Scratching sound synth Talking heads Girlfriend is better

Scratching sound synth Talking heads Girlfriend is better
« on: October 03, 2021, 01:26:09 PM »
This is the first time I post something on this website and I am not sure if I can ask questions about settings for songs. I will give it a shot. I have a Talking Heads Stop making sense tribute end this month. I am at the end of a long journey of evolving, learning and creating synth sounds. I am working on Girlfriend is better on my REV2. The lead synth sound has a kind of scratching effect (solo stop making sense concert Girlfriend is better). I tried using the pitchbend on 12 combined with the pitchbend Triggering the amount of LFO1. LFO is connected to the OSC All. Its getting somewhere but not like Bernie. If anyone on this forum can give me some direction so I can fix this amazing sound I will be very very happy. Thnx in advance.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2021, 01:28:19 PM by ThaPST »

maxter

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Re: Scratching sound synth Talking heads Girlfriend is better
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2021, 04:57:04 PM »
I just had a listen, and it sounds like it's the mod-wheel that should be routed to the LFO amount of the LFO that is set to modulate Osc All. So it's more of a playing style utilizing both wheels, mod (the vibrato) and pitch bend. I can't tell if the modwheel-LFO is routed to Cutoff as well, perhaps some.
The Way the Truth and the Life

LPF83

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Re: Scratching sound synth Talking heads Girlfriend is better
« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2021, 04:39:40 AM »
This is the first time I post something on this website and I am not sure if I can ask questions about settings for songs. I will give it a shot. I have a Talking Heads Stop making sense tribute end this month. I am at the end of a long journey of evolving, learning and creating synth sounds. I am working on Girlfriend is better on my REV2. The lead synth sound has a kind of scratching effect (solo stop making sense concert Girlfriend is better). I tried using the pitchbend on 12 combined with the pitchbend Triggering the amount of LFO1. LFO is connected to the OSC All. Its getting somewhere but not like Bernie. If anyone on this forum can give me some direction so I can fix this amazing sound I will be very very happy. Thnx in advance.

The scratching effect sounds to me like the sound OSC 1 makes when it is sync'd to OSC 2, and then the Freq value of OSC 1 (which is of course now affecting timbre instead of pitch) is then sweeped (try by hand first and then use modwheel controlled LFO once you've pinpointed the range you want).  The OSC2 frequency is of course now the pitch but you may not even need to modulate pitch at all to get the sound you want.

During sound design, I've always felt that if you start out by identifying / understanding / reproducing the most unique aspect of the sound, the other bits of it usually fall into place more easily. 
Prophet 10, OB-X8m, Prophet 6, OB-6, 3rd Wave, Prophet 12m, Prophet Rev2-16, Toraiz AS-1, Pro 2, Virus TI2, Moog SlimPhatty, Hydrasynth desktop, Korg Minilogue XDm, Roland JP-8080, Roland System-8, Roland SPD-SX SE / Octapad, Maschine, Cubase/Ableton/Akai MPC

maxter

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Re: Scratching sound synth Talking heads Girlfriend is better
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2021, 06:08:35 AM »
Yes, that is likely.

If you could find out what synth is being used @ThaPST , it would make it much easier. As those early analogs were much more limited in terms of modulation, knowing which synth would probably make it more of a no-brainer.
The Way the Truth and the Life

LPF83

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Re: Scratching sound synth Talking heads Girlfriend is better
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2021, 05:51:07 PM »
Yes, that is likely.

If you could find out what synth is being used @ThaPST , it would make it much easier. As those early analogs were much more limited in terms of modulation, knowing which synth would probably make it more of a no-brainer.

Very true...  sometimes unique sounds that come out of one synth easily can be harder to reproduce on another.  When I perform the above OSC 1 sync test on the Prophet10, the basic characteristics show through immediately.  But then when I do same on the Rev2 or AS-1 (monophonic P6 basically), I get very differnet results on each of the three synths for this particular sound.

This sound definately sounds like someone is playing the LFO realtime with a fixed max range (i.e. modwheel max amount).  On the Rev2 I got something that sounds (sort of) like it by using the mod matrix to map modwheel to both LFO1, with amount around 39 or so, and also directly to OSC1 Frequency, giving it kind of an exponentially weird increase with each stroke of the modwheel up to a fixed amount (all of this assumes OSC1 is already sync'd to OSC2, OSC2 is put into the appropriate pitch etc).

The general nature of the sound I hear coming out of the P10 is a little closer but harder to describe how to reproduce (no mod matrix or exact values to report), but I think the band was known for lots of Prophet 5 use so that may have been what was used.
Prophet 10, OB-X8m, Prophet 6, OB-6, 3rd Wave, Prophet 12m, Prophet Rev2-16, Toraiz AS-1, Pro 2, Virus TI2, Moog SlimPhatty, Hydrasynth desktop, Korg Minilogue XDm, Roland JP-8080, Roland System-8, Roland SPD-SX SE / Octapad, Maschine, Cubase/Ableton/Akai MPC