Hey,


I’d like to ideally recreate a few sounds, styles and effects that i personally enjoy from this artist.
With the intention of better understanding the gear or techniques behind the sounds, to improve my own music practice, and make music i enjoy. My intention isn't to just copy, or imitate the sound.

Not everything has to be dead on, as a lot of the sounds are possibly resampled etc, but I'm looking for a starting point at least to better understand how to move forward.

Side note: If you don't like the music, that’s okay. I appreciate any help. since scrolling through multiple plugin presets and videos doesn't really help me, as I can’t find similar sounds and don’t know what to look for online.

I will happily buy a coffee (or two) for whoever can nail it best!
Any general sort of tips would be great.

01: @ 1:04 ethnic horn + stab and @ 2:25 ethnic horn, background trance synth stabs, and drums overall.

02: @ 1:22 brassy electro stab

03: @ 0:00 background synth sequence and @ 00:54 stab and snare drum

04: @ 0:00 Clock-like synth stabs, other synths, main kick, @ 3:12 detuned synth

05: @ 0:55 Synth sequence and @ 1:22 detuned sounds and snare drum

06: @ 0:00 The strings that morph and change (sounds a bit like physical modelling?) and @ 2:17 detuned vocal sound

07: Any general tips

08: Any general tips

I love a lot of the vocal chops, voice/synth, drum sounds, trailing transitions, drones, and cinematic hits (stomps, kicks, toms, claps, percs etc), on the tracks. I can never quite find or manipulate samples to have the same feel though, even when trying a myriad of kontakt libraries, sample packs, messing with synth presets etc.

I did have a Rytm, but I never enjoyed the sounds, not sure if a Tempest would be useful here, although I see it get so much hate.

If anyone also has any general ideas of where to approach things or look sound wise, beyond just that it sounds like trance synths and cinematic, orchestral instruments, I’d really appreciate any pointers on possible sources, effects, and techniques.


Thank you.

 

Xfer Serum can recreate all those sounds and more. Plus you'll have to put FX on some of them, I hear Guitar Amp over few sounds, Serum doesn't have an Amp as effect, I guess it was Izotope Trash2 or Aleton stack Amp

 

All of the linked audio clips are from the same producer? Or are these your pages?

Maybe you could ask him, if communicating with someone in China is possible for you. Based on that tiny piece of information alone, I would guess he likes ReFX Nexus. It's known for high quality, very clean sounds. And producers in China obviously have access to it.

If I was looking for a shortcut, you could look at using either Visco or Synplant to do something like that.

 

i just picked out a bunch of sounds that stand out to me, either because i'd like to be able to figure them out on synths i have, or i don't understand how to do the sequencing/fx, or maybe the drum sound is possibly from a specific hardware etc...

the artist isn't me haha, i just picked this one as they're up there for me. they're not actually chinese, people in china probably have an easier time getting vsts etc, than people in the west. i did message with them once, but they're not forthcoming and i don't expect them to be either. i do know what gear they use for live shows, but i don't like to get stuck in obsessing on gear, and i kind of understand their influences across genres... so i was hoping for some guidance on some of these sounds, that i can take and move forward with.

i have stuff like pigments, arturia v, a few kontakt drum libraries, and the whole of ableton, so i avoid adding anything because i know i'm the issue, as i don't know how to make the sounds i really enjoy, but i can find 1000 presets that i maybe don't like, and if i'm lucky maybe i happen to accidentally shape one that sounds slightly similar, so then i fall back on sampling.

 

ah, i missed out on trash2, i have touched on using the amp effect sometimes, but i'm not always confident on working it into a track.
i do have pigments, arturia v, etc, and it's hard to know where to go for those kind of sounds. i've only once found a preset that i've been able to actually work closely to the original, otherwise it's not my forte.

 

wow, thank you. i'm surprised you know that much, it's a lot, i was just expecting some half-guesses on synths... i wish i knew as much as you haha.

i kind of avoided serum for so long, because everyone seemed to use it, and i wanted to try other things, stupid me.

