This one was a bit tricky to get right!

For the opening of their best album ever (wich is KID A, in my opinion) Radiohead and Nigel Godrich came up with a very cool fake electric piano sound that is simply breathtaking.

The original sound was made with a SCI Prophet 5 synthesizer (an expensive 5 voice, 10 oscillator analog beast). Unfortunately we don't own one, so we decided to emulate it with a MUCH less elitist piece: a Juno 106.

The patch uses a mix of saw waves with a little bit of suboctave'd squarewave. The filter and vca envelopes are setup for zero attack, zero decay long sustain and medium to low release.

Filter resonance is medium-high and cutoff is low, with a little bit of env modulation thrown in.
As the song advances the filter slowly opens up.

There's a tiny bit of distortion via the Juno VCAs. ¡This was unintended!, but it does make it sound closer to a real wurli.

Last but not least, in our particular version of this sound we used a tiny bit of reverb and a pseudo-Haas effect, delaying one of the stereo copies of the sound by 28 miliseconds. This gives a great "out of speakers" sound and makes it more interesting and intriguing.

Enjoy!

Positif Synth School vol.8 - Radiohead's "Everything in it's right place" w. Juno 106

POSITIF presents: CLUBBER's DIGEST VOL.3 (nov. 2013 mixtape)

FIRST SAMPLE: ORIGINAL
SECOND SAMPLE: AKAI s950
THIRD SAMPLE: SONITEX STX-1260


I've been longing for an s950 ever since I heard it in this very nice sampler shootout: 
https://soundcloud.com/sampler-shootout/sets/odb-main

I specially love the 25Khz sampling setting of the s950, it reminds me of early Oizo tracks, a sound that i think is very, very classy.

Funds are tight so I tried to emulate it to convince me that I don't need yet another piece of gear. In order to emulate it  I took the original files from the sampler shootout and used a long forgotten plug that I had in my arsenal (http://www.toneprojects.com/products/plug-ins/sonitex-stx-1260/) to give it some textured lo-finess.

The key to achieve this sound is finding the right cutoff points of the high roll-off and low roll-off filters in the "tone" section. Here i cut everything below around 50 hz and everything above about 8k. Theres also a little bump in the filters (read resonant peak), that gives it perceived fulness/presence at the cutoff frequencies to counteract the cuts. This is a similar technique as the one used by the Voice of God from Little Labs, wich we studied previously here: https://soundcloud.com/positifpositif/positif-synth-school-vol-7.

So now you know why people like the sound of vintage samplers. Whats really happening is that the sound is being filtered by these in order to tame the aliasing artifacts caused by the low sample rate. This in return gives sometimes a pleasant punch to drums due to the resonance bumps of these anti-aliasing filters.

Of course, you don't even need the Sonitex plug to achieve this. You can use a lowpass and a hipass resonant filter (bundled with most daws) plus a little bit of saturation and compression from your favourite plugs. All you really need is a bit of patience and ear training to achieve similar results without much effort.

Also it's interesting to note that not only this is cheaper than buying a hardware sampler. It's also much more convenient and less time consuming than loading a sample to one of these old beasts, and it also let's you apply these treatments to much longer recordings than what is possible with the original samplers.

All in all, worth the effort in my opinion.

POSITIF SYNTH SCHOOL vol. 10: Recreating the sound of the AKAI s950

This is a track we remixed for MANS-O's (Wesphere) new ep "openaneyeandthentheother". It's a rework of it's homonymous track.
You can hear the EP here: manso.bandcamp.com/album/openaneyeandthentheother-ep

released 21 February 2014
Original tracks by: Mans.O (production), Max Grosse (vocals)

Remix: Positif (Pepe Coca: Synths, keyboards, programming, production, mixing, mastering.) 

MANS.O + Max - Openaneyeandthentheother (POSITIF REMIX)

This is a SPECIAL ISSUE mixtape we did for the fine folks at HGV.

Its got a retro vibe -pun intended- to it with some tape delay FX (courtesy of our trusty Roland RE-201).

Hello Good Vibes is an awesome Barcelona based musical collective
CHECK THEM OUT HERE: http://hellogoodvibes.com/ 

POSITIF x HelloGoodVibes mixtape (Clubber's Digest vol. 4)

This sort of "fake pizzicato" synth sound is a disco classic, many others before Siriusmo have used it. Most notably, Massara's Margherita (later covered by Boney M.) makes thorough use of this sound, and many of Perrey and Kinsgsley's songs also feature it (by the way, Siriusmo himself has sampled Perrey a few times).

