New Order Blue Monday lead sound

[evilgus]

Hi folks,

Am having a good crack at reproducing Blue Monday with my Snow and an Electribe ES-1, but not having much luck with the lead sound, that kicks in at around 12 seconds. The basic sound isn't too tricky, but I can't figure out how to program a similar auto-Wah effect. (Maybe it's actually sequenced, or mod-wheel controlled...) I tried setting up Filter 1 and 2 with enough difference to produce a change in resonance, from 1 setting to the other, but the transition is way too slow, no matter what settings I use.

Any ideas how to get a quick-acting auto-Wah like effect? Does it sound like it might be driven by an LFO that is synched to incoming MIDI clock?

Cheers,

EG

[MBTC]

I've always found that perfectly reproducing specific sounds from tracks to be tough, especially sounds like this one that are defined by the curves created by filter settings. Sometimes its possible to get close.

I took a quick crack at it starting from init patch, and its not the same and of course harmonics of init aren't right, but just to focus on the wah-effect you could try something like this:

Filter1 Env Amt = 67.2% , cutoff =39
Filter 2 Env Amt = 57%, cutoff = -19
Both are LP, Reso=0, Split

Here's the more important part:
Phaser Mix = 70
Phaser Freq = 0
Phaser FB=63
Phaser LFO rate = 97
Phaser Depth = 58
Phaser Stage=1

Now play with the cutoff of F1 and F2 very slightly. Major changes to the sound but it starts to sort of begin to take on the formant characteristic of the original, so maybe it will be enough to get started. Triggering the phase and Wah at just the right time would be a trick and pure experimentation on my part.

Those settings get it "approximately" there. You might want to play in those ranges to see if you can get it closer. Its going to sound different with whatever additional settings you have, even just the raw waveforms can make a big difference in how it sounds versus the init settings I used.

Many ways to skin a cat, I'm sure similar could be done with pure LFO+filters+matrix (maybe LP + bandpass) without using the phaser effect specifically.

[evilgus]

Great! Thanks, MBTC, I'll try that tonight!

Cheers,

EG

[evilgus]

Ok, after trying those settings out, I finally figured out the "right" way to do it! Within the Env menu, you can adjust the ADSR settings for the Filter, thereby setting how quickly it cuts in after hitting the note and then changes after the initial attack. With a bit of tweaking of those settings and the base Filter params, I can get pretty close!

Actually, I started with the PPG Syn PS patch, from one of the free sound collections on the Access site. The final sound isn't that much different, just a tighter ADSR envelope, different filter cutoffs and less bass EQ.

P.S: The Phaser does actually help, but I'll tweak the settings without it first, then add it back on top.

Cheers,

EG

[MBTC]

You'd likely want to use either with the filter env ADSR, or the phaser, but not both (because for purposes of this patch they do the same thing, only slightly differently) as they might work against each other if used together. I went for the phaser first mostly because it seemed like the end result would be easier to type on a forum because most of the settings were all in one place (in the phaser section). Being lazy I guess.

Would love to hear your final result. I don't think I have the PPG Syn PS patch loaded yet, I only recently got the Snow and haven't had time to download all banks or play around with it much.

[evilgus]

Thanks for all your help, that got me looking and now I understand a little more about sound tweaking!

Yes, definitely don't need both the filter settings and the phaser, but it adds a little shimmer on the top, which is quite nice. (Similarly for Resonance - not sure if it was used originally, but it adds a nice bite to the effect.) However, after getting the sound working well with an auto-wah style effect and playing along with the original, I'm pretty sure the original part was modulated manually, using a mod-wheel. Although the variations in tone/wah are fairly regular, there's too many little variations and imperfections to have been an automatic effect. Not really fussed, mine sounds close enough to be usable!

Will post up the current setting tonight, I'm at work right now.

Cheers,

EG

[MBTC]

It could be the mod-wheel, or what I thought of when I was listening to the original, sounded like velocity-driven modulations to existing filter settings.

This is what I meant about the difficulty of faithfully reproducing exact sounds. A lot of bands back in the 80's used to just sample synth riffs like that, because it was easier to keep track of the sampled versions, guarantee the sound played back properly during live play, and also if one synth model went out of production and couldn't be obtained again (as they all do eventually), reproducing on another synth in exactly the same way is a real chore.

But, even with the version I threw together on the init patch in a few minutes, if someone were to play the melody at a gig live, the audience would know right away which track it was and not know or care about subtle differences in the timing of the wah, the harmonics, etc.