Talking Heads & Tom Tom Club sounds from the P6?

Talking Heads & Tom Tom Club sounds from the P6?
« on: April 24, 2018, 10:14:00 PM »
Before I purchased the Prophet 06, I posted another topic in the Rev2 thread asking which synth would be best to achieve the kinds of sounds on these classic joints. (Talking Heads "Speaking in Tongues" and Tom Tom Club). Feedback says it should be a "clear choice", considering the albums relied heavily on the Prophet V.  https://forum.davesmithinstruments.com/index.php/topic,2480.msg26827.html#msg26827

The overall sound of the 06 feels kind of rough to me, and not nearly as clean, juicy, and organic.  I am not a sound designer, but have been kind of fiddling away at it.  It is an impressive synth, but I'm unable to achieve the results I was looking for.  Is there anyone who can share some patches or offer tips on achieving such sounds?   
« Last Edit: April 24, 2018, 10:31:32 PM by BobPeru »

Re: Talking Heads & Tom Tom Club sounds from the P6?
« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2018, 09:47:19 AM »
Good news!  These 80's type sounds can absolutely be reproduced on a prophet 6!  Here are a couple hints I've figured out to make it happen :)

1.  The sub oscillator is your enemy!  They didn't exist in the 80s, and your Prophet is already mega fat.  Turn it off. 
2.  You're going to spend a lot of time tweaking square wave pulse-width.  I find that there are a few sweet spots that sound really great for 80s sounds, and 12 o'clock is not one of them.  Also, the shape of the P6 square wave is more sawtooth-y than you might realize, so beware of that if you use the continuous waveform instead of the pulse-width to fatten things up.  You could be heading down the wrong path. 
3.  Old synths didn't have as snappy of envelopes as the P6.  You want to emulate them, so take that into account.  Try making the amp attack slower than you actually think it should be, and instead use the filter envelope (on the filter) to give the note a fast attack.  Adding in the noise oscillator makes a clangy (aka attack) sound. That's actually a trick you can do to make a synth with slow envelopes sound snappier.  Sounds strange, right?  But it totally works.   So...slower amp envelope + fast filter envelope + noise osc will lead you towards 80s sounds.
4. Chorus with one oscillator is better than two oscillators detuned from each other.  Why?  Because it's in s t e r e o o o o o!  And it's truer to the old style of sound design, when oscillators were harder to come by.
5.  BBD delay.  More important than reverb.
6.  Run all that through a stereo tube preamp.  This is more important if you're recording entire songs with just synths.  Otherwise, no matter how great your sounds are, you'll still end up with unnaturally clean sounding recordings.

Finally, I recommend you remember the Prophet 6's character.  Sometimes you can perfectly reproduce P5 sounds, other times you definitely can't.  But on your way to trying to reproduce a sound, you will always find something that sounds (really) just as good, but possibly a little different.  Enjoy!

Re: Talking Heads & Tom Tom Club sounds from the P6?
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2018, 09:57:57 AM »
Here's a vid that seems like it quite fits the bill! P6 doing Talking Heads...