Cymbals

[LucidSFX]

Has anyone been able to create a usable patch for cymbals without using the digital OSC cymbal samples? Using noise to modulate frequency is to harsh...most of what I have come up with is utter garbage. Any success out there? I have searched online for cymbal synthesis but aside from Sound on Sound's crazy master class which is more mathematical than hands on patch making, it is a tough thing for me to find. Ring modulation for sure is a key ingredient which the Tempest doesn't have...

Thoughts?

[Yorgos Arabatzis]

I'm afraid cymbal synthesis is one of the most complicated but i'm on it..Hope i can come up with something useful 

[LucidSFX]

Well Yorgos, if anyone can do it.... it would be you! LOL This could be a great competition! Realistic isn't necessarily what I am going for but something "bell like" sure...

[LucidSFX]

The gauntlet has been thrown...Yorgos. Using the two Analog OSC I have created the best cymbal yet (ahem in my collection). I have attached the SYX file for everyone to use and two different MP3 examples of the same pattern. One of which is clean and the other has distortion and compression applied from the Tempest.

Usage:
* Keyfollow is turned off on the OSC's. Instead use amount on LFO 2 to change the timbre.
* Reverse acts like a soft hit.
* Pressure acts like a strike and hand mute.
* Velocity sensitive strike
* FX: I used the 4 Note FX slots for FX Strips 1 & 2. Be mindful of this when manually sequencing in the editor.
        FX1: Timbre Change and with pressure tight grabs, if done right it is an open high hat (a few lights up front centre).
        FX2: Tonal Changes - extreme setting gives it a synth tech feel

Alright .. this is officially a competition not for the feint of heart. Bloody hard to piece together. I hope everyone gets some use out of it!

TIP: The distortion and compression example is using extreme settings at almost 1/2 turn on distortion and almost 3/4 turn on compression. You can get the most realistic cymbal sound when distortion is at a minimum level setting of 4 and compression at 38.

[John the Savage]

As I recall, fellow Tempest user "Leviathant" did a pretty good job emulating the cymbal sounds of the TR-606 and Dr-110 without using samples.  He did employ the digital oscillators mind you, but the sounds were entirely synthesized from scratch.  Worth a listen anyway...

http://www.bitrotten.com/tempest/

http://dsiforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=6361

Hell, I'm still using those hats (grin).

Cheers!

[LucidSFX]

I remember reading his post back in July. Very cool.

[LucidSFX]

Fyi - the examples posted use a different variation of the cymbals for each strike on purpose.

[muleskinner]

Has anyone been able to create a usable patch for cymbals without using the digital OSC cymbal samples?

Haha - you know I was just about to post asking the same thing.

Cymbals are the only thing I'm never satisfied with. My best results have been using high filter resonance and FM - still pretty lame though. I will check out your patch when I get a chance...

[LucidSFX]

Let me know if you got the right sysex file. I just updated the firmware after yesterday's new firmware post. After reading the release notes I realised that the wrong sysex file may have been sent due to a firmware bug. I may have to resend and upload the sysex preset.

I was also thinking of redoing the demos since I am not happy with it to showcase the sound. I am using Adam A7 monitors which is sounds great on but ...crap on IPhone (obviously). I wonder if anyone was turned off the patch from the demo...

[bozo]

If you look up the tr 808 schematics it explians th circuits used and the cyb use 6 shmitt osc or something and ring mod etc etc.
Something they forgot when designing, well porting the tempst synth engine.

[Shea]

good job.

[Steven Morris]

I think I've come up with a decent method-- Two pulse waves. Modulate the PWM of the first w/ maxed out rate/amt S&H LFO, do the same with the second LFO but modulate the pitch. For the second pulse, modulate the pitch with the noise parameter and max that out.

Find the sweet spot w/ the LPF/HPF filters and mess with the Filter & Amp EGs and you could probably come up with something passable.

Hope that helps!

Edit: Forgot to mention that it helps to raise the pitch of OSC2 as well as raise the feedback

[LucidSFX]

Interesting. Will check this out. I also plan to revamp my patch.

[Leviathant]

Hey guys! So I haven't ported this over to the Tempest yet, but I think I was able to create reasonably passable Roland hihats using two square waves, noise, and a highpass filter.

