Pizzicato sounds as used by Faithless

[Timo]

Originally Posted by Khazul

Yeh - I just cant enough 'attitude' out of the TI even with osc phase tweaked, punch maxed, the envelopes as blipy as they can be and using an lfo in one-shot to add a noise blip. This is the area where I find the V-Synth a bit more intense.

Needs a better compressor on the job as well - bog standard compressor that ships with Cubase SX - which I allways thought was crap - though TBH I didnt exactly pay alot of attension to compression - just cranked it

I would be interested to know what went into the original sample sound used - sounds like the kind of thing I could have got out of a D50 or DX7 quite easily.

I think reverb and delay pay a large part in the sound. Particularly the actual reverb sound/colouration and envelope it gives the pizz. The 3/4 delay on SalvaMea is quite apparent. But it's still all very clean, not muddy. A transient follower might have been used on the raw sample (before further processing) to tidy it up and clarify it. - The pizzi samples are very short. - The reverb and delay fill out the rest, followed by the main buss mix compression.

Also, on the dry MC505 pizzi sample I'm also thinking Roland, when they recorded it, may have processed it with a very short, one-shot "slap-back" delay/echo, before uploading it into the MC505 waveform Rom. Maybe a short reverb with lots of early reflections, too.

[Khazul]

Found a preset on my novation KS-Rack that allmost identical with a tiny bit of filter tweaking.

Its basically 3 organ waves stacked - what really makes it on the KS is the filter overdrive and quite brutal clicky attack - add some reverb and brutal compression and your there

The nova/supernova *might* have the same wave in it as well.

There some really nice waves on the KS - the wurly preset is probably one of my favourite wurly sounds as is one of the organ presets.

[LEWISWOOD]

The Pizz timbre that Faithless used is From the Roland JD-990 synth and was soaked in reverb . Most soft synths and hardware synths will have some Pizz recreation somewere on the module . Also it must be noted that the original artists Faithless may off processed the sound which to an extent might of made the finnishing toutches that may slightly differ from the timbre on the Jd-990 howether like i say thats were the original sound was from .

[hatembr]

i also remember i read somewhere that faithless used a JD for his pizz sound, but a JD800 not a JD990. Btw, salva mea is my fav too.

[chessmess]

i know this is an old old post but im looking for that patch you made for the access virus faithless pizzicato!!! would really appreciate it if you could send it me! x

[namnibor]

Since this post was revived, thought I'd just throw this out there: I've kept a Yamaha CS2X for use as a midi controller and for easier programming of my old-school Yamaha RM1X dependable hardware sequencer and fact that it's various arp patterns indeed transmit via midi to external sound modules. There's actually a patch on the built-in sound banks:
Preset Performance List (Bank1),
35 Ld Pizzsyn 3 Off Hall1 Chorus4 Tunnel VariCntrl ReverbSend Volume Volume Resonance

36 Ld Insomnia 2 Off Hall2 Ens Detune Compressor RevChoSend FEGRelTime FEGRelTime

This was a subject on homerecording.com I think, but it confirms what previous posts have postulated via audio deconstruction.
Also, I will admit keeping the CS2X also for some rather awesome grand piano sounds, even though essentially a rompler, each piece of the puzzle makes whole picture/sound in this case. Trent Reznor has this in his array of studio toys to include even some circuit-bent casios; which again shows diversity in studio is a vry good thing indeed