The Human League: Love Action synth

[noiseboyuk]

No, not the meeeoww meeeeeow one. That's fairly easy - apparently it was a Yamaha CS-15, but any saw with a bandpass filter sweep and the resonance up gets you in the ballpark there.

I mean the rhythmic choppy one that comes right after it and before the drums come in. It's almsot funk guitarish. There's some sample and hold filter stuff going on I think. It's the fantastic organic sound that comes in at 8 seconds.



Here's what we know, the synths listed as being used on the Dare album:

Roland System 700
Roland Jupiter 4
Korg 770
Korg Delta
Casio VLT-1
Casio M10,
Yamaha CS15

The System 700 I believe belonged to producer Martin Rushent, but it can't have been that as you can clearly hear the same sound on the band's demo recorded in Sheffield. The quality is horrifically degraded, but I was very impressed at how all those sounds were all ready to go. Martin Rushent did an amazing job on Dare, but he sure didn't do everything...

(this doesn't quite link to the right time stamp, it should be 30.25)



We can write off the VLT1 (and presumably the M10), the System 700 and presumably the Korg Delta (string machine). So that only leaves the JP4, the 770 (also unlikely surely) and CS15. My guess is the JP4.

But perhaps more than the specific model, I'm interested in how you'd make that sound. There's a guy here who did a really good recreation of the track using just a JP-08, but this sound is by far the weakest element. It's a really distinctive and usual sound.

[CHOOS]

I could be wrong but it sounds like a guitar to me with processing

[noiseboyuk]

I could be wrong but it sounds like a guitar to me with processing

It does sound like that yes, but guitars were definitely and famously banned on Dare, which has the accolade of the first no 1 album to contain no real instruments (in the UK anyway). A guitar did appear on Hysteria though, pretty loudly on The Lebanon.

The only exception on Dare was that a guitar was used to trigger the fast rhythmic synth on Don't You Want Me - IIRC that was the System 700 through a gate, and the guitar triggered the gate.

I think I'm starting to know a bit too much about all this...

[CHOOS]

I think I'm starting to know a bit too much about all this...

Just a wee bit

But one you run even a simple saw pluck (especially pulse) through some amps, sims etc you'll barely notice the difference in a short sample like that.

[noiseboyuk]

But one you run even a simple saw pluck (especially pulse) through some amps, sims etc you'll barely notice the difference in a short sample like that.

The thing that most intrigues me - and made me start the thread - is hearing the same sounds in terrible quality in their tiny demo studio. This is 1981, and people really didn't amp synths, if they'd been that progressive I think it would be in the lore of the band and the album.

Besides, when you really listen to it, there's definitely wild filter sweeps and all sorts that have to be synthetic. It could be more than one thing layered up, but even there I'm doubtful because of the demo which would have been very bare bones. I think it's a single synth patch, probably live-tweaked. The band used to have a System 100, but I think that went off with the Heaven 17 guys - that would seem more plausible than the JP4 or CS-15. I can imagine the sound being the result of a lot of patch cords, basically.

It's such a distinctive sound of that record, and apart from it being sampled I've never really heard anything like it anywhere else. And yet I can't find any reference to it in web searches where the question has been asked by a synth nerd like me.

[CHOOS]

There's some guitar-heads in here that will know FAR more than me about all things guitar who might be able to steer you in the right direction to get such a sound. but recording it and applying filtering to it or any other effect for that matter is easily done.

[_morton_]

I think it's def a synth, programmed by Martin, watch this video from around 6.15, Ian explains how he (Martin) did some stuff (not this sound, but you gey the idea)

[noiseboyuk]

CHOOS - it's not a guitar.

Yes, that's a great video morton, but as you say Ian doesn't look into that particular sound.

One of the reasons that Dare still sounds as good as it does is that the sounds are still so distinctive. You never hear "oh there's that preset that everyone used". Well, apart from the VL-Tone perhaps, but even there no-one else used it in pop! The arrangements and mixes are sublime, there's so much space in the mix that allows everything to shine.

The irony is that - at the time - it was perceived that Heaven 17 were the pioneers and the new Human League were "just pop". Both bands were exceptional in their different ways.

