Moog Music Forum

Dear Moog gods,

I am having the largest of trouble with a certain sound I need to create. its the synth(bass) sound on ''unbroken'' bij Demi Lovato. this is regarding the chorus part.

I know the sound has been made on a moog voyager on the official studio track. But I only got a sub37 to work with.
I almost got the sound similar aside from not having the higher tones in it like the voyager has on that sound. but that is a minor thing and can be worked with, the part that is driving me crazy is that I cannot seem to get my ''pulse'' or ''wave'' on that sound to get in sync with the BPM on the track.

I am playing this piece live in a tribute band and we use a backingtrack with all sorts of bells and whistles so I am forced to play in sync with that track.

At first I made the patch manual on the synth itself and quickly found out that its not precise enough in terms of the knob turning so I then used the editor on my pc and got it somewhat close but it still isnt entirely in sync and I noticed this about 20 seconds into the song where all of a sudden my ''pulse'' isnt corresponding to the leadvocal timing or the four on the floor kick drum that goes on.

I already use my Sub37 as a slave and my DAW a the master clock ( so i changed the BPM in my DAW to 124 which is the BPM of the song )

If someone could help me recreate this sound from the bottom up ( from a init preset )or if someone could send me this preset which I then can load in ( willing to pay for that ) then that would be super helpfull. because I am far away from being experienced with this stuff. I only rather recently got into synthesizers.

The tempo is 125 bpm not 124. In the intro it sounds like they used sidechain compression keyed from the kick drum to create the "wave" or "pulse" as you put it. This ducks (lowers the volume) of the synth every time the kick drum hits. The compression release time can be tailored to fit the tempo of the song to produce the wave or pulse you are hearing. This technique is very common in this genre...Which I mostly avoid.

This simple diagram shows what sidechain compression does. The "d"s are the kick drum, the horizontal lines and arrows below the "d"s represent the synth volume.

d...........d............d...........d
_<---_<---_<---_<---


Original Song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14MoMDZb114

Here's a really quick example of the Sub 37 doing the intro bass sound with a 4 on the floor kick drum. I added some UAD CE-1 Chorus to get a wider stereo field.
https://soundcloud.com/rotundness/unbro ... nd-example

Good Luck!

Oh wow! that is really amazing, any chance u could somehow give me that preset ? that is exactly what I am looking for.

and the sidechained example , I believe i understand that. did you create the sample entirely by using the moog sub 37?

I am such a newbie in this regard.. and I really need that sound fixed before my gig though.

Here ya go,

I used the Sub 37 and UA's version of the Roland CE-1 chorus plugin. Love that plugin. Not sure how you will set up the side chain in a live situation but it's crucial to the sound. I used Cubendo's built in channel compressor for the side chain action which was keyed from the kick drum.

Super! thanks so much for your help, im learning so much more everyday about this synth! its so exciting haha!

I think the only option will be to have ableton live running during a gig where the drummer has a midi trigger on his kick drum which will trigger the compression on my bass which also has to run through ableton while my bass also has the Chorus plugin running over it.

Guess that would be the best way to do this then.

Regardless you are the moog god I was looking for!

You are too kind...Thanks!