The TR808 clap.

[Oden]

Hello,

I am trying to learn how to program all the different drums from scratch. Currently learning about snare / clap sounds. If you know of a good site detailing the classics, shoot!


Anyway let's talk about the TR-808 clap sound, which you can hear here:
http://wavearts.com/uploads/mp3s/808_dry.mp3 (Sample taken from waves site, where it's used to demonstrate their tube saturator plug in).

Does anyone know how to program that or how the original was done? I heard it's white noise + fast LFO filter, but the results don't really speak for themselves...

Thanks.

[xoxos]

if you gather a bunch of 808 claps and zoom into the front part, you'll discover similarity in the timing of the "pre envelopes" or whatever you want to call them. of course, soundonsound synth secrets articles are a great source for this kind of stuff.

it's been a while since i looked at it. i have a vst called "clap of luxury" which is designed to make pathcing such things easy.

there are two pitfalls with this plugin: the patches have a random generator: to disarm it, you have to disengage the purplebuttons on the bottom left, otherwise it will revert to randomised vlaue on trigger.

and some of the knobs need to be clicked on to select them before you adjust them.

last time i build randomisation into gui params! plug sounds nice tho :p

[No_Use]

Some info about synthesizing the 808/909 sounds in the Waldorf Attack manual.

http://waldorf.electro-music.com/attack ... sounds.pdf

There's also a paragraph about the 808 clap but strangely it seems to be only in the German section.

[Oden]

Some info about synthesizing the 808/909 sounds in the Waldorf Attack manual.

http://waldorf.electro-music.com/attack ... sounds.pdf

There's also a paragraph about the 808 clap but strangely it seems to be only in the German section.

That's amazing. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

But OMG, why is the rest of the manual in german


Is there trial of this software, tried to find one but couldn't. Maybe I can find out how they made the clap. The demos sound pretty good, but not exactly like TR.



"

[phlake]

The 808 service manual has a detailed explanation of the signal path. It may be too low-level for you, but it could still be worth a look. Google up a PDF and see.

[Gone soft]

I read a little bit here and there, I concluded you need white noise, a BPF, two VCAs or a VCA with two or more modulation inputs, an LFO with a sawtooth wave and an envelope generator. (http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1996_ar ... drums.html was my main source here) White noise goes through BPF, BPF goes through first amp. LFO modulates the amp and thus kind of creates an ilusion of several people clapping if the rate is right. Then you pass that on to the second amplifier and modulates that with a simple envelope generator, or control the one amps total volume with it. Attack should be set to zero and the decay should be fairly long in order to simulate reverb, offcourse not too long. Do the reverse (long attack, zero decay on a AR/AD envelope) and you get a reverse handclap, pretty close to anyway.

I tried doing something like this in Vaz Modular, which I've found to be an immensely flexible program with a very acceptable learning curve for what it's capable of. After the last price reduction it's turned out rather inexensive for a softsynth modular too. http://www.kvraudio.com/product/328 if you're interested in checking it out, the demo gives full functionality (except no loading of other patches than those coming with the demo) for 20 minutes and then goes silent until reloaded for another 20 minutes of modular bliss. Digressing, sorry...
My approximation ended up being white noise through a four pole BPF (two pole sounded weak somehow, but you may offcourse disagree...) and used the Voxengo SPAN for tweeking it to 1000 herz which was the frequency I hoped I remembered right from some website I couldn't find again... Increase resonance to max and you should see a peak that clearly shows the cutoff frequency whenever you use something that doesn't show you values in hertz, offcourse remembering to decrease the volume first. Some people find not having values displayed in hertz is a plus as it forces you to use your ears instead of trusting numbers you've been fed. Resonance decreased, and with an LFO modulated simple "amplifier b" module fed into another amp b which was in turn controlled by a slope generator it sounded like a synthetic handclap to me. The slope generator in transient + retrig mode is like a simple AR envelope, which all these websites claim is what's used inside the TR-808. You can also use an ADSR envelope, set sustain to zero and always adjust decay and release to the same value. I made the noise polyphonic and adjusted the polyphony for the patch to eight, which should be fitting.. With a "trigger sequencer" (to, well, trigger the handclap), and some slight comb filtering to add a little bit of slightly modulated delay and a touch of short and simple reverb I was relatively happy with the result, seen as a synthethic clap and not as a precise emulation of the TR-808 anyway. It's a bit to dark (or muddy, you might say...) for that, but keep adjusting to taste or comparing with recordings of the TR-808 one and you should be able to get pretty close.

What I did in Vaz Modular, sorry the screencap turned out so blurry after ImageShack was finished with it:

And here's the full horror of the results, first some repeated trivial patterns of regular handclapping:

http://www.mediafire.com/?n440fb1qqnopq06

And that semi-backwards version I was on about, here I used Vaz Modulars ability to change the direction of playback for the patterns in its internal sequencer so the whole thing should approximate even closer being properly turned backwards:

http://www.mediafire.com/?fg85e6q1lwx5y15

And if I use Audacity to play the "backwarded" patterns backwards we get this:

http://www.mediafire.com/?bdpwmdv5gb7h11e

Wav files, roughly 3 megabytes each.

