Classic Goa Trance basses/leads/FX recreated in modern software

[Multi-Media]

See here: 

 

I posted 2 vids from him, in one he also said what he used on the early works, not much and he also explains why it worked better with less..

[astralprojection]

7 hours ago, AstralSphinx said:

 

I did some digging, and my memory wasn't wrong Bill Cosmosis was indeed a member here on psynews:

https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/38368-updated-tips-and-trick-section-on-cosmosis-websit/

https://www.psynews.org/forums/profile/2838-bagginz/

I stand corrected and my apologies

 

  

13 hours ago, AstralSphinx said:

Some egyptian themed goa intro, messing around with the D-16 Phoscyon 303 clone through reverbs/delays, with a kick drum, bass, choir pads, flutes, hookpads, "airy white noise sweeps" and some arps, headphone mix so bass is probably too low as usual  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IfrVXDMV5il9NC-1IgHCv0JsnoZjIgzU/view?usp=sharing

the 303 pattern is in the "egyptian" scale/mode as well to fit with the rest.

 

 

nice! a little Khetzal-esque in the feeling of it  

edit: btw is "egyptian" mode pretty much Phrygian mode? Or is that a scale and not a mode? I am not musically trained Im learning as I go along. 

[Imba]

I made some old school Juno 106 styled bass preset for Serum, added MIDI for bass and kick sample. Get it here and play around:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wv5ptu7uymte0b6/Old School Goa Bass.zip?dl=0

 

Inspired by Boris Blenn (and Radi)

[astralprojection]

@AstralSphinx

thanks that is super useful and helpful!! very much appreciated. i think i understand about 75% of it or so

 

[Imba]

22 hours ago, AstralSphinx said:

Could you make a little audio example?  for us that don't have Serum. Curious to hear how it sounds. Did you make it with a Juno 106 Sub Osc wavetable or purely with Serum's own oscillators?

 

Used Serum factory oscillators with a bit of tweaking. Here is short example or how it sounds without processing:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/685chmgz3yakt8s/Old School Goa Beat.mp3?dl=0

[astralprojection]

haha thats great. spire is something id want to buy in hardware form and then have that as my only hardware synth.

 

[recursion loop]

 Spire  can sound similar to Virus, mostly the VA and unison based stuff. Leads, plucks, pads, acid, it covers that more ir less. To my ears it sounds thinner, softer and brighter than Virus but in an actual mix they can be pretty much interchangeable (i have both).

 

It doesn't do wavetables and the FM sounds very different tho, do it's not a full replacement for Virus TI.

 

If you like Virus, check out also Adam Szabo Viper synth.

[astralprojection]

id love to see the virus line continued, and they make a current version. then it would rival spire in a second ive no doubt.

[recursion loop]

For what I know there will be no new Viruses, Christoph Kemper is now making guitar amp sims and the chips the Virus is based on will be out of production soon.

[astralprojection]

so in your opinion that old virus of yours is still better at sound design than spire? if so then i believe you, i dont have the pleasure of working with a virus before. Never even tried one in a shop. But ive heard one, and yes spire sounds much much more software like than a real virus theres no question.. but i think that can be mixed in later in the chain, but yes this is the problem with nearly any SW vs HW scenario.

 

[recursion loop]

 

8 minutes ago, astralprojection said:

so in your opinion that old virus of yours is still better at sound design than spire? if so then i believe you, i dont have the pleasure of working with a virus before. Never even tried one in a shop. But ive heard one, and yes spire sounds much much more software like than a real virus theres no question.. but i think that can be mixed in later in the chain, but yes this is the problem with nearly any SW vs HW scenario.

Virus does some things which Spire can't do. Virus TI2 has a full-blown wavetable section with some unique wavetable FX, global unison, cross-oscillator FM Also there are sonic differences, like Virus sounds bigger/fatter/darker, with much more midrange presence.

 

You can make Spire sound like that with some extra processing if you know what Virus sounds like and what you should aim at, also you can pull off some Virus-like sounds from wavetable synths like Serum and Parawave Rapid, but Viurs is Virus.

 

That "the distance" track (you know that track) was made with heavy use of Virus (and also Microbrute, so I think it's like 50% hardware, 50% software)

[astralprojection]

Interesting. Seems even a 10 year old HW unit can beat even the best SW units 

thats really what its all about though. god damn bullshit is what it is, that we cant have that SOUND in SW. that "thing". at least, out the box (of the plugin)

 

[recursion loop]

I once talked with Urs Heckman (the man behind Zebra, Diva etc) at the KVR forum, he essentially thinks Virus doesn't sound good to him and has many technical flaws, like aliasing and other. 

 

It seems that software devs consider Virus to be obsolete digital tech so analysing and copying it doesn't seem to be rewarding or interesting to them. Which is technically true - the engine can alias, the oscillators can't reproduce full bandwith, the filters are far from an accurate analog model etc, etc.

 

 But it does sound great.

[astralprojection]

22 minutes ago, recursion loop said:

 

 

 But it does sound great.

yes it does! And spire costs about a tenth or so vs a ti2. Still love spire, still would love to see it come to hw, sounding "more" than what it now does.  I think it would be a really fun box to be hands on with. 

 

[recursion loop]

14 hours ago, AstralSphinx said:

Here is the Infecto/Virus filter model with a filter sweep.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cabhbTT6Ag71r4IGHTQLTJCe8LrxEJ7A/view?usp=sharing

I'm not too happy with how the filter behaves, at times it sounds as if the filter is fading between some EQ settings. It is not piercing through as I would expect it to.

Great melody!

