hi.
i know there aren't many people in this forum that followed the scene back in the days, mainly from '93 to '96. i listen to a huge variety of music but i have a soft spot for hard trance (techno, acid, house, trance, whatever) from that era, and i usually try to analyze and understand tracks.
as i was saying in another thread, for example, a lot of them have a lot of information under 100 Hz in stereo, even though today it's considered to be a heresy.
anyway, i have a quick question.

listen to the extract here
https://sndup.net/zt7j/

it's a simple arp that plays a single note. the track (paragon - the poets) came out in '93.
each note has a different cutoff, to give it that acid/squelchy sound. but i couldn't help but notice that one of the note has a different steep... only one of them. the others have a low pass with high resonance at a certain range (12/24, i have no idea), but ONE single note is a little bit different (the cutoff is much steeper)
i know it's not important at all, but i want to extend my knowledge about production from the past.

just some questions
- that's not an LFO, because each note is clean and has a different cutoff. how did they modulate the cutoff? were they sending midi information to a machine? were they using a very expensive synth that could modulate the cutoff per note in the arp? (which i seriously doubt)
- how come that single note has a different filter? i thought maybe they just sampled different notes being played and then one of them had a different filter, then they played each sample together to make the sequence. it seems like the most obvious solution. (unless it's like a machine error..)

if i have other questions about production in the 90s i'll use this thread.
cheers, love

 

It could be modulated by key velocity, i've seen that happen on some roland stuff of the era.

As for the ONE note, i don't think i can hear the difference. Are you talking about the BEEP-BOOP thingy?

 

so do you want to know what sample cd they took it from?

 

This reminds me of something else, the famous Gouryella bassline from late 90's.
Starting at 4:53, Ferry explains how he made it, with velocity, so maybe Paragon did the same?

 

I'm sure the underlying synth techniques or whatever took place to create the original audio apply, it just really reminds me of one from one of the more "famous" or even common sample cds from back then. there was no flood, so sometimes things were used in multiple unrelated songs. or stolen and released as samples. there are lots of old libraries which were made early enough to appear on a recording done in 93. Akai and emu iso copies. This is still almost the dark ages, in terms of downloading material at high speed. So think hard copy availability.

those computer music/future music magazine samples are a goldmine for this stuff. @r4e just posted a great link to them last week. The earliest ones are from this exact time frame. https://audiosex.pro/threads/filesi...ntly-opened-to-dl-for-free.67482/#post-672053

in your video, he mentions using "Akai s". Right there it narrows down other formats. Look at the difficulty people still have converting these formats now. It hasn't become more difficult. How many people did they have making the track? Time consuming work, on racked gear. They would have opted for the JV-1080 for anything possible. ;)

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2022

Saw wave oscillator. Sweep a pretty narrow bandpass while alternating playing octaves (same note, an octave apart).
Edit: I made an example with simple saw. Added two bandpass filters with pretty high resonance, with a noiseLFO (random on both) controlling the cutoff frequency. The two randomly moving bandpass filter cutoffs creates a bit of a vowel-ing. Created in Surge XT (freeware).
https://sndup.net/vd7d/

Another example:

 

Last edited: Nov 5, 2022

https://www.tone2.com/gladiator.html

 

thanks everybody for the replies, but i'm afraid only a few of you read the thread until the end, or maybe jumped to the wrong conclusions too early
i'm not asking how the sound is made, in fact i already asked about a similar sound and the wonderful baxter explained pretty well and in a simple way how to achieve it (as he has done now, with a very nice similar result).
rather, i'm asking general stuff about production in the early 90s (1992-1994-1996 max).

i know sample cds were used A LOT. but i also know for a fact that a lot of those artists rented studios, went to friends', etc. so they did use a synth once in a while

@mk_96 i can hear a single note with a different "timbre", i don't know why but focus on the single notes. if you have trouble check with a analyzer and you will see what i'm talking about.

i was simply wondering about the original two questions, that's all. cheers, love you

 

Not that difficult, IMHO. The thing we did back in the days with hardware (digital or analogue) was simply realtime editing. Means moving knobs, faders and switches for cutoff, resonance, filterslope, ..., we even pitched drumloops from synths and samplers in realtime. As long as the hardware doesn't produce any clicks or dropouts, you can change anything and everything in realtime and record it.

 

Agreed.
Not only that, but you (OP) can assign velocity to filter cutoff. Or assign a random LFO (noise, very slow Sn'H, etc) to the filter cutoff. As well as assigning a "random" LFO to resonance, detuning, etc for even more randomness.
That way your realtime "knob-twiddling" hand can hold a beer (that you can drink from time to time) while you're sounding very modulated.

 

Last edited: Nov 8, 2022