hi all,

have made several attempts to recreate the *very first* sound of "a question of lust" by depeche mode; it's some resonant-noise thingy (even before the bass and perc starts), and i'd suppose it's fm synthesis somehow, probably synclavier.

someone ever tried to rebuild that sound? if not fm, would some formant filter or fixed filter mod do the job by any chance?

any hints highly appreciated,

isdjan

Can you post a short snippet of it, i dont have it anymore.

Also, what synths have you got?

Kriminal wrote:

Can you post a short snippet of it, i dont have it anymore. Also, what synths have you got?

the snippet is here:

http://www.geocities.com/isdjan2003/dm_snippet.mp3

i got several mostly VA vsts installed, some synthedit generated ones as well, enough for me for getting into pc(only) based production for now - i plan to buy a big vst synth solution, prolly reaktor, but i'd like to make sure i will be able to create sounds like the one mentioned before spending the bucks...

Try to look @ www.recoil.co.uk It's Alan's home page and there is Q+A chapter where Alan is answering on questions.I remember there was question regarding "World In My Eyes" bass sound etc...

o.

p.s. one thing I know is that they used Dan Miller's ARP2600 a lot...

overflow wrote:

Try to look @ www.recoil.co.uk It's Alan's home page and there is Q+A chapter where Alan is answering on questions.I remember there was question regarding "World In My Eyes" bass sound etc... p.s. one thing I know is that they used Dan Miller's ARP2600 a lot...

thanks; i've been in the q&a there before and browsed thru the "black celebration" section, but found none on that sound unfortunately. i read there that they used the synclavier excessively on that album tho, might be a hint...

Probable synclavier...maybe PPG Wave with quite big amount of reverb...

o.

Crystal, preset 'Dream of Jungle' but turn off voices 1 and 3. Thats fairly close (plus a bit of tweaking)

Crystal would def be the best bet for this type of pad sound. Have a mess with that.

Dave

overflow wrote:

Probable synclavier...maybe PPG Wave with quite big amount of reverb...

i'd vote for synclavier rather - imho the resonant portions of the sound don't sound like analogue filter resonance, but i'm guessing.

Kriminal wrote:

Crystal, preset 'Dream of Jungle' but turn off voices 1 and 3. Thats fairly close (plus a bit of tweaking) Crystal would def be the best bet for this type of pad sound. Have a mess with that. Dave

i just tried your suggestion and found it a pretty decent way. have to mess around with the proper waveforms, but everything sounds pretty convincing there. many thx for that hint

suggestion to spend some more time with synthedit before you look for somethnig you can give away money for..

I used to be a ridiculous Depeche Mode nerd and collected every shred of evidence I could find about their setups and every photograph of them playing synths that I could find. I've never heard of them using a Synclavier, tho. Does anyone have proof to the contrary?

My understanding is that during the mid 80's, they were huge Emulator and PPG Wave users. My guess is that sound is just a tweaked digital synth -- PPG or Korg DW8000, perhaps?

Here's a list of the gear they toured with during the "Black Celebration" tour:

Black Celebration Tour

Alan: Emu Emulator II, Korg DW 8000
Martin: Emulator II, PPG Wave 2.3
Fletch: Oberheim OB, two Prophet 2000 samplers

xoxos wrote:

suggestion to spend some more time with synthedit before you look for somethnig you can give away money for..

oh - moneywise, crystal is a wise choice too, isn't it?

i made some experiments with SE and must say it's an unbelievable product. the reason why i didn't use it for this specific task was the fact that my ears made me think that the sound i was looking for was from the fm side.