Moog Music Forum

So, a few of us had a synth competition (create a song using only a single synth, and no effects).

I did mine with the Voyager. Check it out here, if you like. It's called Bollyweird.

-Hoax

Tune sounds great!! How did u get the distorted guitar sounds and vowel like sounds? Very impressed.

Nice one.

D

I agree. Great job! You should share that guitar patch!

I didn't like it at all. But good try.

I'm impressed -- I thought it was cool, like, waayyy cool!!

Thanks for your comments, guys! Glad most of you liked it (and glad you took the time to listen, ikazlar, even though you didn't like it)

No sounds were sampled. All were recorded straight to "tape".

All drums are the Voyager, played into the recorder (not single hits sampled and sequenced in a sampler). The snare sound has an unusual envelope setting: The Decay phase is set faster (lower) than the Release. So, if you keep your finger on a note, it dies out really quickly, giving you a dry snare (like you kept your stick/hand on the drum after striking it). If you just give it a quick tap, the envelope remains pretty high, and the slower Release phase takes over the decay (like hitting a drum and pulling your hand away quickly, not dampening it). This is how I got the "dry, medium, dry, splashhhh" snare pattern. No effects, no different patches; it's all playing technique. I didn't use Velocity for expressiveness on the snare, only the Decay/Damping idea, which feels really natural to me as a playing technique.

The lead guitar sound is made by syncing Osc 2 to Osc 1. Osc 2 is a sawtooth wave. The filter is LP/LP, with frequency pretty high (a bit above midway between the 1k and 4k markers). Resonance is almost at max before the filter starts to self-oscillate. KB Cont. amount is actually set a bit less than halfway, which means the filter freqs don't follow the keyboard exactly. You kinda tune in the frequency range using the Cutoff knob, and the sound sounds nice over a couple octaves. Freq. Spread is set to a 1-octave spread. I recorded the sound in mono, though, so both filters were mixed together. The screamy noisy dive-type guitarisms are coming from the Mod Wheel mod buss: Osc 3->Osc 1 FM is turned on (which you don't hear if you don't move the Mod Wheel). But on the Mod Wheel buss, Osc 3 is patched to modulate itself (a favorite trick of mine). So, when you move the wheel, the FM stuff gets all crazy on Osc 1 (which we can't hear, but we surely do hear the effect on Osc. 2). It tries to settle into equilibrium if you let the mod wheel rest, so it's best used as punctuation: I think of it as hitting the body of the guitar with my fist. You get expressive noise that's not particularly polite, but it's easily controlled when you know how to play it. The last bit of evil comes from feeding the Insert jack back into the External Input, and cranking it up 'til it almost feeds back (but not quite). I know everybody is tired of me preaching the "solder yourself up a patch cable" tirade, but it allows evil cool distortion stuff like this. The pitch dive at the very end of the tune is me cranking up the External Input pot until the signal slows to just clicks, then suddenly backing it off.

Once again, thanks for your feedback, everybody! I definitely plan to share these patches with the Moog community, one way or another. I'll let you know more later.

-Hoax

Hmm. This is pretty cool. It reminds me of Ween.

Nice one Hoax. I hadn't listened to these over there, but I am guessing I would have to vote for you. We have always seemed a bit like minded on these synth matters. Anyways, sounds dope, that snare sound is fuh' reel.

Cruel Hoax wrote:I definitely plan to share these patches with the Moog community, one way or another. I'll let you know more later.

Nice one! I love that vocal sound that you've got - I tried recreating it, but have so far failed - any chance of you sharing those patches soon!

Simon

It will happen!

(thanks for the bump!)

-Hoax

Yeah, that lead guitar sound is just sweet. I've tried to immitate it, but mine never turned out as nice as yours. I have to say that that piece inspired much tweaking. Thanks.

I'm putting the patches on the Squarewave site. So far, the lead guitar, the robot drones, and the wild Indian are there. There's more to come!

-Hoax

Cool! Looking forward to checking them out!

Thanks!
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NEG