Info on a Common 80’s Sound

[yeroc]

A pretty common synthesizer sound that’s pretty much a filtered arp..? Recreating it seems pretty trivial, I’m more curious about if this is a common preset/setting on some of these 80’s era synths?

A couple examples, both start fairly early on in the track -

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nSEtYTp78Sk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=efubwIE9A ... 9uZQ%3D%3D

Bonus points if you can correctly identify the synth and setting in either track

[ken long]

the Cocteau twins one sounds like a pro one but could be anything. The Prince joint is much newer. Could be anything. Both are 1/8th note. 1000 ways to skin this cat.

[Arpangel]

Forgotton how good that Twins album is.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

Cannot think of what waveform, maybe try triangle first as a guess. It will be about getting the right filter action which does not open much and of course playing those notes. There might be a tiny bit oscillator sync going on.

Also the right filter character, it is almost but not quite approaching a vowel type sound (whirr) so the resonance will be important. (has a touch of overtone singing cadence as we discussed on here before so fairly high resonance so some upper partials are exposed a bit.)

Try a Moog (ANA2 has a moog like filter) or something like The Legend, Lu-Sh-101 or Diva, Repro-1 as in the box starting points.

Some sounds that are quite plain are deceptively tricky to synthesize. Get the note sequence right, just an analogue mono synth should do this, either actual or softsynth.

I also loved the Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd album, very dreamy.

[FrankF]

The Cocteaus ditty sounds more like Robin Guthrie's guitar to me, with a slicer or filter arp effect, not unlike How Soon is Now?

[yeroc]

The Cocteaus ditty sounds more like Robin Guthrie's guitar to me, with a slicer or filter arp effect, not unlike How Soon is Now?

Interesting! Hadn’t considered that… maybe!

[yeroc]

Forgotton how good that Twins album is.

It’s an all timer… anytime I listen to CT I feel thoroughly convinced they’re one of the best bands ever

[yeroc]

Truly unbeknownst to me, apparently it very well could be Prince sampling CT’s 50-50 Clown. Hilarious. Maybe not so common of a sound after all.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1218-8-s ... he-weeknd/

[yeroc]

Try a Moog (ANA2 has a moog like filter) or something like The Legend, Lu-Sh-101 or Diva, Repro-1 as in the box starting points.

Thanks! Will try it one of these days. Was hoping for some old head to tell me “oh that’s just preset D3 on a Juno 60 with the onboard arp set to blah and the filter set to bleh, everyone overused it”

[Kayvon]

A pretty common synthesizer sound that’s pretty much a filtered arp..? Recreating it seems pretty trivial, I’m more curious about if this is a common preset/setting on some of these 80’s era synths?

A couple examples, both start fairly early on in the track -

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nSEtYTp78Sk

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=efubwIE9A ... 9uZQ%3D%3D

Bonus points if you can correctly identify the synth and setting in either track

You've absolutely blown my mind with that Cocteau Twins tune. Thankyou.

[Arpangel]

The Twins say often that they didn’t use synths, a lot of their sounds were made with guitars put through drum triggered filters and delays from a Lexicon PCM70.

[SafeandSound Mastering]

If you want to have a go on a synth, the triangle was a reasonable starting point guess for synthesizing something similar to guitars.

Good luck with it. I would have a go myself but our music making room is temporarily out of use. Let me know what synths you have and I may still have a go when that room is not inhabited by someone with Covid.

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Truly unbeknownst to me, apparently it very well could be Prince sampling CT’s 50-50 Clown. Hilarious. Maybe not so common of a sound after all.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1218-8-s ... he-weeknd/

That’s amazing. Personally I think he did it better

[yeroc]

The Twins say often that they didn’t use synths, a lot of their sounds were made with guitars put through drum triggered filters and delays from a Lexicon PCM70.

I think you might have nailed it!

https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/lexicon-pcm70/11504

If you have any specific interviews from them talking about this or gear geeking stuff I’m interested!

Edit: this is pretty self explanatory.

https://cocteautwins.com/cocteau-twins- ... ounds.html

[yeroc]

If you want to have a go on a synth, the triangle was a reasonable starting point guess for synthesizing something similar to guitars.

Good luck with it. I would have a go myself but our music making room is temporarily out of use. Let me know what synths you have and I may still have a go when that room is not inhabited by someone with Covid.

I think Arp above may have the correct answer

https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/lexicon-pcm70/11504

[ajay_m]

Two beautiful tracks. Although I did not try and exactly duplicate the sound, starting with a harmonically complex waveform in my Hydrasynth and assigning the harmonic mutant to that oscillator seems to get me in the ballpark, so that'd be a starting point. Possibly using the vowel filter and sweeping cutoff would also get there, or a combination of these.

[Dave.P]

Just come across this article interviewing Robin Guthrie in Guitar World if it helps…

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/robin-guthrie