It's a simple sound to get "in the ball park", but to make it sound great the details are important. It has obviously a short attack in both filter and vca envelopes, and a short release. Play with your adsr controls to get it right.

To get the best results send a generous amount of envelope modulation to the filter, and use two vcos sync'd selecting the pulse waveforms. The key is to get a very narrow square wave (moving the pulse width controls) and playing with the pitches of the sync'd oscillators to get the right high frequency content. 

Last but not least, to achieve the trademark Siriusmo sound it's advisable to use plugin-style brickwall limiters, some reverb and a highpass filter before hitting the limiter.

POSITIF SYNTH SCHOOL vol. 11: Siriusmo's Dr. Beak on a Moog Little Phatty

Demo quickie of the new TR inspired Korg Volca Beats. Nice drum machine for roughly 130 euro. Will have to mod that snare though, too icepicky/distorted for me. Stock it only works ok as a third tom when you bring down the white noise circuit (like in this demo).

Korg Volca Beats Demo by Positif

The Prodigy's "Girls" features some very cool samples. My favourite one is the re-sampling of D-Train's "You're the one for me". I just love this line so much, great melody and great synth programming.

The re-sampled lick sounds cooler, -more synthy and less "plucky guitar rompler"- in The Prodigy's production, and this is the one we've decided to recreate.

In order to do this sound I'm usig a mix of square waves (pwm set to manual and with the pulse width of the square wave set in the "middle"), saw waves, and SUB (mixed about half way). The filter is set  this way: Frequency is about 40% on the fader and resonance is high (about 75%).

Theres also some envelope and lfo modulation into the filter and some lfo modulation to the pitch. Also, it's necessary to apply some delay to the lfo vibrato. If your synth doesnt have this, just use the modwheel.

Last but not least the vca is set to a "gate" envelope and the filter envelope has a fast attack, fast decay, medium sustain and low release (although with the gate envelope on the vca the release doesn't matter much.) The onboard chorus is set to "1" setting.

After this we passed the juno sound through a SPL Transient Designer to empasize the attack a bit, and put some very mild overdrive and some reverb via plugs.

The sound we've achieved with the 106 is probably more analog sounding and "retro" than the original. For even more accurate results it would be wise to use a digital synth and maybe resample it and pitch it up like Prodigy did. This is as close as we could get with the 106.

It's probably much easier just to sample D-Trains record but, that wouldnt be fun, would it??

Enjoy!

POSITIF SYNTH SCHOOL vol. 12: Prodigy's "Girls" with a Roland Juno-106

Keys, bass, programming, production, mixing, mastering: Pepe Coca
Acoustic Drums: Manuel López

Mastered @ Clockworks Mastering (www.clockworksmastering.com)


Fat Plastic (Remastered version)

Un remix que no es moderno, aun siendo de hoy.

Los Ganglios - Gafas De Aluminio (POSITIF Remix)

Nice patch huh? This baby is capable of so much crazy stuff.
The "Daft Patch" is made cross modulating both vcos (vco 1 to vco 2 and viceversa) plus putting the filter on the verge of self oscillation. The "ay and "ya" vocal sounds are made manually tweaking the PWM (pulse width modulation) knob of the square wave.

PS: sorry for the ambient noise, next time I'll record direct .
:O)



Daft Punk's "Human After All" on an Octave Cat SRM vintage synthesizer.

Nice patch huh? This baby is capable of so much crazy stuff.
The "Daft Patch" is made cross modulating both vcos (vco 1 to vco 2 and viceversa) plus putting the filter on the verge of self oscillation. The "ay and "ya" vocal sounds are made manually tweaking the PWM (pulse width modulation) knob of the square wave.

Quite some time ago I made a water drop patch on a Tom Oberheim Sem. The rest of the HelloSamples crew liked it so much that they asked me to do some equally “wet” sounds for the modular drums library.

However, for those of you that you don't own either a SEM or a huge eurorack modular, here's a very similar sounding patch for the Little Phatty that should be easily portable to related systems like Moog's Sub37 and Sub Phatty synthesizers.

First you need to mute the Phatty's oscillators setting “osc. 1 level” and “osc. 2 level” to zero. All we will use this time is filter self-oscillation. For best results -at least with the Little Phatty- set the filter poles to 4 -classic Moog 24 dB- as this gives a tamer, more realistic sound. This is changed in the setup menu via the LCD.

