How do I make these sounds by Carpenter Brut?

[hebex]

(First I posted in the Instruments forum, but got recommended to post here instead.)

Great fan of Carpenter Brut, one of my favorites is Invasion AD.

a) At 2 minutes and 59 seconds a nice clear synth sound starts, what exactly is this synth? Anybody knows?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebJxb_ftj3g

b) I could ask the same about the powerful synth sound that starts the song with the notes octave down E-E, pause, D-E octave down E.

I suppose the synths are pretty much processed, but what would be your guesses what he has used to begin with? They have a particular character that I can´t put my finger on. They don´t sound like Moogs anyway as far as I can tell.

Maybe you would have an idea of what he could have used?

Thanks!

[CHOOS]

it's just a saw.
add a hint of vibrato to give it some life and add a bit of filter attack and quick decay to it to give it that quick brassy feel

[juno987654321]

a) I agree with this. Bandpassed.
The sound patch should also be made velocity sensitive as we can hear the 2nd note is louder and more stingy e. g.
Carpenter may have just used a Juno or some keyboard that was common at the time (if he made the sounds himself). A Moog could probably also do it. I don't know for sure. But most synths had HP + LP + filter ADSRs, so why not, and the vibrato comes for free in older analogue synths, as part of electricity fluctuations...

[bluesawsq]

b) I could ask the same about the powerful synth sound that starts the song with the notes octave down E-E, pause, D-E octave down E.

That powerful synth bass has massive character. The attack/decay part sounds kind of like smashing a huge metal sheet. This type of metallic sound could be created in FM or additive synths.
This video shows how to recreate the sound in Razor
https://vimeo.com/557701214

To get that metal smashing attack/decay and fat sustain sound I used

• Envelope modulation of lowpass filter cutoff and boost
• Filter smoother controlling partial amplitudes to add reverb like character to the filter movement
• Unisono with randomization of partial phases to get blurred unison sound
• Unisono noise stereo effect with envelope reducing the amount at attack

[juno987654321]

The accompanying metallic sound is special to me:
- Could this also be done in some freeware plugin for those who don't have Razor?
- Would it even be possible to recreate this sound in Serum?

[hebex]

b) I could ask the same about the powerful synth sound that starts the song with the notes octave down E-E, pause, D-E octave down E.

That powerful synth bass has massive character. The attack/decay part sounds kind of like smashing a huge metal sheet. This type of metallic sound could be created in FM or additive synths.
This video shows how to recreate the sound in Razor
https://vimeo.com/557701214

To get that metal smashing attack/decay and fat sustain sound I used

• Envelope modulation of lowpass filter cutoff and boost
• Filter smoother controlling partial amplitudes to add reverb like character to the filter movement
• Unisono with randomization of partial phases to get blurred unison sound
• Unisono noise stereo effect with envelope reducing the amount at attack

Amazing! Thank you very much!

[BertKoor]

Bandpassed.

To that I disagree. It's the full saw spectrum of a saw, nothing cut off from the lows, nothing from the highs.
Why do you think it has a band-pass filter? Or are we not talking about that fat bass sound in the opening?

[bluesawsq]

The accompanying metallic sound is special to me:
- Could this also be done in some freeware plugin for those who don't have Razor?
- Would it even be possible to recreate this sound in Serum?

Similar sound should be possible also in free plugins or Serum. The idea is to add some inharmonics or dissonance to unison saws and then use filter and envelopes to carve the metal smashing sound out of it. The source of dissonance could be FM (phase modulation) or you could find some wavetable containing that dissonance.

I tried quickly to create the same sound in Surge, FM8 and Serum. It was not easy and the results were not as smooth as using Razor. I have used Surge only for couple of hours and had to check the user guide for instructions on FM. Somehow I could not get a proper control of FM sounds in Surge, and using unison together with FM did not sound good.

In FM8 I got pretty good sound, but getting really accurate recreation using FM synthesis can be quite tricky and slow. Many times its more like trial and error, or lucky accidents in FM synthesis.
Don't know if there is any free FM synths that have the unison feature required for this sound.

In Serum I used saws in osc A and B, and tried adding FM from SUB to both oscs with envelope. But the result was a bit too gritty and changed pitch of oscillators too much. I think you would need a bit more complex FM structure than what is possible in Serum. Maybe in Serum or in Vital it would be easier to just find a proper noise oscillator or wavetable that could give the right kind of inharmonics for the smashing attack.

Amazing! Thank you very much!

My pleasure

[surreal]

The accompanying metallic sound is special to me:
- Could this also be done in some freeware plugin for those who don't have Razor?
- Would it even be possible to recreate this sound in Serum?

Similar sound should be possible also in free plugins or Serum. The idea is to add some inharmonics or dissonance to unison saws and then use filter and envelopes to carve the metal smashing sound out of it. The source of dissonance could be FM (phase modulation) or you could find some wavetable containing that dissonance.