My favourite filter for that kind of thing is Scorpio, try this one.

[recursion loop]

Equalizer in Spire is somehwat similar to Virus eq, in the sense that it can radically change the tone and turn a lame sound into a pretty cool one.

Overall don't expect that Spire would behave in exactly the same way as Virus, it's not an emulation.  It seems that they wanted to make a synth that would sound similar to Virus when making EDM and classic trance kind of stuff, like plucks, supersaw leads and such, I think psy/goa/acid wasn't their main interest.

 

Forgot to say, there is also Acido filter, did you try this one?

 

 

[astralprojection]

Damn this is like a crashcourse to spires filters =) i learned TONS from you guys. incredible discussion above.

anyway, on topic, i gave up my dancing galaxy lead   i was not good enough to get the melody accurate. and showing off a sound without the melody kinda defeats the purpose. i have since switched to Noone Ever Dreams  hopefully that will be easier since at least its fully pitch coherent to my ears. if i cant do that either ill just have to go back to Nexus again, which is pretty much pitch-sterile and even me could nail the melodies. i think.

[MikroMakro]

The ATARI 1040 STE's (maybe Amiga's) of the time was typically only triggering the MIDI sequence hardware synths played. The Mackie 24/8/2 - 32/8/2 were the desks to aim for at home project level, there were many others... but studios like those at Dragonfly Records may have had bigger channel counts and something like an AMEK or a A+H Sabre, something along these lines.

I guess most were played back and DAT captured MIDI sequences, synths and samplers. So you were limited by how many synths you had and how many stereo effects returns were wired to dedicated effects returns (usually you had 4 dedicated stereo returns on a project desk) of stereo pairs of channels. Unless you multi-tracked them to tape and re-used your synths for different lead lines.

DAT's are just 2 channel stereo mix recorders.

 

 

[Multi-Media]

Hey folks,

I finally got the ARL-B to work, noted with the delivered patterns I can get decent results. However I also downloaded a preset for it with the file format .fxp. I do not know how I can load this in the synth? Also it can import Rebirth patterns (or called songs?), this does not work too sadly ;(

Fromt his thread: 

Same here old free VST "The BlueV2" I cannot find a menu to load presets at all, the format here is .fxb:
You guys are experienced perhaps someone can help?

[recursion loop]

Fxb is the universal preset bank format for VST/VSTi

Look for "load bank" in the plugin's GUI or put the fxp files into the same folder where the the fatory banks are stored.

[Multi-Media]

7 hours ago, recursion loop said:

Fxb is the universal preset bank format for VST/VSTi

Look for "load bank" in the plugin's GUI or put the fxp files into the same folder where the the fatory banks are stored.

Yeah I figured this already, in case of THEBLUE there is no folder at all, just the dll,dat and fxb file, which I unzipped in the VST folder. And there seem to be no menu to load presets: I like the kind of warm, nostalgic and rough sound of this one, this is why I really want to have the presets (like said, there is only 1 in the menu - which the Logic interface provides, not the synth itself!)

 

In the case of Audiorealism Bassline, this one seems to have only the options to load patterns and rebirth songs (at least this is the file ending = .rbs). But I downloaded an .fxp file which says are presets for ARL-B. But I see no way to load them, also putting in the "patches" folder does nothing. Also it will not load the .rbs files, however the patterns work (there are 4 folders with patterns for different styles)

EDIT; SOLVED one needs to use the host application to load these (means the DAW itself!)..if VST itself has no menu.

 

[Multi-Media]

As I have solved the issue above and while experimenting with the ABL I got already 1/3 of a new track (means another began and not finished *sigh*). I ran into trouble with the 303 sequence together with kick and main bassline. Seems frequencies got themselves into the way. I learned how to make room to a certain decree but when I cutoff/lower too much of the low of the 303s it becomes too thin. How do you deal with this? Perhaps lower the main bassline in volume while the 303 plays or put a sidechain on ? I made a track with lots of sidechain and a mastering engineer (=AP fromt his forum) told me it was way overboard, so I am now careful with that...

I recon many use the 303 also as the main bassline, which I do not do. I have a regular synthbass for that.

[recursion loop]

I usually hipass everything that is not the bass at around 300 Hz, give or take. If it's too thin, add some slight distortion or compress it (but before the hipass filter)

[Padmapani]

yeah, 303s need to be highpassed aggressively (if you're not doing acid techno where the 303 takes the place of the bassline). at first it may seem as if you cut all the meat off the sound, but if you compare to your favourite acidlines, you'll notice that they're all highpassed pretty harshly.

[astralprojection]

46 minutes ago, Multi-Media said:

As I have solved the issue above and while experimenting with the ABL I got already 1/3 of a new track (means another began and not finished *sigh*). I ran into trouble with the 303 sequence together with kick and main bassline. Seems frequencies got themselves into the way. I learned how to make room to a certain decree but when I cutoff/lower too much of the low of the 303s it becomes too thin. How do you deal with this? Perhaps lower the main bassline in volume while the 303 plays or put a sidechain on ? I made a track with lots of sidechain and a mastering engineer told me it was way overboard, so I am now careful with that...

I recon many use the 303 also as the main bassline, which I do not do. I have a regular synthbass for that.

I'm not a mastering engineer just yet, but I did think it sounded very much too pumpy, and it took too much focus. Don't get hung up on that though

The 303 isn't suitable for a psy bassline, I don't think it goes deep enough. But in the 90's, acid trance had it as the bassline too, iirc same as alot of the acid techno. 

Saturation is probably your best bet in beefing up the 303, after you high-pass it