NIN 'Terrible lie' sound......Can a Virus do it???

[johnldreffs]

I found some more info on what he used for the Terrible Lie sound.

The link to the interview is here http://www.nin-pages.de/1990_Keyboard_April_english.htm.

Here are the parts reating to the song.

There doesn‘t seem to be a lot of synth on the album.
Actually, there was. I used a Prophet-VS, an Oberheim Xpander, and a little bit of Minimoog, which was down more than up in the studio. I‘ve had the Xpander since it came out. I‘ve always considered it a great analog machine. It‘s the only thing I‘ve ever owned that‘s never let me down. But I‘d gotten to the point where it was cumbersome to pro gram. I had the same ten sounds I always thought were great in lt. Then, when I worked with Flood, he breathed new life into it for me. He‘s absolutely a master of programming the Xpander. We really got into the FM section, doing some weird modulation things I‘d never attempted and coming up with very strange, non-analog sounds. That ended up being a big part of what we did for a lot of weird modulating sounds. “Terrible Lie“ was all Oberheim.

“Terrible Lie“ also features a very provocative dissonant theme right after the false ending.
That sound has quite an interesting history. It started out as a woodblock. I ran it through a distortion pedal, sampled it, then did my Emax trick by dropping it down a couple of octaves. Then I chopped off the beginning of it. I might also have put an envelope on it with Turbosynth. That‘s probably my favorite sound on the record.

Here is the info on the emax trick he mentions.

What about the keyboard parts?
I‘ve always had E-mu products. I had an Emulator II for a while, but I got rid oft right before I did the album. Almost every sound is an Emax. I like it because it has a slightly brighter sound than the Emulator. And I really love its crummy clock noise when you trans pose down. That‘s the secret to a lot of the sounds on Pretty Hate Machine: Get a cool sound, then transpose it down three octaves to get that great grainy high-end buzz. In the studio, we have an Akai S950, which probably sounds better, but it gets duller as you transpose down. I use Turbosynth a lot, in a kind of half knowing what everything does and half I‘m-not-sure-what-this-does, I‘m just-gonna-mess-around-with-it-for-an-hour until-something-cool-comes-out way.

Sorry I can't give any help as to creating it on a Virus but, I don't have one and my programming and sound design skills leave much to be desired.