01: what do you mean by zourn?
02: maybe my bad in describing, 1:22 sounds like a much wider/larger unison lead sound... thanks for explaining that all too!
03: i was aiming for that single bleepy sound, sounds different to me...
04: may be a bit similar to the 03 sound, it just reminds me of a clock, or a timer sound, it stops at 00:27.
06 1: ah okay, it made me think of the reason objekt sounds a bit, like a sort of plucky sound that i haven't come across.
06 2: wouldn't have guessed since it sounds so vocal/slowed.
1.30 did you mean the keygen track, or the other, as keygen sounds like the low end of a tom to me?
1.57 is it like a dj sample tool vinyl or something originally? is that skinny puppy the industrial techno band? i know the artists is influenced by industrial and hardcore stuff so might be that... struggling to find any actual tracks, only samples...

i always remind myself that it is simple, and i know i overthink it. but i also definitely feel stuck in improving and knowing how to move towards sounds i love, even though it is simple.

also where can i send your coffee to?

 

No worries mate, I have my coffee in the kitchen

 

01. It's an instrument, like flute but sounds annoying, type Zurna or whatever English butcher the pronunciation


02. It's because 1.22 has no bass so it's sound louder due to bad mixing
03. On downbeat you mean? It's a filler, stacked saws or similar synth sound
04. I don't know, there is a brass stab, string run, percussion and alarm type fx, is the latter you mean? It's probably fx of some tipe
1.31-1.55 kazoo and distorted kick bass
1.57 vocal

 

I read nexus is more of a rompler than a synth? but still good for typical genre sounds. never heard of visco, never got into synplant, it always seemed very hit or miss, and when it hits it's more experimental leaning, but maybe i was using it wrong!

 

Synplant2 has a very useful feature now, you drop a sample and it recreates a preset using FM, it's an approximation but good. Although you can do the same with Serum or Vital just with more mouse clicks, a lot more. It works for somewhat simple sounds when you want to figure out how it's done or want to get as close as possible, but then again the coolness is in the performance if there are glides and different articulation and subtle pitch ups and drops a simple recreation of the Synthplant2 or Serum won't help much if you don't have a MIDI track.

 

I haven't checked all the available Nexus 4 expansions, but those I have used are high quality. You could compare them with UVI Falcon, or maybe VPS Avenger sound quality. It's primarily a ROMpler on it's own, but when you are not making "real instruments"; you can get so much mileage out of them by using Midi FX as insert plugins and also audio plugins. The expansions for it are pretty heavily weighted towards various EDM styles; and it is very popular with producers making those genres. Some of the synth sounds in the clips are very clean, bright; and you would get equivalent quality sounding results from Nexus. Listen to some demos of it and you'll hear why I mentioned it.

 

okay cool! i'll hopefully try them all out, although az seems to not have serum or nexus 4, win versions... unless i'm missing them.

 

you don't have any idea about the drum side of things in that music do you?

i've tried all kinds of samples, kontakt heavyocity, triaz, classic drum machines etc, but the sounds always feel a bit lacking most of the time.

i saw you mention xfer nerve in a different thread too.

maybe it's just sampling choice and mixing...

 

@atrophene Question #1. Look for Oriental Soloist 1&2 and Taq.sim 1&2 libraries for Kontakt. They both contain what @Axvap correctly called a Zurna along with micropitch tuning helping you to tune to middle eastern scales.
Drums and some distorted synths i hear in those tracks mostly sound like they come from Damage 1 or 2 (Kontakt). No matter if they do, these are staples of epic cinematic production so it would be best to check em out, if you haven't already that is
Cheers

 

Do you have the track? Throw it in Ableton, find the tempo, loop the drum section, highpass it, lowpass it, maybe isolate a single drum. Or use HitnMix RipX it can brake down a song into stems: bass, drums, percussion, vocals so you can see what part doing what exactly

 

yeah i've used lalal ai quite a bit to isolate and listen, just wondered if there was something i was missing with where the drums might be from, or the processing.

 

I see you not a big fan of the best of the best tools out there and prefer some obscure sht (you've made some comments about Serum, now this Lallala thing no one heard of) I hope you not subscribe to that for 35$ are you? Better then pay and buy RipX, you can use it inside of your DAW as VST and export stems directly on the tracks

 

haha, sometimes... if it's worth trying though i'm very happy to, definitely sounds better, thank you for that.

 

For "electronic" 4/4 genres like techno, and so on; I really like the D16Group drum machines. Maybe even more than the Roland cloud versions of the originals. But if I could only pick one drum machine plugin for those styles, it would be Sonic Charge Microtonic. But there are so many good ones, and samples anyway; so it's pretty difficult to identify them, aside from the obvious ones.