Next is the envelope settings: 
Set the “volume” (VCA) envelope as follows: ATTACK, SUSTAIN and RELEASE must be set to their minimum value -zero-. DECAY at about “10 o'clock”. The “filter” envelope must be set this way: ATTACK at about “11 o'clock” while all other controls -DSR- must be left at their minimum value -zero-.

Now in the filter controls you should set Resonance all the way up to 100%  and cutoff to taste -depending on cutoff value and the keyboard note/transposition values you will get higher or lower frequency “drops”-. Set “egr amount” -that's filter env. Modulation on the Phstty- to about “1 o'clock” -ie: on the positive side but low- and keyboard amount at about “2 o'clock”. “Overload” should be set to zero.

For a less predictable sound, you can make the drops a little more randomized routing mod wheel and velocity movements to filter cutoff. This way you can have a more realistic -less repetitive- sound while controlling the change in timbre via performance. It can also be interesting when sequencing from a DAW.

If you add a little bit of reverb things will sound even better.
That's pretty much it! 

Enjoy the analog bath!
Pepe Coca  (A.K.A. Positif)

POSITIF SYNTH SCHOOL vol. 13: Water Drops & Bubbles with a Moog Little Phatty.

Befaco sampling modulator + turing machine in action.

Befaco Sampling Modulator As Gate Sequencer With Turing Machine.

The second "Positif Synth School" chapter is HERE!
This second volume keeps it on the funky side, it explains the synthesis theory behind Breakwater's "Release The Beast" synth lead sound -also sampled by Daft Punk on "Robot Rock"-. We've recreated it once again on our beloved Octave Cat.
It's pretty obvious that the patch is a classic VCO sync. sound, but it has more to it to make it perfect. Both vco's should have pulse waves selected. First route the adsr to the filter AND VCO 1, then put the resonance a bit on the high side, and set the envelope for fast attack (but not zero) and no release. VCA should have a gate type of envelope (zero attack, zero release). The important thing here is tweaking the adsr and percentage of modulation going to vco and vcf.
Last, but not least, send a bit lfo frequency modulation to VCO 2. If you have "LFO delay" slider like on my cat you an get the delay in the modulation taking action just like in the original. If you dont, like on most moogs, just make use of the modulation wheel and call it a day.
Bon appetit!


Breakwater's "Release the Beast" (A.K.A. Daft Punk's "Robot Rock") on an Octave Cat SRM

The second "Positif Synth School" chapter is HERE!
This second volume keeps it on the funky side, it explains the synthesis theory behind Breakwater's "Release The Beast" synth lead sound -also sampled by Daft Punk on "Robot Rock"-. We've recreated it once again on our beloved Octave Cat.
It's pretty obvious that the patch is a classic VCO sync. sound, but it has more to it to make it perfect. Both vco's should have pulse waves selected. First route the adsr to the filter AND VCO 1, then put the resonance a bit on the high side, and set the envelope for fast attack (but not zero) and no release. VCA should have a gate type of envelope (zero attack, zero release). The important thing here is tweaking the adsr and percentage of modulation going to vco and vcf.
Last, but not least, send a bit lfo frequency modulation to VCO 2. If you have "LFO delay" slider like on my cat you an get the delay in the modulation taking action just like in the original. If you dont, like on most moogs, just make use of the modulation wheel and call it a day.
Bon appetit! 

Breakwater's "Release the Beast" (Daft Punk's "Robot Rock") - Octave Cat SRM & Space Echo

If you have heard Simian Mobile Disco's track "Are you in the picture" from the "Extra Temporary EP" you might have noticed some synthetic liquid drops at the end of the track (5:40 or so).

I recently got myself a new TomOberheim SEM, and this sound seemed like a good candidate to push the limits of the synth. 

To get this liquid drop sound you have to:
0 - Send CV to VCO1 and gate to ENV2 GATE
1 - Hard sync VCO2 to VCO1. 
2 - Tune VCO2 to it's lowest possible pitch and VCO1 to it's highest pitch.
3 - Modulate VCO2's pulse wave (PWM set to 90%) with ENV2 (settings : Fastest attack & decay. Mid sustain). (ENV2 should also affect VCA, so make sure vca switch i NOT on "EXT" -aka:open- setting)
4 - Send VCO2's pwmed wave to the filter (vco1 should be muted)
5 - Set filter to BANDPASS. Frequency at max and cutoff close to max.
6 - Send ENV1 out (Fastest attack. Medium decay & sustain) to filter modulation EXT MOD IN. Set filter mod to EXT and set it on inverted (aka minus/negative) setting.

