Hi everyone i am new to this forum and this is my first post!
I have recently acquired a Moog Voyager, I absolutely love it.
I have just started an experimental sound project for uni and im basically going to be using the Moog to create a drum and bass track from the bottom up (No samples aloud). The experimental part is that i will be purposely feeding sounds backs using a controlled feedback loop to add harmonics and textures. I will then use impressionist art and music influence the track.
Anyway more to the point, does anyone know how to make realistic kick and snare drum sounds from the moog.
Here is a brief overview of what i have tried
Kick
Triangle wave 0 attack short sustain 0 release and half decay. after this i created a pitch envelope to increase attack and intensity. i then tweaked the envelopes until i ended up with a sort of an 808 bass drum sound.
I was just wondering is there any better ways of trying to synthesize a kick drum because i keep on ending up with a really lifeless clinical sound., i need something thats got a nice full bodied sound with a bit of top end emphasizing in the 100Hz region and that will really cut through the mix.
i can sample waveforms from the moog and load them into a sampler aswell if this helps?
Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated and i look forward to hearing from you lot. be nice im a bit of a Noob
Fwiw, the TR808 drum machine’s bass drum is around 56hz, I think.
It uses a damped oscillation, which decreases amplitude (and pitch slightly) with it’s decay.
That waveform would be a sine, btw.
An initial quick decay can help with the initial hit, but not all envelope generators can both generate a good initial decay and final release desirable.
The best drum hits I’ve synthesized used two or more env generators.
Some people also like to mix a small amount of noise, either filtered low or pink into the tail portion.
The low freq random content may help with the simulation. The 808 doesn’t tho- it’s all waveform.
They’re not a voyager, but the square wave lfo from the mf 102 into the audio input of the mf 107 with mix at 10 can produce some pretty good bass drum sounds, especially if the 107 is patched to the 102 with the carrier in the low audio range. It sounds a lot like an orchestral bass drum. A gate would probably work instead of the lfo if you want more rhythmic control. I’ll post a link to some examples, if you’re interested, and I can find where on the interweb my friend put them.
If you really want old school, have a look at the Sound-on-Sound article that was published years ago that dissected the TR-808. It helps to know (as Kevin pointed out), what it did to make the sound if you want to accurately model it.
A one-shot LFO on pitch wouldn’t be a bad idea but you’ll something that can be triggered externally because you’ll need the ASDRs for the basic tone. I’m no expert but have access to a Jomox and it’s got all of the elements broken out into discreet knobs (and is renowned for it’s bass drum; the MBASE11 is the modern day version of this).