I like this 808 sound in the drop. It is unique. Can someone tell me the steps I should take to get that 808 sound.
Sine wave. Pitch envelope (attack and decay: starting low, going up and then going down). Saturation/distortion. Lowpass filter. Has "808" replaced "sine wave"? Has it gone that far? edit: or are you talking about the actual kick drum? Gently saturate/distort a dry kick (real). Adjust amp decay to taste. Last edited: Jun 4, 2016
Just a distorted kick (maybe layered with a real drum sample for that raw/broken feel) layered with a sine bass (distorted too). On that sine bass it is either pitch-bend modulation either internal modulation via LFO, in the synth. Listen the song entirely, if the pitch bend is always the same, the automation is probably in the patch, otherwise may be pitch-bend automation.
Mouth/finger plop? Try a mouth/finger plop. https://freesound.org/people/UlfHubert/sounds/266945/ https://freesound.org/people/UlfHubert/sounds/266945/ If you want to synthesise it, play a very short (amp decay only, 30-40ms) sine wave. Add a very fast pitch (up) envelope (fast attack), starting low and going up very fast. Here, I made some finger plops...or bubbles: add a transient click, or cut the waveform abrubtly at the start to get a more realistic mouth plop. Last edited: Jun 3, 2016
It's all 'bout that 808 nowdayz baby. Sine is so yesterday. I'd like to see their faces when they found out how old is the TR-808. I know 'cause is my age ) In other news, I just gave you the 500th like. Sorry, can't hold it to myself. OCD on board.
I was talking about that distortion which makes that 808 dirty and smooth at the same time. I do not know how to distort a sine wave to make it sound like that. I have tried many 808s from various songs and achieved similar results. But this one is bothering me. Anyways, thanks.
Load a single sine wave oscillator (any synth). Load a distortion plugin (Softube One Knob Saturation is free). Put a lowpass filter after the distortion. Play around with distortion amount and lowpass cutoff. ????? PROFIT!!!1!
Tends to happen quite often when one relies mostly on presets and sample packs. I don't get the curiosity though.
You can create your own distortion by layering some white or pink noise to your sine sample, then modulating and adding resonance to give your distortion a certain tone and timbre. Or for a more natural distorted sound, just down sample. Take a 24 bit 808 sample and drop the bit depth to 12 or 8 bits. Fun..fun
FYI, of course take the time to learn the techniques mentioned by Baxter. Yet don't be ashamed to use presets..lol. If you spend all of your production time on designing sounds, you won't get any work done. Well I wouldn't, as I sell to quite a few local people. I say find three or four good tools, learn them, as in to make them work the most efficient for you, and rock out.
It remembers me a Youtube video with ppl arguying about "How do you make a 808 sound like that ?" And it was running in circle...because it was NOT a 808 by any mean ;) It was a punchy kick (more like 909), with a click and ANOTHER regular bass layer They didn't liked when i came in, and told them it was not a 808, and they should train their ears BEFORE trying to clone sounds. Layering, baby. And use your ears. It is like training to recognize notes...but with frequencies only. On this drop example, there is nothing special. To me, it is even horrible sounding...a kind of over saturated/flabby regular kick. And another layer of "diving" sine (very 808 like, indeed), over saturated too. In this example, a dual band distortion would have worked better on the regular kick. Something like Kombinat or freeware ClipStar (a gem on bass) : https://delamanchavst.wordpress.com/effects/
It would be nice for Steve to update Serum to the latest browser version. @Ankit: It's just a matter of positioning the curves (and the note length) according to track's BPM. Increase Serum's pitch-bend to 12 semitones (it default to +/- 2). And drive the filter hard. This should get you in the ballpark. .
