Reproducing certain sounds (links inside)

[Ravich]

Hello everyone. I dont have a whole lot of experience with music with an electronic aesthetic to it, so I was hoping that you all could help me in learning to recreate specific sounds/instruments. Any help with any of the examples would be much appreciated. I'm not even sure what sort of synthesizer to start with.

For the record, my DAW is Logic.

1) Metal Gear Solid - Introduction

All of the sounds seem straight forward except for the high pitched "beep" instrument that starts right at the beginning and loops straight through the whole thing.

2) Mass Effect - Saren

It seems like one istrument with a delay effect for the whole thing, and there is some sort of phasing effect going on I think. Other than that though, I wouldnt be sure where to get started.

3) Mass Effect - Liara's World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U15eCO-cwk

No idea where to begin here. I can here the effects, but I have no idea what they are called.

4) Metal Gear Solid 3 - Main Theme

WIth this track I'm looking specifically for the effect starting at around 2:05. It sounds a bit like the noise is being put through the shape of a person's mouth if that makes sense. It comes in again much stronger at about 3:40.

Any pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: no embedding apparently, I'll change to links.

[chromaticorb]

mystery sound 1), the MGS intro doesn't sound hard to recreate actually.

it just sounds like some kind of simple sawtooth wave, maybe a couple of harmonics on it, playing octaves.

EDIT:

actually having a quick jam out it sounds like its something to do with fifths, using the notes E and B (or near there). the rest is pretty easy to work by ear, if you get the time

[chromaticorb]

3) is again, a sawtooth wave, with some portamento added, bit of reverb, and the guy also has a filter ADSL set to decay so it hits the 'sweet spot' of the resonance. he's also automating it by altering the lowpass filter cutoff (and the resonance itself as well)

[chromaticorb]

(4) sounds like some kind of drum, almost sounds kind of woody, like a rimshot or something. its being put through a formant (or perhaps bandpass) filter, with some flanger or chorus (for some reason i tend to get those two mixed up in my head; always been a problem of mine and i've been producing for years), and some good ol' reverb

(2) has some light detune on a good ol' 2 osc sawtooth, with some of that nice atmospheric delay you get where the filter cutoff goes down with each sucessive delay. and theres some phaser there too. he's also doing something with the decay of the ADSL filter but I can't really say; its gonna need some experimenting on your behalf

hope these helped!

[Ravich]

Thanks a lot, this was really helpful, I appreciate it. I'm really just learning the basics, so when you say sawtooth wave, I just did a bit of googling and then tried the simplest synth logic had (EFM1), which got me a bunch of knobs I didnt know what to do with, but playing around with them I was able to get a feel for them and get a close sound to what I was hearing in the MGS track.

Is there a better starting place as far as a simple sawtooth wave goes?

Managed to get pretty close to Liara's World as well with a synth that had build in glide/portamento. Thanks again!

[Rozovian]

The EFM1 is _so_ not the simplest synth in Logic. It's an FM synth (more advanced synthesis technique than subractive/additive, which its other synths use) - and the interface is terrible. The sound in #2 could be FM (frequency modulation) or PWM (pulse-width modulation).

The ES1 can do PWM for pulse waves, you might be able to set it up to do this sound, but I would suggest the ES2 as you'll then have control over the filter and the pwm separately.

If you have no idea how to do synths, start with the ESE and ESM, then move on to ES1 (and freebies like FreeAlpha and TAL-Elek7ro II for a change of interface) and ES2. If you've used the EXS24, you'll be more familiar with the filter when you get to the ES1 and 2.

If the sound is FM, you might be able to recreate it in EFM1. I suggest not starting with that, tho. FM is tricky, even with a good interface.

I have a few sections on synths in my remixing guide. They might be helpful.

(pro tip: create an initialized patch/preset for all synths, one with everything turned to its default position, all modulation options removed, basically the most basic settings you can get. that way, you won't have to turn everything off whenever you want to build something from scratch... like here, with pwm.

iirc, you can also start making it in es1 and then switch it to es2. it'll create an es2 version of the es1 patch you had.)

ADSL filter, huh? That's a new one.

[Ravich]

Thanks for the recommendations. A couple of problems:

-Is there a link to any reading you can give for the very basics? I feel like I'd be better off with a fraction of a foundation of knowledge than none at all.

-I'm not quite sure how to get the most basic setting in any synth just because not all of the knobs seem meant to go all the way to one end.

[Rozovian]

Thanks for the recommendations. A couple of problems:

-Is there a link to any reading you can give for the very basics? I feel like I'd be better off with a fraction of a foundation of knowledge than none at all.

-I'm not quite sure how to get the most basic setting in any synth just because not all of the knobs seem meant to go all the way to one end.

Re-read my post, look for a link. Go look in the guides&tutorials subforum. Google synth basics or something.

Alt-click the knobs and controls. Most of them will default to an init value, tho some buttons and others might not. Also remove any modulation matrix data so it doesn't interfere (it's the long confusing thing across the middle of the EXS24 and ES2). Once you've gone over the whole thing doing that, save the preset as "init" or something.