I tried quickly to create the same sound in Surge, FM8 and Serum. It was not easy and the results were not as smooth as using Razor. I have used Surge only for couple of hours and had to check the user guide for instructions on FM. Somehow I could not get a proper control of FM sounds in Surge, and using unison together with FM did not sound good.

In FM8 I got pretty good sound, but getting really accurate recreation using FM synthesis can be quite tricky and slow. Many times its more like trial and error, or lucky accidents in FM synthesis.
Don't know if there is any free FM synths that have the unison feature required for this sound.

In Serum I used saws in osc A and B, and tried adding FM from SUB to both oscs with envelope. But the result was a bit too gritty and changed pitch of oscillators too much. I think you would need a bit more complex FM structure than what is possible in Serum. Maybe in Serum or in Vital it would be easier to just find a proper noise oscillator or wavetable that could give the right kind of inharmonics for the smashing attack.

Amazing! Thank you very much!

My pleasure

Do you mind sharing your patches of what you have achieved?

[surreal]

b) I could ask the same about the powerful synth sound that starts the song with the notes octave down E-E, pause, D-E octave down E.

That powerful synth bass has massive character. The attack/decay part sounds kind of like smashing a huge metal sheet. This type of metallic sound could be created in FM or additive synths.
This video shows how to recreate the sound in Razor
https://vimeo.com/557701214

To get that metal smashing attack/decay and fat sustain sound I used

• Envelope modulation of lowpass filter cutoff and boost
• Filter smoother controlling partial amplitudes to add reverb like character to the filter movement
• Unisono with randomization of partial phases to get blurred unison sound
• Unisono noise stereo effect with envelope reducing the amount at attack

What synth did you used for the pulse 8th note bass?

[BONES]

Carpenter may have just used a Juno or some keyboard that was common at the time (if he made the sounds himself).

Ummm, "At the time" for Carpenter Brut was 2015. It was most likely done with VSTi. From Equipboard - "I have a Macbook Pro, Ableton Live, Akai midi keyboards, Universal Audio soundcard, PMC monitors, a bunch of VSTi like Arturia, Diva, Native Instruments, Korg and a few hardware synthesizers like Prophet 6, Pro 2, Mini brute or recently a Modor NF 1."

[AnX]

prob thinks its John Carpenter....

[BONES]

The name is in fact a pun. Apparently there is a champagne called "Carpentier Brut" and he thought it would be funny to change it to "Carpenter Brut", in honour of John Carpenter. I'm more of a Perturbator man myself.

[juno987654321]

Yes, Bones, I was thinking of John Carpenter's sounds from the 80ies movies which have been recreated here. Many artists who do retro sounds still prefer to use the same analogue gear nowadays but I don't know what they used for these recreations. The original analogue gear has become extremely expensive...

**********

...

Thanks for your reply, bluesawsq.
I'd also be interested to have a look at your attempts for Serum or the other plugins, but only if you wouldn't mind. That's up to you.
To me it doesn't have to sound good in this case - just to see what the other plugins could do for these type of sounds...

[hebex]

The accompanying metallic sound is special to me:
- Could this also be done in some freeware plugin for those who don't have Razor?
- Would it even be possible to recreate this sound in Serum?

Similar sound should be possible also in free plugins or Serum. The idea is to add some inharmonics or dissonance to unison saws and then use filter and envelopes to carve the metal smashing sound out of it. The source of dissonance could be FM (phase modulation) or you could find some wavetable containing that dissonance.

I tried quickly to create the same sound in Surge, FM8 and Serum. It was not easy and the results were not as smooth as using Razor. I have used Surge only for couple of hours and had to check the user guide for instructions on FM. Somehow I could not get a proper control of FM sounds in Surge, and using unison together with FM did not sound good.

In FM8 I got pretty good sound, but getting really accurate recreation using FM synthesis can be quite tricky and slow. Many times its more like trial and error, or lucky accidents in FM synthesis.
Don't know if there is any free FM synths that have the unison feature required for this sound.

In Serum I used saws in osc A and B, and tried adding FM from SUB to both oscs with envelope. But the result was a bit too gritty and changed pitch of oscillators too much. I think you would need a bit more complex FM structure than what is possible in Serum. Maybe in Serum or in Vital it would be easier to just find a proper noise oscillator or wavetable that could give the right kind of inharmonics for the smashing attack.

Amazing! Thank you very much!

My pleasure

I´ve been thinking about this lately. I´ve got a lot of software VST-synths and a couple of nice hardware synths and I just wish I had the knowledge in using them to come anywhere near their real potential. Beyond the most obvious stuff, filter cutoff, ADSR, etc, I´m still pretty much just a preset player, I´m afraid. I can´t say I really understand what makes the sounds the way you demonstrated knowledge in here. Judging by people visiting KvR and elsewhere, I´m pretty sure I´m not alone in this situation.

There should be a market for somebody like you to make tutorials and really delve into sound design and make it understandable. What you displayed here, both in words what you were doing, and by working the Razor interface, is a nice way to explain I haven´t seen before.

You should consider making online courses explaning how to make a wealth of different cool synth sounds. I´ll be your first customer.