How to get old synth sound?

[Aleatoric]

Boards of Canada "old" or "f*cked up" sound it's not hard to get.
Tips:
* Use synths like impOSCar or PPG, they emulate hybrid digital-analog. Old harsh low bit digital sound passed through analog-like filters lead to very strange fx.
* Pass your synth sound through something like Amplitube or GuitarRig. You are emulating the sound of an amp, certain amount of overdrive, speaker and microphone. That can be enough degradation.
Virsyn TERA has "speaker emulation" capabilities.
* You can make judicious use of things like PSP VintageWarmer. It never fails to make things thicker or more distorted but in a strange way.

Have fun.

I agree completely. You can get BOC sounds just by good synth programming (with the right synths, CS80v and minimoog are great) and by processing the signal in wierd ways.....just degrade it in varouse ways or bounce to tape or threw a guitar pedal or amp or threw mics. But why sound like BOC....do your own thing!

[JerGoertz]

I want to sound like Boards of Canada because I like that sound and it's a style I'd like to explore! I mean, nobody starts "tabula rasa", we all learn from and are influenced by past the masters whether then be Bach or BoC (nyuk nyuk). "How did they do that?" is always a valid question, IMO.

Now, I agree that playing with old-school synths (or their emulations) like the Moogs and Prophets and such and then degrading their audio can get you sounds which are similar to the sounds in a number of Boards of Canada songs. I've already done that. However, please listen to the example song link at the top of this thread. The synths in this one have an over-the-top special kind of lofi degradation/distortion that is definitely BoC but in a very extreme, special way. It's THAT particular sound that I'm having trouble with. Most of the time I add distortion and lofi degradation to the extent present there and it just sounds, well, drowned in distortion and not "warmly, richly" distorted.

I do appreciate everyone's advice, however. And, for those of you who say it's easy to get the synth sound CONTAINED IN THE EXAMPLE SONG (important, please note), I am giving you the opportunity to put your money where your mouth is. If you can make a patch or patch/effects combo using VST's and VSTi's that sounds reasonably close to the synth sound CONTAINED IN THE EXAMPLE SONG (again, important), I will Paypal $20USD to the first person to post a link to a download of the patch or patch/effect combo, after I download and evaluate it. It will need to be made with one of the following softsynths that I have; if you can do it with one not on the list, go ahead but you might be unable to claim the prize if I don't have the synth to try it out. Also, no samplers or extensive sampling, or additive synthesis is allowed. Yes, I know how to yank samples out of a song too.

Allowed Synths/effects
======================
Any Freebies (synth1, daHornet, etc.)
Anything NI (Reaktor, Absynth, FM7, etc.)
z3ta+
Triangle I, II
Angelina
Rhino
Amplitube
Albino2
XPhraze

Let's see what's possible!

[JerGoertz]

Dang, no takers?? I thought that this was easy! I mean, come on, less than a hours work (it's easy, right?) for $20 ain't bad.

Okay folks, we're upping the ante:

$50USD

And I am completely serious.
This is easy money, it's like I'm practically giving it away.

[JerGoertz]

$50 for an hour's work ain't bad... That's more than I make.

That's more than an itinerant worker in Uzbekawakistania makes in 10 YEARS. In fact, if he knew how to use Cubase and run an effects channel through Amplitube he'd be collecting and throwing a celebration for his entire village.

[deastman]

Maybe I'm just retarded, but I looked at the link posted at the top of this thread, and I found a lengthy discussion, but not the actual song in question. Do I have to register on that site before I can hear the song or something?

[JerGoertz]

The download is right at the top of the discussion when I go there, but I have my browser preferences to automatically log in to watmm.

Actually I remember something about not being able to download stuff unless you're a member at watmm; that's probably what you're seeing, deastman. It's free to register tho, so you should be able to do that and then be good to go!

[Kim Lajoie]

There's this particular character that the synths have in a lot of Boards of Canada songs. Someone else did a BoC tribute song that perfectly exemplifies this:

http://forum.watmm.com/index.php?showtopic=6655

Erm, so where's the music?

Forever,




Kim.

[JerGoertz]

Did you read my post directly above yours? Someone else had the same problem as you're having, but I still see the download directly at the top of the discussion thread at watmm.

I believe this is because watmm requires you to be signed in as a member to download files. Try joining watmm (it's free) and then following the link to the discussion.

[galwaypark]

Pro53 also has a very nice old-skool analog sound, tho not quite as nice at impOSCar IMO.

Well, Pro53 might be a good way to go, because BoC use a SC Prophet, or so I've heard somewhere... They also use a whole lot of vocoding, so try modulating a synth with a beat, lo-fi mic'd ambience or another synth, or just plain noise. And sloooow pitch LFO's are an absolute must

[tetraplan]

Now that I dug out my TX81Z:

Erik, sounds cool. Maybe this is something I can reproduce in FM7, if you would give me some more specifics?

OK, here goes:

Algorithm 4, which looks like this:

Code: Select all

             ____
            |    |
           [ 4 ]_| <-feedback path
             |
     [ 2 ] [ 3 ]
       |   /
       |  /
     [ 1 ]
       |

Feedback set to 5.
LFO: triangle, speed=11, no delay, sync=on.
Frequency: operators 1 and 2 default, crs-ratio = 1.73, fin-ratio=1.73 (op3), crs-ratio=1.41, fin-ratio=1.41 (op4).
All waves set to sine.
Detuning: op1=-1, op2=+2, op3=-3, op4=0.
Attack: op1=15, op2=8 op3=5, op4=4.
Delay1R: 31 for all operators.
Delay1L: 15 for all operators.
Delay2R: 0 for all operators.
Release: op1=2, op2=3, op3=4, op4=4
Shift is off.
Out level: op1=99 , op2=34 , op3=14 , op4=99.

I don't know how this can be translated to any of the FM VSTis, and to make it sound good it should be grunged up a bit.

Hmmm. Maybe, I should use it in a track sometimes.

Groet, Erik

[scuzzphut]

at the risk of repeating myself (see the Human League synth sound thread) I would recommend the following approach to get that "old synth " sound.

(1) Load up a normal patch
(2) twiddle the fine tune knob randomly while playing.

try it - you'll be amazed

[VeXKoN]

skuzz is right, BoC just detune... i don't even think they microtune, just detune. Stick with just 2 occilators and put one at 0 and then drag the other one up.

[ew]

- Now here's a possibly fruitful approach: I took a vintage-style lead in Absynth that takes 2 of the 3 osc's, then for the third osc I put a constant-note sine osc. All 3 osc's are run through the waveshaper and then a lpf. The waveshaper will, of course, add "distortion" to the sine osc; adjusting the relative gain of the 3 osc's to put the sine in the background makes a sound somewhat similar to the BoC "fuzzy synth". Maybe I need to add some envelopes to vary the sine osc's gain or the master filter cutoff... Anyone here an Absynth master who can perfect this idea or tell me that it won't work?

You're on the right track-add a mod to the sine wave channel,and pick your choice of modulating wave(you'll have to play with the pitch).Use an envelope for mod balance.
Run it all through the master wavehaper like you're doing now,but use it motly as a compressor instead of as a distortion effect-use just enough to warm the signal up.And by all means put an envelope on the master filter.
ew