effects ? I have the Ultra Analog VA-1 but I haven't even begun to explore it.

My second question : I'm trying to find some old postings (from maybe 3 months back) but it seems the search can only go back 14 pages. Is there any way I can find older postings ?

Thanks in advance.

An arpeggiator turns a set of notes held down at the same moment into a melody where each note is playing separately. Play a C major and a simple arpeggiator turns it into C-E-G-E-C and so on. So yes, that's most likely an arp you're hearing.

An LFO is simply a robot that moves a slider for you, up and down and in any repeating pattern available.

All that is happening here is that the filter cutoff is slowly increased during play - most likely just by moving the slider or knob up. Your SH can do this: pick a preset with the supersaw, turn down the filter cutoff to near zero, set the filter ADSR to 0 6 0 0 (0 is lowest position 10 highest) and set the filter to envelope knob to 6 or so. Play a chord and hold it when the arp is switched on, then slowly increase cutoff. Lather in reverb and delay. Done.

Surprisingly, not all VAs can do a supersaw sound that well.

However, to my ears, that sound is not even a "supersaw"... not even a trance-gate. The effect is simply a garden variety sound attached to a garden-variety tempo-synced delay -> reverb effect. (There is definitely trance gate in this song, with the female voice, but not for what was described).

While the garden variety sound might be something "traditional analog" I'm not thinking of (PWM? Ring mod? FM?), I'm actually thinking it's a wavetable sound for some reason. And yeah, it's the filter cutoff that's being manipulated over a sequenced bit (however you choose to sequence it... draw it in your DAW and repeat, etc.)

Stop using supersaw everyone.

Ha!! Yes! and everyone also needs to stop drinking Bud Light, stop watching TV, and stop eating McDonalds! And for the love of christ stop wearing those big retarded trucker ball caps with the flat bills... especially if you can't even fit them on your head right.

Word.

Simple detuned saw wave, with manual filter sweep ( very little resonance) the arpeggiator seems to be within the range of one octave, but its hard to say what the pattern is because the chord that is being played for the arpeggiated notes to pattern thru are changing often. Its a very simple sound with lots of reverb, you will need to experiment with the envelope to pinpoint the desired decay/sustain rate. There is not gate, or ring mod, or tempo synced delay on this sound.

You sure about there being no delay? :poke: To me it sounds like a classic tempo-synced digital delay line, where you take a pretty simple synth line, throw it on a digital delay, and have this more complicated sounding wash emerge. (Think U2's early guitar sound...)

But I think you are right about it being a simple detuned saw wave.

"We need to stop watching TV, stop caring about Hollywood, but we're addicted to the things we hate."

For some reason I'm not hearing the gate, even though I guess it could be there (as a way to do the arpeggiation -- for instance, instead of programming it in, you can run a straight synth line into a trance gate to get your pattern). But hey, not a big deal. (Trance gates are everywhere in trance, so it's nice to post the tutorial. ) You sure about there being no delay? :poke: To me it sounds like a classic tempo-synced digital delay line, where you take a pretty simple synth line, throw it on a digital delay, and have this more complicated sounding wash emerge. (Think U2's early guitar sound...) But I think you are right about it being a simple detuned saw wave.

It seems purely arpeggiated to me, I could be wrong but they way it cycles thru sounds different than a delay to my ears. But its definitely not any type of gate.

A triggered gate has a completely different type of envelope response.

I know what you mean.

We just scratch on day to day with nothing but matchbooks and sarcasm in our pockets and all we're waiting for is for something worth waiting for.

I know what you mean. We just scratch on day to day with nothing but matchbooks and sarcasm in our pockets and all we're waiting for is for something worth waiting for.

Oh, God. I consider myself a KMFDM fan, and I didn't catch that until now. Shame, shame...

They certainly do if you are talking about real gates not "gating" your sound internally. I would not have posted without listening to the example.

Thank you guys so much for replying. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the clip and trying to figure out how that effect is made I am however new to the world of synths and their functions and I know it'll be a while before I know enough about them and how to create all kind of different effects on them.

I see there is a disagreement on how the effect is made though. Has any of you ever tried to make such an effect ? The exact same one.

xmlguy, yes I did listen to the example you gave. Thanks man. And as I mentioned, I am new to synths and this is my first synth and I'm sure there are still things to be discovered but every now and then I learn something new. I sure hope the SH is capable of producing the same effects.

Yoozer, I know they're using cut off but I wasn't sure how that pattern was made (arpeg. or maybe gate....). Thanks.

BTW, would you say the effect in this clip is made the same way ?

It starts at 1:01 -1:20...

Also, what would be a good way to learn about how different effects are made ? Is Youtube the easiest way ?

Thanks again.

It's not always obvious, but here are some useful pointers. These are general scenarios; exceptions apply, of course.

An arpeggiator retriggers the note; a gate doesn't. If you have a sound with a slow decay on the filter cutoff (ADSR @ 0 10 0 0, cutoff @ 3, filter > envelope @ 6 or so), an arpeggiator would cause the cutoff to go up again; a gate would let the cutoff continue its descent; the gate merely cuts away the volume at once.

