Hand clap sound????

[bassplayer1980]

Hi, againforum Can anyone tell me howto make hand clap sounds??? I research that the clap trap from simmons is a good device to make those types of sounds. can i make hand clap sounds with the esq-1?? is ismpossible to make those with moog because i will use it as my bass lines, so, can the esq-1 make the clap sounds?? which ismy better option to get a drum machine like new order or some vintage bands???

thanks forum

[Solderman]

The typical recipe for dry handclaps as I understand it, is white noise goes into a 6db per octave bandpass filter(with a modest amount of resonance/feedback) then into a VCA, and this VCA gets modulated by a positive unipolar sawtooth wave at a frequency of around 5-15 hz. Roland/Boss also diverts the bandpassed noise to a second mixed in channel that goes through a VCA with a simple linear decay, to act as the "room sound". I can do the dry part with my Polivoks(modulation being a rapidly retriggering envelope) or Yamaha CS-15(with the Highpass filter and some post EQ). I prefer to use my Boss HC-2 though.

I think the Human League used a high resonant lowpass filter for their handclaps in Being Boiled, but it sounds like they are modulating the filter cutoff, not amplitude. Maybe you could try this with the ESQ, if you can get the LFO to go fast enough. As long as the slope drops off fast enough over a wide cutoff range, the lowpassed white noise is more likely to have a knocking or smacking quality to it. Don't forget the ESQ's LFO can modulate LFO depth with itself or another LFO at its source for unique waveshapes, if needed.

[Jaytee]

I found a patch recipe for a CZ-101 handclap. By itself it sounded ok, but really came alive when you hit three keys at once, slightly out of time. I actually like it better than a lot of classic claps.

I'll try and find the patch recipe for you to look at, though it may not help. It makes extensive use of the 8-stage envelope and nothing really sounds like a CZ.

[Stab Frenzy]

I find that the key to making a short percussive noise sound into a handclap is some short delay. Short delay, bit of feedback, Bob's your uncle.

[Jinsai]

Handclaps are very difficult to synthesize well. The original drum machine handclaps are themselves poor imitations of real handclaps, which are themselves difficult to record and have sound good.

Typical drum machine clap sounds do consist of several attacks/impulses of noise in very close proximity. That's why you can try LFOs. Main problem is many LFOs only offer sawtooth waves with linear decay, and it may not be "punchy" enough for you. You probably want something with an exponential decay, and you want to be able to have it only do a few pulses very close together.

What you're trying to do is basically create 3-5 overlapping "slap" sounds separated by a few milliseconds, with a bit of tail on the end.

Unless your synthesizer is pretty complex (allowing you to route noise through 2 different filters simultaneously, and allowing some kind of LFO or Envelope modulation where you can have 3-5 impulses/peaks fire, plus a "tail") you're probably not going to get anything approaching what you want out of a clap.

You're better off getting a drum machine or sampler that already has the clap sound you want.
Something like the DSI Tempest will also work, but you're going to spend a bit of time tuning the programming to get what you want.

[skunk3]

Seems to me like it would be far easier to just record real hand claps, overdub and add reverb to taste. Way easier than synthesizing them and likely faster and better-sounding as well.

[commodorejohn]

The best success I've had with synthesizing handclaps involved running my MS-20 Mini's square-wave LFO output into the modulation VCA, controlled by an envelope generator, so that the resulting signal was a decaying burst of square pulses, and then using that as a modulation source for the lowpass filter, with a bit of resonance on it, and the noise generator used as the only actual sound source. Since the ESQ-1's LFOs can be modulated by the EGs, there should be no reason you can't try that on it. Using the "reverb tail" mode for the envelopes could help add a little spaciousness to the sound, too. (Cranking up the resonance on the MS-20's HPF and setting it so the cutoff was just below audible frequency range created some nice additional clatter as well, but the ESQ doesn't have an HPF.)

[Jaytee]

I should have mentioned it earlier, but what's wrong with grabbing samples? Dozens of the most famous synth claps have been sampled and released free.