Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 98 Location: London
Audio files: 5
G2 patch files: 13
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 11:00 am Post subject:
No idea where to start!
I want to create a effect like the one on this clip (the "sparkly" one that starts high and goes low, not the lead sound) but I have absolutely no idea where to start with this sort of thing. Any suggestions as to general approaches to patching this sort of sound most gratefully accepted.
Cheers, Angus
I don´t have a G2, so I cannot make a patch for you.. uh.. and it is very tempting to let you just struggle with that one...
Those sounds there used to be called "dikmiks". You can Goodle DikMik and Hawkwind.
These are fairly easy to set up on the VCS, the AKS, the 2600, the Cat or the MS 20. There used to be a patch sheet called "space ripples" for the 2600 which pretty much was a basic patch for this kind of sound.
Less acid and h.. and a higher percentage of weed willl point you in the direction of Gong.. and this was also one of Moonweed´s signature synth patches.. Try Google Moonweed and Gong.
_________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 98 Location: London
Audio files: 5
G2 patch files: 13
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 1:10 pm Post subject:
OK - will have a look around. I'm pretty clueless about this type of sound - there are a few factory patches which are in the same sort of genre, but they all use the DX modules which I totally don't understand!
Angus
Sounds like a square wave modulating a high Q filter, with some delay and an envelope control sweep. Here is something that is pretty similar. Not exactly what you want but pretty close I think.
Sounds like a square wave modulating a high Q filter, with some delay and an envelope control sweep. Here is something that is pretty similar. Not exactly what you want but pretty close I think.
Maybe a place to start.
ups ...Mosc answered just while i was writing ...
Could well be a square on the filter...i just wanted to point to that what atracts you on this sound is maybe it´s spaceinous journey and not what the synth is doing.
Its sometimes amazing how little noisy bleeps develop with some fx on...
never judge a sound before you had it on the desk with some fx on...
So just to prevent you from beeing un satisfied with the G2..fx are involved.
The G2 can handle it. But building an fx algorythm that is working so smooth and present is quite some work.
In the realworld i would expect the TC fireworks beeing responsible for this fx.. But could be an eventide or a group of fx units aswell.
A studio fx rack is quite the same as a modular synth.
This is a kind of "70s space music" patch that was used all over the place. As such it was a typical zero state for a synth set up for various spacy effects. When you finally get the patch right you will see that translated to a typical semimodular or mono/duo phonic synth of the 70s you will have direct access to wide range of wonderful chirps and rippling sweeps.
I reckon it would be easier to understand the patch if you actually look to the actual layout of any of these synths. The 70s SH Rolands weren´t suitable for these patches. The filters weren´t wild enough.
On some synths there were spring reverbs and you would of course use that one.. and the echo would be Roland Space echoes.. or.. the hobbyist reel-to-reel tape decks with sound on sound echo. Some of the Tandberg decks like the TD 3500 were wonderful. these had a "bug" which resulted in a wonderful stereo echo thinge.
A phaser could be just fine. A mono phaser could be put on the input of the TD 3500 and the resulting stereo echo would be simply mindblowing. When phasing such a patch like this one it would often help to have some subtle spring reverb rattlish noise ringing. That extra noise added enough wideband juice to the signal to really let the phasing and the echo be effective. However, the spring reverb could also be a major PITA. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
A mono phaser could be put on the input of the TD 3500 and the resulting stereo echo would be simply mindblowing.
In this sound i rather hear a stereo phase behind the delay fx with mod 180 degrees distant...at least it reminds me much to what my mutronphasor did..
Stupid me..why i ve sold this one ...
Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 98 Location: London
Audio files: 5
G2 patch files: 13
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 2:20 pm Post subject:
Wow - quick replies
I was busy working on this [attached - not a million miles off but a sounds a bit rubbish lower down] but I'll go back and revisit some of these ideas (not that I understand any of the technical jargon - I just spend hours adding in modules and switching them on and off to see what they do!!)
Messed around with the shape of the LFO a bit to get the right amount of bite and distinction on each "bleep" without sounding too clicky. Also assigned some params to the mod wheel so you can mess around with the sound when it reaches lower registers.
