KVR Audio

MachFront · Post by **MachFront** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:08 am

Let's get this out of the way... It's worthy of shit-slinging hatred that a 'remastered' edition of the soundtrack vomited itself into sales a handful of years ago that farted forward an electric piano sound over the awesome and perfectly atmospheric high-toned synth lead of the wonderful main titles of this synth-score masterpiece.

So, most uploads on YouTube are from that release. If you actually care about the film at all you have (on purpose) the earlier release of the soundtrack (wherein, ya know, it actually sounds like it did in the film...that is: good).

NOW

I've avoided asking as I've attempted to improve my sound design skills over the years... but that's simply brought me to a place of: I still suck and still can't make my most fave synth sound of all time for me and something integral to my childhood/life.

So... Please... those of you that understand how this shit works, since there's nothing that makes any sense to me at all in the way of teaching such things...*

How, how, how may I make the perfect synth sound of the "Escape From New York" main theme that comes in at :36/:37 of this vid...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1JYDmo19to

I'll assume that Howarth/Carpenter were using a Prophet of some sort.
Also, it's of note that I'm an 'all-freeware' guy who more often than not defaults to Synth1 and I also suck hard at effectively implementing effects, so there's that....

* No fault of the authors/teachers, but to me pretty much any/every tutorial I've read/viewed/etc. is heard by my brain as:
"Now turn the thingie to the so-n-so for a qualachy of shimbam. Then there's a hadeep-needeep-snooten with malooge-pop on the allamagoonza pudding slume. With the poppin' set to Minogue's ta-tas, the filter resigns in a slump of flap-a-lappin'. A slight application of chorus with a bent toward shim-a-lang-flam-a-lam-Corman-popcorn-in-the-space-cadet-kashaddah-fabbah the sound is all yours. Bing bang.
Rosencrantz!!!"

crimsonwarlock · Post by **crimsonwarlock** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:35 am

I'm a fan of the movie as well

Could be a Prophet 5, but does sound bit Oberheim-ish to me as well. So OBXD could be the ticket

Two slightly detuned sawtooth oscillators, 24dB filter that's almost closed, small amount of envelope modulation with a little bit of attack and decay to about 70/80% sustain level. That should get you in the ballpark, tweak to satisfaction.

As I like a challenge, I'm going to try to get close with Ragnarök, which doesn't have saw-waves but definitely the filter to pull this off. Might make for a nice preset, so thanks for the inspiration

EDIT:

Missed this part:

MachFront wrote:"Now turn the thingie to the so-n-so for a qualachy of shimbam. Then there's a hadeep-needeep-snooten with malooge-pop on the allamagoonza pudding slume. With the poppin' set to Minogue's ta-tas, the filter resigns in a slump of flap-a-lappin'. A slight application of chorus with a bent toward shim-a-lang-flam-a-lam-Corman-popcorn-in-the-space-cadet-kashaddah-fabbah the sound is all yours. Bing bang.
Rosencrantz!!!"

So I hope you can get by with what I wrote above. I tried to keep it as simple as possible.

MachFront · Post by **MachFront** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:44 am

I'll try to squeeze something out of my head/hands today in that....area.
S'funny. I was thinking maybe perhaps Oberheim as well but considering how much they both used the Prophets...

Even more odd, I gave Ragnarok (thanks so much) a spin a week or two ago (before I had to reinstall, or rather restore everything) and I 'felt' that sort of 'clean grit' of those b and z-grade sci-fi flicks I love so very much. It's only failing is me, who needs more presets as doorways to venture forth to those wonderfully dim VHS domains.

Thanks also for shoving my dumb head in roughly the right direction. Here's to it.

MachFront · Post by **MachFront** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 10:47 am

What's irritating is that there's a tune on Spahn Ranch's album "Architecture" ...."Future Unlimited" or "Future Limited" I can't recall which, that has a sound very nearly this same thing. If (likely) Matt Green can do it, then dammit...

crimsonwarlock · Post by **crimsonwarlock** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:13 am

MachFront wrote:Even more odd, I gave Ragnarok (thanks so much) a spin a week or two ago (before I had to reinstall, or rather restore everything) and I 'felt' that sort of 'clean grit' of those b and z-grade sci-fi flicks I love so very much. It's only failing is me, who needs more presets as doorways to venture forth to those wonderfully dim VHS domains.

More presets are definitely coming. I'm (for obvious reasons) doing a lot of stuff with it, so the default bank will fill up completely soon enough, and I will do a full additional bank over the coming holidays probably. And there are already three small preset packs from other users available on the KVR product page, bringing almost 40 presets together

crimsonwarlock · Post by **crimsonwarlock** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:18 am

MachFront wrote:What's irritating is that there's a tune on Spahn Ranch's album "Architecture" ...."Future Unlimited" or "Future Limited" I can't recall which, that has a sound very nearly this same thing. If (likely) Matt Green can do it, then dammit...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg9uL0-6Vi4

MachFront · Post by **MachFront** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 11:26 am

There is a 'stain in the light".

Thanks for your help so far. I'll report back with my flailings tomorrow night as I watch ST:TNG on BBCAmerica.

crimsonwarlock · Post by **crimsonwarlock** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 1:44 pm

Just made a preset for Ragnarök that comes pretty close. Not completely but close enough to work in a 'cover version' kinda way

Will be available in the next update

crimsonwarlock · Post by **crimsonwarlock** » Wed Nov 26, 2014 12:22 pm

Ragnarök 1.1.0 is just released, that has a patch called 'Escape-NY'

MachFront · Post by **MachFront** » Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:37 am

S'no good. Two weeks later and I'm every bit as dumb as I was then.

Thanks for the update and preset, crimsonwarlock. That's incredibly cool and kind of you.

I'll need to noodle over the parameters and head-scratch for a lil while. Mayhaps it will steer even a lunk like myself towards what I want.

(Things like this often remind me of my after-school tutoring with regards to algebra: the tutor saying some...stuff about...stuff and pointing at things and rambling about...things and...and stuff...and me, at age 13 feeling as though I was supposed to understand especially after all this extra time and special attention and therefore simply replied (as I felt I should): "Yeah. Oh, okay." ....I then went on to high school to fail Pre-Algebra A three times over before they put me in something called "Applied Mathematics"...wherein we were doing things even geometry and calculus students were doing, only applied in pratical ways as they would be and understandably so in the real world, etc.,etc, blah,blah,blah...
It was no surprise to me that in my early 20s I realized I no longer even knew how to do 'long' division. Hooray.)

"Escape From New York" lead.