In any modern desktop browser - but preferably Chrome - go to my Javascript Boss DR-110, and ignore the sequencer for now. This doesn't use sample playback, it uses the Web Audio API. The bottom row of your keyboard should correspond with the buttons on the drum machine. The "V" and "B" keys will trigger the open and closed hihats. Not too shabby, right?

I'm stupid busy these days. New position at work that's got me traveling a lot. Building a performing arts space with an apartment above it that I'll be living in. Unearthed some 18th century artifacts while doing that construction. Not a lot of time for deep diving into drum synthesis. Here's where you can beat me to the punch in bringing this to the Tempest, though.

It's javascript. Even if you didn't know how to view the source code in your browser, I've put the whole thing up on Github. Part of my effort in making this javascript drum machine was to try and keep the javascript faaaaairly readable. So if you go to line 93, you'll see the secret sauce for the hats. The only thing that's not super apparent if you don't read code is that I'm using the following frequencies from an array (aka a list) that I defined earlier in the code: 780 & 1100. These don't match at all with what's in this analysis, but when I used the numbers given there, it definitely sounded wrong, so I kind of went by ear until things started to click.

In theory, you should be able to use two analog square waves, tuned to those frequencies, and then the 4k resonant noise digital osc, pitch-modulated by a triangle LFO, and then highpass the whole thing, and get similar sounds. It'll be as analog as a Roland hihat, considering that Roland also uses a digital source for its white noise (which it then runs through a modulated bandpass filter, which we're emulating by modulating the resonant noise filter with a free-running LFO)

As you can hear from the ride cymbal on the DR-110 page, I haven't QUITE got that down as well yet. That's four square wave oscs and a noise source, so on a Tempest, it would still require two separate voices to emulate well.

[Steven Morris]

Leviathant, that is good stuff . I didn't consider using the sampled noise on the Tempest as I tried to stay as analog as possible (I understand the EG's & probably LFO's etc. are digital though).

FWIW, Doepfer makes a module called the A-117 DIG. NOISE/808 SOURCE that contains a couple of stagnant oscillators-- containing 6 and 2 pitches each respectively. Either of those in conjunction with some noise & creative filtering & enveloping will get great cymbal sounds. Here's a video by Raul's World of Synths containing the raw sounds that come out of each of those outputs:
https://youtu.be/79SxLCkYZBU?t=8m36s

Here's a recent video I did using the 6osc out w/ some filtering and modulation-- and in retrospect I wish I would've turned those cymbal sounds up a bit as they are a bit buried in the mix:
https://youtu.be/Vgcp_lj7H-4?t=3m27s

Those 6 & 2 OSC outputs on the A117 were something I never thought I'd use, but I particularly like the 6 for cymbal sounds. With that in mind, however, it's a bit of a challenge to get something that complex out of the Tempest's analog oscillators. Those really metallic partials require more oscillators or some FM (that is a bit more precise than what is present on the Tempest).

At any rate, perhaps some clever use of sync could make up for the missing oscillator in your proposed ride cymbal recipe

[LucidSFX]

Sweet! Yeah, I was trying to get close using the two Ang OSC. I find that 1/2 of the trailing sound can comes close but I am finding it impossible to remove the overtone ring which sounds a bit digital. It seems like we agree on using 6 OSC's. 4k noise is probably the most usable sample sure. As soon as I get close to a realistic cymbal I now compare it to one of the sampled ones on the T and shake my head:) It's is a great exercise though! I find myself starting a patch to be a cymbal then switching it up to a tech percussion sound. So it has helped me understand more about synthesis.

On that note I visited stack exchange/sound Delete repeated word to get some tips from the pro's but the forum is a bloody mess to filter though. Most people are like how do I get this or that sound from XXX track. Very annoying for me. However, you do come across interesting reads on deep synthesis.

In any case I would like to hear from the Tempest team about any discussion had on cymbal creation during the development of the Tempest. Surely it must have come up since they were creating a drum machine. Maybe the next piece of gear from DSI would be a Cymbal beast. Maybe not! LOL

[muleskinner]

Nice job on that patch.

I'm going to post my attempts here but I'm not particularly happy with either of them!

Very difficult to get the necessary 'metallic noise' type effect. Everything I try ends up sounding either too 'washy' or too 'hard'.

I wish there were more varieties of pitched/bandpassed noise in the samples.