7: ENJOY! Now you can play with filter freq, env1's decay and the filter modulation controls to create variations on the sound. Also a little reverb can do wonders (I used ableton's stock plug, nothing fancy).

Positif Synth School VOL. 5: SMDs "Are you in the picture" (water drops on an Oberheim SEM)

This time we tried to recreate Kraftwerk's super-classic "Trans Europe Express" from their album of the same name. Most of the stuff in this track comes from a Mellotron, so that's the easy part (just fire up M-TRON or a similar Mellotron library and play some chords). But the "train" sound is particularly special on this track.

The main things you need are white noise and a flanger. But it's in fact through zero style flanging that you hear on the track, not your run-of-the-mill regular flanging pedal. I'm not sure if this was made with tape, it's tough to tell. Some people say Krafwerk used an Eventide Clockworks Instant Flanger (a rare 70's rack device).

We dont have two tape decks nor the old Eventide rack, but we managed to get a similar sound via an Electro-Harmonix Flanger Hoax pedal, wich has a very similar working principle to the Eventide. If you dont have this kind of kit just search for a through zero flange plugin. Results will be similar, may be a bit more metallic sounding -not as sweet but cleaner-.

The synth used is an MS10, we patched white noise in to the filter and adjusted the filter+vca envelope for a short attack, and short decay/release kind of sound, so its sort of percussive. Then we just put it in to the flanger and rocked the knobs for some variety.

Hope you like it!



POSITIF SYNTH SCHOOL VOL.6: Re-creating Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express"

1st loop: DRY
2nd loop: VOG
3rd loop: SHERMAN

I've been reading a lot about Little Labs VOG "bass resonance tool" and was thinking if i could emulate it with my existing setup. This is a tool marketed as a specialized "bass enhancer". I was specially curious since I didn't know what it actually was: an EQ? a filter? a bass synthesizer?


I read in some forums that it was a resonant 24 db hpf, but a very clean one, supposedly cleaner than other synth-styled filters. There's was also a lot of  "mojo-talk" about how "magical" it was and how difficult it would be to emulate it with conventional filters/EQs. 

Certainly it's name "VOICE OF GOD, analog bass resonance tool" sounds quite magical, and a lot sexier than the more common denomination " resonant high pass filter".


I'm a very skeptical person -specially when it comes to audio-related stuff- , so I thought I'd better do some testing in order to see if the VOG was worthy of the hype.

In order to emulate it, I took Sound On Sounds audio test files of the VOG (available here:http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov11/articles/littlelabs-vogmedia.htm) and tried to match the effected loops with the only box in my arsenal capable of doing resonant 24dB high pass filtering: my Sherman/Rodec Restyler.

Well, it turns out i could replicate it pretty closely. The surprise, however, came out when I noticed that the Restyler was actually a little cleaner than the VOG in SOS's demo. If you hear this with really good monitors/headphones you will notice that the VOG has a tiny little bit more harmonics/saturation than the sherman -so its actually LESS clean!- wich makes it appear a bit louder and more present.

Also, in SOS's other sound demos the "kick" files actually distort, but not at 0dB, so probably the VOG is a resonant 24db HPF with a certain distortion/clipping circuit -or maybe low headroom- and not 100% superclean as it's usually stated.

The pros of the Little Labs are that it's idiot proof and already tailored for it's niche application. But for the same price you can get the Sherman wich does all the stuff the VOG does and SO much more -it's a multimode stereo filter with fm and am modulation, parallel processing, multiple filter mixing, etc-. Unfortunately for sherman, they didn't come up with such a "nice" name for their unit.

Lesson learned: there's nothing new under the sun. Just good marketing!

Positif Synth School VOL.7. Emulating Little Labs' VOG with a Sherman/Rodec Restyler.

These boys know their shit well and play LIVE, refusing to hide behind just laptops, to bring you an incredible live electronic experience.

With their frantic mix of bleeps, bass, and excessive cowbell playing (even by Christopher Walken standards!) these men have cracked the dancefloors of venues like Apolo and Razzmatazz.

As of now they're doing remixes for other artists (Mans.O, Wesphere, Los Ganglios) and preparing a whole new EP due out 2015.

POSITIF

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