A gate is used in a very typical manner; usually the pattern is something like x-x-xxx-x-x-xxx- (x means you hear the sound, - means you don't), now referred to as the "trance gate" (though it existed earlier than that). Several BT tracks feature something that almost sounds like a reversed bouncing ball; that's easier done with a gate (or by micro-editing automation).

A chord is broken up by an arpeggiator and left in one piece by a gate, though there are arpeggiators that play polyphonically.

Arpeggiators play notes of equal lengths, though there are various synthesizers with more complex arpeggiator patterns, and even older machines like a Juno-60 would offer a trigger input so you could delay or speed up the switching.

Yes, I apparently am talking about fake gates, not real gates, not like the "horse is already out of the barn" kind of gates, either. Of course I was talking about gating as a technique/effect within the synth engine to produce a trance-like pattern, such as using an LFO or two on the amp stage. I thought that should be obvious, since the original subject was whether the SH-201 can do the effect. Now I'm curious as to which specific make/model gate you were referring to?

A real gate, like a noise gate where you can side chain the input trigger by playing an external audio part to trigger what the envelope is either from the source or by the gate itself.

Good example:35 seconds in

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=information+society+pure+energy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

You cant get that sound any other way.

Notice in this example the hi hat part was the source trigger

If I had some time to try and program the sound, I'd have some more definitive answers.

The reason I think there's no gate is because I think I'm hearing distinct ADSRs per note (which means straight arpeggiation or sequence, no gate). But I'm not 100% certain, so the people thinking "trance gate" might be right. (That's how you tell the difference between a straight arpeg and a gate -- listen for whether or not a note "sounding" twice has a attack.)

The reason this is hard to pick up is because the patch is awash in effects, it's hard to tell the fine detail. This is another production thing about today's trance: HEAVY cathedral reverb and/or HEAVY tempo-synced delay, etc. On practically EVERYTHING except the rhythm section (drums / bassline). (In contrast, early 1990s trance is often as dry as toast. )

That also sounds like a straight arpeggiation going into a deep reverb to me. There could also be some sort of washy pan-swirl-delay too, but actually I think that's artifacts from the {censored}ty Youtube encoding

Well, thanks again guys. I appreciate your taking the time to read my question once again and answering it. Damn, looks like those sound effects that I'm so crazy about aren't easy to make, not for a beginner at least. And with so much {censored} going on in my life right now I don't know when I'll have the time to try some of your suggestions. Well, at least I have a synthesizer now -a dream I had for a very long time- and I'm hoping it will be capable of doing some of the effects I really like -once I'm a little more experienced- but I'm not sure if it will 'cause every body says it's just a basic beginner's synth with limited effects.

Well, the particular sound you asked about in this thread is in fact easy to make. That Synth1 video easily showed how to make it. It's just a detuned saw (possibly more than 2, like a "supersaw") oscillator group with the envelope set to a certain decay time. The arguments earlier were all about whether the notes were created by arpeggiator or gate. Personally I don't see how anyone could think it was a gate considering a gate can't cause different pitches.

If you want to make that sound, follow the video to learn how to make the actual sound, then just play whatever notes you want.

Seconded. The arguing is really coming about because of the nuances. It's pretty simple when you boil down to it. The Synth1 tutorial really will get you there.

Here's another tutorial on trance arpeggios using FL Studio and Predator. This may be more helpful for the general technique.

[YOUTUBE]l6Mi3boJ1hU[/YOUTUBE]

You can program a "trance sequence" pretty easily though in any DAW. I mean, in FL-Studio it's a matter of simply going into the piano roll and dragging stuff around. "Arpeggiation" to me would be describing the musical concept, not the software used to actually do it. Although sometimes perhaps an arpeggiator software would be used, I doubt you would do so in most cases.

If you want a software synth that can do every sort of trance thing known to man, take a look at Gladiator 2 from Tone2.

I for one don't like trance at all, but it's a pretty cool synth for any purpose, and has all those trancey effects thrown in too. It's got gates and arps, spatialization, super-any-waveform, and plenty of effects (all tempo-synced where applicable.) It also sounds good too.

I used it more for it's HCM synthesis mode when I had it, but it can do all the things you describe with ease.

Might be a more useful exercise to learn these things on the gear you have, but I thought I'd mention this.

Hell, I don't really know much about gates or arps, as I don't use either. If I personally were to make the sound in question, I would have just played/programmed the notes manually.

Thanks again for your help, guys. I can see that VSTs are much more capable than my synth, which means they are the way if I want those Trancy sound effects. However, I still have a lot of learning to do with hardware and especially software. But here's another question if you feel like answering, does an advanced synthesizer (Virus or comparable synths) have everything you see in a good software synth? I know this sounds like a stupid question since soft synths are made to emulate hardwares but I look at some good softs (like Sytrus,Toxic...) and I'm overwhelmed by all those knobs and sliders... and they seem more complex than real synthesizers. I'd like to have a hardware synth that has it all someday down the road. Thanks

Thanks for turning me on to Switched on Synthesizer there xmlguy. I went there and right on front is a cool video of the Tip Top Audio Z2040 Low Pass Filter; perfect timing to the person thinking what his next modular filter might be (though I would like to get one of STG's post lawsuit filters too).

That really depends. Some softsynths have really off the wall features you won't find in hardware, but as I understand it the Virus series is pretty full-featured and should have everything a typical subtractive softsynth has.