I hope this made sense and wasn't too long...

[Oden]

Thanks for your contribution V-ger.

I tried your method and got similar results as you did, however it doesn't sound like TR808 clap.


I have translated the Waldorf attack manual with google translate.

The TR-808 Hand Claps consist of a band-pass filtered white noise, which runs through a complex interconnection of multiple envelopes. The cutoff frequency of the bandpass is at 1000 Hz, but only worked a portion of the noise, while the other is brilliant. Two envelopes are responsible for these two noise components. The extended envelope provides the characteristic "echo" effect. The brilliant noise represents the "crack" effect available which generates about 100 Hz and three repetitions.

Now if someone could only translate this english description.


The service manual is a bit low level for me indeed, I don't understand electronics.

[helium]

Thanks for your contribution V-ger.

I tried your method and got similar results as you did, however it doesn't sound like TR808 clap.


I have translated the Waldorf attack manual with google translate.

The TR-808 Hand Claps consist of a band-pass filtered white noise, which runs through a complex interconnection of multiple envelopes. The cutoff frequency of the bandpass is at 1000 Hz, but only worked a portion of the noise, while the other is brilliant. Two envelopes are responsible for these two noise components. The extended envelope provides the characteristic "echo" effect. The brilliant noise represents the "crack" effect available which generates about 100 Hz and three repetitions.

Now if someone could only translate this english description.


The service manual is a bit low level for me indeed, I don't understand electronics.

From reading the German manual:

Imagine a LFO with a saw waveform that doesn't oscillate forever but only exactly three times. That is the envelope used on pure white noise.

Code: Select all

|\   |\   |\   
| \  | \  | \  
|  \ |  \ |  \ 
|   \|   \|   \_______...

This "LFO" seems to run at 100 Hz, so the three spikes are 10 ms apart from each other.

Than you have band pass filtered white noise (1000 Hz cutoff frequency) that is modulated by a normal envelope with no attack and a long decay.

[Oden]

Thanks for your contribution V-ger.

I tried your method and got similar results as you did, however it doesn't sound like TR808 clap.


I have translated the Waldorf attack manual with google translate.

The TR-808 Hand Claps consist of a band-pass filtered white noise, which runs through a complex interconnection of multiple envelopes. The cutoff frequency of the bandpass is at 1000 Hz, but only worked a portion of the noise, while the other is brilliant. Two envelopes are responsible for these two noise components. The extended envelope provides the characteristic "echo" effect. The brilliant noise represents the "crack" effect available which generates about 100 Hz and three repetitions.

Now if someone could only translate this english description.


The service manual is a bit low level for me indeed, I don't understand electronics.

From reading the German manual:

Imagine a LFO with a saw waveform that doesn't oscillate forever but only exactly three times. That is the envelope used on pure white noise.

Code: Select all

|\   |\   |\   
| \  | \  | \  
|  \ |  \ |  \ 
|   \|   \|   \_______...

This "LFO" seems to run at 100 Hz, so the three spikes are 10 ms apart from each other.

Than you have band pass filtered white noise (1000 Hz cutoff frequency) that is modulated by a normal envelope with no attack and a long decay.

Thanks for your german translation!!


I will try 3 layers with 2nd and 3rd delayed by 10 ms. (As my synths can't have triple envelopes nor delay - apart from HW).

And mix that with white noise....

Hopefully this will work. =)

[Aroused by JarJar]

Does your mom know you're on the internet asking how you can get the clap?

http://www.mediafire.com/?a4j4ub49cb99g9l

The envelope is a saw at 100 Hz as helium describes, but there is no need to have multiple instances or somehow stop it at a precise amount of cycles: it runs as a normal oscillator, but is clamped down by a linear AD envelope at about something like 40 milliseconds, giving you three full interations of enveloped noise, with diminishing amplitudes. If you try this and zoom in on a sample of an original 808 clap you'll see that this matches. The fourth interation of the 100 Hz osc. is pretty much buried in the second big clap that comes in around 35 ms. or so. Whether this second clap is modulated by a second envelope of its own or is a delay tap or something in the original, I do not know. There is a big envelope that covers the whole thing, I don't know it is set- I use an exponential envelope at about 1.5 seconds, which probably is not how the original does it, but it works.

A typical original 808 clap is lighter and brighter than the example I made, but crispier. Personally I like even much thicker and heavier claps, but I try to synthesize as close to the final product as possible- an 808 through mixing board and effects can be dark and heavy of course.

[phlake]

You can find the service manual here (English): http://ericarcher.net/devices/tr808-clone/

The clap is on page 6, envelope diagrams are figure 13. No electronics knowledge is required to look at the diagrams, at least.

[xoxos]

if you use my plugin i get an eternity of rainbow coloured houris in the afterlife

[philnsicab]

In this video I re-create it in detail. Hope it helps.

[dynaudio2]

In this video I re-create it in detail. Hope it helps.

this one is amazing!