Angus
This LP was probably one of the best examples back then of such patches. Tim Blake doesn´t quite take the dikmik into stars.. but a lot of the patches in there are pretty much the same one that generates the dikmik as heard in mp3 example in the first post. The parameters are just slightly different. Basic routing is the same.
Trivia: this wonderful LP, now rereleased on CD, is pretty much recorded live.
_________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
You are off to a good start now. Mix that in on top of noisey voice, lots of noise, distortion and tons or reverb and you'll have it. _________________ --Howard
my music and other stuff
In this sound i rather hear a stereo phase behind the delay fx with mod 180 degrees distant...at least it reminds me much to what my mutronphasor did..
Sure. I am not really referring to the mp3 example on a 1:1 basis, but to this patch in classic terms. You know, much like you would a synced lead voice with a tail of echo.. controlled by footpedals.. and then smurfed into a filterbank stepped by the Phonosonics sequencer rack. The same basic patch could result in a lot of seriously different wild stuff. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Joined: Mar 29, 2004 Posts: 580 Location: The Hague/Netherlands/EC
G2 patch files: 109
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 2:46 pm Post subject:
Re: No idea where to start!
This is what I would probably use as a starting point.
Fast sine lfo on a sinewave, plus another slow lfo or AD env for that large sweep, plus a little modulation of the fast lfo on the VCA. Play with the speed of the slow lfo and echo level for effect. But be sure to first hit that moonweed...
Some extra tape echo comes closest to a late sixties type sound and a spring reverb to an early seventies type sound. The big Accutronics number nine springtank is my advice.
Not bad at all _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Should run on the demo software. And some sort of dikke mikmak dingetje in the voice section. That's sort of the dutch translation for fat dikmik thingie...
Great, Rob. It's a great patch - both useful for musicial purposes and very educational. Next time I do a Krellian piece, I'll be sure to use this. I'm user the original composers used Ampex machines for tape echoes, but it those days the obsession with branding was not so intense as it is now. _________________ --Howard
my music and other stuff
Joined: Mar 29, 2004 Posts: 580 Location: The Hague/Netherlands/EC
G2 patch files: 109
Posted: Sat Aug 13, 2005 8:51 am Post subject:
mosc wrote:
I'm user the original composers used Ampex machines for tape echoes, but it those days the obsession with branding was not so intense as it is now.
Well, over here on the European continent the Revox A77 was all over the place. In fact, when someone referred to an Ampex machine it invariably meant a machine to transfer film to video for direct broadcasting.
I guess the sixties and seventies was much more local markets.
Joined: Aug 12, 2004 Posts: 466 Location: Los Angeles, CA. USA
Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 12:32 pm Post subject:
yes nice thread folks.
Very educational too like you said mosc.
I have always liked these patches and had never heard of this
dikmik thing as its called & learning how to patch it is all the more fun.
I also wanted to say I like every one of these example patches! Thanks
the dikmik patch itself is not really invented by the Dik Mik , the soundengineer of the UK space rock group Hawkwind. However, back then Hawkwind and Gong were probably two of the most trendsetting groups around regarding the use of soundeffects and synth noises.
What I liked about Hawkwind was that it was like a mad spaceship with everybody jamming things in to see what would happen. Half of it was DikMik just finding out what would happen with the synthesizer, and Nik used to have his captain's cap at the time, he doesn't wear it much now but he used to have this captain's or seaman's white cap and he looked very good 'doing that' ..(chuckles).. So I sort of went up to a few gigs.
_________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Well, over here on the European continent the Revox A77 was all over the place. In fact, when someone referred to an Ampex machine it invariably meant a machine to transfer film to video for direct broadcasting.
I guess the sixties and seventies was much more local markets.
I think so too. Of course we also had Tandberg and Ferrograph, and also all the consumer brands offering reel to reel decks with sounds on sound and whatever. Braun, Phillips .. uh.. and others. Akai and Sopny came in early in the 70s and then they started to sell the Teac decks in big numbers. And we also had the Agfa and the BASF studio decks.. huge nasty things on wheels..
Over here "Ampex" usually meant either tapes or video gear. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Well, I was thinking of the 50s when Bebe and Louis Barron made the score for Forbidden Planet. I would bet they used Ampex tape recorders on that one.
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...Mosc answered just while i was writing ...
Not bad, actually. 
