Hello everyone,
I am here to ask you for a little help, as the search for this sound is driving me mad, though I suspect that for other people it might be very easy to find out what it is.

I am looking for that kind of synthetic bell sound, at times even close to some kinds of electric pianos, that you can hear in several anime or video game music. You can hear it in the following tracks:

2:40-2:57, melodic line

0:58-1:55

here it is ubiquitous, and sound more like an el. piano of some kind

A lot in here, too.

And basically every other sad track off Clannad OST.

I would be very grateful if you could suggest some solution. What would you use to recreate that sound?

Thank you in advance and have a nice day.

 

In the first video, it's the "Staccato Heaven" preset from Roland D-50

 

Yeah check out the Roland synths,
and maybe the Korg M1, Triton or Wavestation..

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2021

Possible candidates:
- Sample based instruments from 90s sample CDs (spectrasonics, zero-g, best service, akai etc.)
- FM Bell like from the DX7 (FM Bell is generally what you are looking for)
- Other classic Synths, Soundmodules like Roland SC88

 

It's not quite that one. The sounds are from the D-50 for sure but I think it might be a custom patch. My best bet is the Stringz n Bellz preset but with one of the parts swapped with a choir/voice part. I'd try to build it myself if I remembered how the D-50 VST works but alas I don't.

Although it's way more likely that it's from the JV-1080/XV-5080 family, both of which happen to have A LOT of D-50 stuff.

I quickly scrolled through my JV-1080 bell-like presets and a lot of the stuff comes really close. Eg voice part is the same but the bell isn't *quite* the same or vice-versa.

As for the Clannad ones they're both very Roland-y sounds. See above. Definitely not SC-88 stuff, no idea why that was suggested. Triton is pretty unlikely too, Japanese composers seem to favor Roland and Yamaha in particular while Western ones are more of the Korg kind.

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2021

Now that you mention..

What do you know/can you tell us about Yamaha VSTs?

I remember back in the day..
some games like Final Fantasy 7 on PC included a software called Yamaha XG or something,
which was like Yamaha's version of Roland's Virtual Sound Canvas..

Later they kept developing this XG midi stuff and released some VSTs which I even managed to try/demo.
I remember each version was more refined/complete, but I've never found an actual warez/cracked version..

Now for some reason this Yamaha VSTs seem to have disappeared from history..
It's hard to find info or even the Demo versions I once had, and ofc there's no warez versions around,
unlike with the Roland/Edirol and Korg stuff which has always been there..

A bit of a mystery/mandela effect because I personally tried them, and while very similar to the Canvas idea/sound,
they were actually better/more refined in some aspects..


I guess Yamaha has been very careful with their software stuff,
but how is it possible that nobody ever cracked it, or talks/knows about them?


(not exactly talking about the S-YXG50 VST tho,
which is like a super reduced/bare bones version of the original midi stuff..
the ones I'm referring to were fully featured, and had fully fledged GUIs,
just like the Roland/Edirol stuff..)

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2021

XG is basically Yamaha's own version of an extended GM set, much like Roland has GS.
There's the S-YXG50 floating around with no protection but just like you said it's super bare-bones in terms of GUI but it does include full GM and XG sets. The problem is that they don't sound good, much like every early XG set.

FF7 and FF8 on PC included a DirectMusic version of the S-YXG50/20 (20 has a stripped down XG set but is otherwise identical IIRC) which was alright for the time but still no match for a proper SC-88/Pro.

The ones you're talking about are most likely the S-YXG100 Plus/PVL. They aren't really obscure or anything, it's just that nobody really cares about them. The 100 series in particular had several add-ons named S-PLG (same concept as their hardware PLG cards for things like the Motif and Motif ES but in a software version - none of them were particularly good from what I remember)

You can find them floating around if you look for them and the XG set the 100 series uses is actually pretty alright but it's nothing mind-blowing. XG didn't get decent until the MU90. The MU1000/2000 however sound absolutely fucking amazing and I prefer them to the Roland SD-80/90 especially when it comes to acoustic sounds (not that those aren't good, I love those too as a Touhou fan but the SDs are basically just stripped down XV series synths with some sounds from the SR-JV Latin World/SRX World cards - you can find those sounds elsewhere)

As for other Yamaha VSTs there isn't much. They made a B3 VST and a VA VST with Steinberg (both of which I should've received when I got my Motif XF but didn't - remind me to call the guy who sold it to me) and the B3 VST sounds pretty alright but other than that there's not much aside from these: https://new.steinberg.net/yamaha-vintage-plugin-collection/

I don't know you but 6:56 in particular reminds me a lot of the exclusive Jazz tracks from the Saturn release of Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for "big band" music.

It's also worth noting that Yamaha's sound designers and software engineers started aiding or even outright replaced the Steinberg ones after Yamaha bought out the company. HALion and Groove Agent contain *some* of the samples/sounds from both the Motif and Montage lines too but what's shared (it's not a lot) honestly still sounds better on the hardware itself in the case of the Motif stuff.

 

Last edited: Jul 18, 2021

Hey man, I've had exactly the same problem (while looking for the sound from that Kingdom Hearts track and from Clannad ones too, actually!). The best advice I can give you is to boot up Omnisphere, select the Atmosphere Library on the top left, and explore the Bells and Vibes category. That has solved my issue completely. One example preset is "Eighties Bell".
By the way, it looks like we're doing similar stuff. If you ever get interesting info on how to make this kind of music, I'll be interested.

 

Pretty sure Hypersonic 2 has many similar bells and popular videogame/anime sounds from the early-mid '00s