Bright and clean leads

[starbird1975]

Hello everyone

I haven't been able to figure this one out, maybe because my experience in soundcrafting is still somewhat limited. I am working on oldschool melodic game music and I need bright leads for the melodic parts. After downloading tons of presets for Zebra2 I realized that almost all bright leads come from saws and saws come with a lot of noise (some would say 'buzz') and the noise starts so early in the spectrum that closing a filter that much just kills the expression of the sound. EQ and Spectromorph gave me slightly better results but I am still not satisfied.

To be more precise what sound I have in mind, consider the following video of an old computer game:

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(Sorry for not using clickable links, haven't figured out how to prevent video inlining and the time feature doesn't seem to work inlined)

I don't hear the characteristic saw buzz so maybe these aren't saws at all? Or is the noise just cleverly hidden? Anyway I am very interested to hear how such clean and bright leads could be achieved, either with Zebra2 or any other synth. Thanks in advance and best regards

[dlarseninclusive]

Do you have any of the other synths? I am sure Zebra can do it, but check this (See Below). It uses 1/3 of the U-he catalog, however the strongest sounds like you are talking about are coming from HIVE (~30 seconds in then you can't miss it), then FilterScape VA. I would give HIVE a serious look as it just does that sound really well. Podolski and Tyrell-N6 share some common ground with it and are worth a look if HIVE is not possible. I might play with Zebra if I get a moment.

https://soundcloud.com/the-riddle-of-st ... p-and-fall

[btw]

Sounds to me like a pulse wave with a little pulse width modulation and vibrato. In Z2, try loading up the Pulse Table from Factory OSCs and set the WaveWarp to somewhere between 0 (square) and 6 (quarter pulse width), which you can later tweak to taste. Modulate the pulse width with a slow LFO for the PWM effect, set up a little delayed-onset vibrato, lengthen the envelope release, set to retrigger, and you're basically there.

[mihai]

Bro... use only basic electronic drums and synth waveforms then throw some hard bitcrushing on them and you've that 8-bit sound. Zebra has that bitcrusher in the form of any VCF with the "SR Decimate" option. Have fun.

[easynam]

Slow PWM is correct here yes, the leads in that video sound like c64 style PWM leads, which are mostly just slow PWM plus some vibrato afaik.

Slapping a bitcrusher on things does NOT make them sound chiptune. It makes them sound bitcrushed. If you want to make chip sounds its best to figure out what the actual limitations of the sound you’re trying to recreate are.

A keytracked per voice bitcrusher tuned right could work for some things though, if thats what you meant? Using a slightly more subtle bitcrush to emulate a lower quality dac can also be useful.

[starbird1975]

Thanks a lot for your responses!

I'll definitely have a look at the synths suggested by dlarseninclusive, provided they can be tested for free like Zebra2.

Thanks for the quarter-pulse, btw! That one is definitely a step forward. It has a much better signal-to-noise ratio than the saw and has a lot of potential for lead crafting. I was less successful with your PWM suggestion, did you mean the 'standard' PWM feature in Z2 (PWM switch and putting a LFO on the modulator for the Phase/PW) or did you mean to modulate the wave warp itself?

[btw]

Using the PWM switch with modulation via the Phase section can provide a PWM-like effect for non-pulse waveforms; this is based on modulating the phase of an inverted waveform added to the static-phase original waveform. However, provided you have the Pulse Table loaded, you needn’t bother with that, as modulating the WaveWarp yields true PWM. You’ll have an easier time nailing the timbre in the video with the latter approach.

Edit: attached an example, where I've also thickened the sound with a detuned quad stack. This is something you could replicate easily in Hive, which excels at these sounds. Tune it down about 15 cents if you want to play along with the video.