EDIT - actually morton, I don't think Martin did program it because the sound was on that rough demo. I think whatever it was was something Ian Burden came up with (at a pinch it could have been Philip Adrian Wright or Jo Callis, but both were very green on synths at that point).

[CHOOS]

OK I have some midi and a preset for Vital to show what I mean.
It get the concept behind it. doesn't sound the same but you could build on from it.
I used a pulsed-saw to get a slightly more nylon-ish sound.

The chords are only the basic triad and I can hear more notes as it plays.

Good luck.

Strum Pluck SomethingOrTheOther.zip

I had to change the white noise sample back to default or the filesize would be too large but I had a stereo noise sample in it.

[noiseboyuk]

I don't have Vital CHOOS, any chance of a short audio example?

[CHOOS]

https://rumble.com/v1e5ntz-guitar-sound.html

[noiseboyuk]

Hey thanks CHOOS! And glad you sorted the dog out

In order to try and break it down a bit, I just isolated the original sound a little more. It's far from clean but it's a bit easier to hear what's going on.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jh5rpvssr4njt ... h.wav?dl=0

I hear three main elements in it - I don't know if there's three layers to the original, or it's modulations that are causing me to hear three things.

1 - the ticky, that's the bit you were recreating. This part feels more like filtered noise with quite a bit of resonance than a plucked saw to me, on a short decay and hold, overloading somewhere. There's definitely a stereo component to this, it could also be on a 1/4 delay.

2 - the slightly organish sound. That seems to be playing triads of Fmaj, Dmin, Gmaj. Heavily filtered - no low end and some resonance.

3 - the sample and hold filtered stuff. That seems to flit in and out at random, definitely with a 1/4 delay - feels like that the dry is panned left and delay right.

That's all well and good, but I'm not doing great at re-creating it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mdzemlyll5rjq ... b.wav?dl=0

Here's what I award myself:

1 - the ticky. That's not bad, using noise on Avenger 7/10.

2 - the organish sound. Horrible. The chords are right, but the sound on Avenger is pretty bad. Must try harder. 3/10.

3 - the sample and hold filtered stuff. That's even worse. I know what I'm going for - this used Omni with some FM and modulating the filter cutoff, but it's pretty ghastly. 2/10.

The net effect of all this is grating and horrible, as opposed to cool and interesting. The best thing I can say in defence of my first effort is that you can at least start to see how it really is a synth (or layers of) and not a guitar. I think it could just be a single patch in the original, not layering as I've done. When they did it they likely found it slightly by accident and lovingly saved (or indeed written down) as a preset.

[CHOOS]

Ooooohhh I love the chords! that's pretty f**king impressive. Ive never been good at hearing what chords are playing.
You definitely need to create some delays in the notes to get that "strum" effect because it's definitely not all notes at once.

There could be very fast delay on the signal but it just doesn't sound right.
Another trick is a reverb panned one way and the dry the opposite. Pre-delay can make it more interesting too.
But it wouldn't be hard to record two takes, maybe even slightly alter the patch and pan both hard left and right.

[noiseboyuk]

Yeah, that loose timing strum effect might be from multiple passes, or stereo processing. For simplicity I just added a spread unison as a very rough and ready on it, but knowing the synths involved that feels very unlikely how they did it and doesn't get the loose timing feel. Probably some outboard processing.

It did strike me that the whole thing - chords and all - might be on a 1/8th note panned delay that you can clearly hear on the sample and hold stuff, and that they played one initial note that would be one-side only that was muted in the mix. It's so easy to layer now that it's hard to think back to stuff with so much simpler architecture.

I treated that semi-isolated instrument from the original a bit further to take out as much of the ticky as possible. Of course that leaves a pumping effect, but I wanted my ears to zone in on the chords and sample and hold parts a little more, and it does help a bit there. I'll play around more when I'm next super-bored

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t9ma3hbomultb ... s.wav?dl=0

[CHOOS]

So I just played it back at about twice as slow and 4 times as slow and it's not delay. On some of the chords you can clearly hear strumming and on others not but that would make sense. even playing straight-up keyboard would create some of that.