The "What made that sound?" thread

[bassdude]

I'm surprised this doesn't exist already. Maybe it does, but I couldn't find it.

Here's where you ask which synth/drum machine/sampler/whatever was used on a given recording or performance, and how it was done.
I'll start it off.
This is one of the nastiest, catchiest basslines I've ever heard in hip hop, and it caught my attention immediately. Im pretty sure it's not a sample, and couldn't find any info as to how it was made:



It's gotta be some old monosynth with a good amount of noise, right? Let the speculation begin......

[Zamise]

It sounds like a sample of a casio PT-87, perhaps harpsichord.

[HUBA]

I'm surprised this doesn't exist already. Maybe it does, but I couldn't find it.

Here's where you ask which synth/drum machine/sampler/whatever was used on a given recording or performance, and how it was done.

I have wondered about that myself and made a similar thread:

http://www.vintagesynth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50281

It wasn't too much interest. Maybe people who have these questions mostly visit forums like this when they want to figure it out and then leaves, so then if there's no thread about it in the stickies you just get individual threads for each question.

It's probably not a good idea to put it in the stickies section either, as I imagine many of those who might know the answer never look through the stickies anyway.

[bassdude]

Come on. Nobody has a guess as to what Dead Prez used on that track?

Maybe one of the mods could sticky this thread, and then people could post their questions within it.

[bassdude]

Somebody take a guess. Anybody.

[thehighesttree]

Hey, I remember that beat!

Since nobody else has any suggestions, I say it's just a sawtooth cut off really far with a low-pass resonant filter and shouldn't be too hard to model on any analog/VA synth. Just turn the LPF so that it cuts the signal by about 70-80% then moisten things up with res till i sounds right. Could be any synth really.

[tshear23]

Sounds like a Minimoog to me, but you could probably get close with most synths. Low cutoff, moderate resonance, mono mode with some glide.

[bassdude]

Yeah, that's about what I did when trying to emulate the sound. I got close, but there's a certain dirtiness/distortion that was missing. Is this from the character of a synth, or just some compression or effect put on later? I ran into the same problem when trying to make the bass from ROYGBIV:




Got close, but not exact. There's some sort of distortion that's missing, and for me that makes all the difference. Maybe I gotta go with a true analog?......

[blavatsky]

I heard it was made using sounds/samples from Pitfall (or some game like that) on the Atari/C64 but I can't find anything to back me up sorry

[tomorrowstops]

nothing to add here, except that bass sound is fantastic and coerced me to buy the record....I had forgotten I kinda liked those guys. Thanks!