[Dream] Drums - sampled? - Sound Forge

[Mark]

On 3/27/07, Kudos put forth:
>It's funny this thread pops up just a few days after I made my own kicks
>in Wavelab.  I wish I did this years ago when I first read the IM Kick
>drum tutorial that everyone goes one about!  Thanks Mark for those
>links.  So far, kicks are all I know how to  synthesize - and just the
>past few days I've been wanting to know how to do my own snares and hi-hats.

Are snares that important in psy-trance??  Anyway, snares are not
that difficult.  A snare is just a tom with bunch of cords or wires
mounted on the bottom which vibrate against the bottom head.  So you
create a tom sound (which is the same as a kick drum, but much higher
in pitch) and then add the crack of the snare to it.  This can be
done using filtered noise.

Hi-hats are a bit more difficult to create using subtractive
synthesis.  While you can use ring modulation, multiple detuned
oscillators, or FM to get the metallic sound, it might be easier to
use a sample.  Create a loop of metallic noise, then use a filter and
VCA to sculpt the sound.  This is how a 909 works -- it uses PCM for
the raw sound, then processes it with an analogue envelope, VCA, and
low pass filter.

>The kicks that I made were all quit similar (about 60 of them) as they
>were made from one session of using the signal generator tool and I only
>wanted to make one particular kind of kick tone.  They're just pure
>sines, rapidly falling in pitch from between 9Khz and 14Khz down to
>around 120Hz to 180Hz over about 10 or 20 ms, then slower down to around
>70Hz in around 80ms, then down to 20 or 30Hz in 300-400ms with a
>fadeout.  I'm fairly happy with the result, but I'd like to make a
>different upper-frequency 'tap' to the kick as it sounds a bit too much
>like a ZAP.  I never considered mixing noise or any other waveform into
>the start of the kick so I will give that a try next time.  Does anyone
>know if there's a maximum frequency a kick should sound at?

I don't know, but 9KHz sounds like an extremely high starting point,
and 14kHz is probably beyond the audible range for most trancers
after they've been at a party for a couple hours.  If I had to guess,
I would say the tuned portion of the sound -- where you are using a
VCO -- would begin around 600Hz??  The beater slap and shell crack of
a real kick drum are much higher, but you would add that by adding
noise or some other sound to the beginning of the patch.

>The envelope features of the Wavelab generator are limited so I'm
>thinking a multi-stage envelope would be better to create more
>variation, one where you can zoom in to work in finer detail.  That got
>me thinking more about which VST Instrument would best to do this, 'cos
>it'll be cool to dive right into the shape of the kick to make
>adjustments at any time - and to be able to control it in numerous ways
>for experimental effects.  Wouldn't Crystal or Absynth do a good job of
>it?  Crystal's the free one...which might be a good result for you, Josh.

What you need are several envelopes, not complicated envelopes.
Which is why the Waldorf Attack doesn't look so good.  It says it
only has two envelopes, but I guess you could make up for that by
playing two patches at once.  Anyway, the envelopes do not need to be
that complicated.  They do not even need to be ADSR's, a few
attack-release envelopes is all you need to make most drum sounds.
The "envelopes" in real drums generally follow a simple exponential
curve.  So you either need linear envelopes with exponential VCA's,
or exponential envelopes with linear VCA's.

Or you could just steal everything from X-Dream ;)