How do I get this sound? (guitar, whistle, water drop)
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- KVRist
- 324 posts since 23 Apr, 2015
I have this sound in mind. It's a bit hard to describe and I can't remember any song that has it. In part, it sounds like an acoustic guitar. It also sounds a little like a short, gentle whistle. Some might say it sounds like water drops. Do you know what I'm talking about? The solo at about 3 minutes into Culture Club's "Mistake Number Three" is not exactly it, but gets pretty close. How do I get that sound?
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- KVRer
- 11 posts since 14 Nov, 2024
My immediate reaction to that sound on the Culture Club sound is that it's a pitched and slowed sample of maybe tubular bells or something similar. Probably done on a Fairlight CMI if that is the case. It could also easily be some sort of FM bell sound. If you want to go the acoustic guitar route, I would sample a harmonic (probably 5th or 7th fret), set it up for a nice repeating loop, then for the performance part I would have a keyboard set up for long-ish portamento time. Make sure there's some sort of low-pass envelope that follows the pitch, at least a little bit. Add resonance to that as you see fit.
For effects then, obviously delay. I would lean towards an analogue sounding delay, tape or BBD, doesn't really matter, plenty of plugins to choose from. Map a mod wheel to tremolo, add some subtle chorus (TAL Chorus LX is my go to for a free and simple chorus, but you might want to look into more complex options for an 'organic' sounding modulation) and obviously some 80's digital hall/plate reverb would go wonderfully with that sound. I would also run some saturation in series with the entire fx chain (including the reverb) in order to bring out right harmonics to fill the frequency spectrum. Not too much, obviously, otherwise you will destroy the sound
Let me know how you get on with that! If you don't have access to an acoustic guitar, I would happily upload some recording of harmonics on my own guitar.
For effects then, obviously delay. I would lean towards an analogue sounding delay, tape or BBD, doesn't really matter, plenty of plugins to choose from. Map a mod wheel to tremolo, add some subtle chorus (TAL Chorus LX is my go to for a free and simple chorus, but you might want to look into more complex options for an 'organic' sounding modulation) and obviously some 80's digital hall/plate reverb would go wonderfully with that sound. I would also run some saturation in series with the entire fx chain (including the reverb) in order to bring out right harmonics to fill the frequency spectrum. Not too much, obviously, otherwise you will destroy the sound
Let me know how you get on with that! If you don't have access to an acoustic guitar, I would happily upload some recording of harmonics on my own guitar.