I need a few sounds to recreate the remix Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex

[hinson]

I'm trying to recreate my favorite remix of Eurodance song E-Rotic - Max Don't Have Sex With Your Ex from the 1994 album Sex Affairs.

This is an album remix


The first sound from the very beginning of the song before the pad.
The second is the pad 00:07, maybe someone knows a similar preset?
Probably the hardest one is the one you can hear well from 02:56. It may be a simple saw wave, but you can hear the automation of cutoff and resonance, which makes it difficult to recognize.
And I'm also looking for something similar to the one used in the melody arp 03:51.

It's impossible to recreate in 100% but I'd like to get a similar effect.
I already have a few sounds. The preset from Sytrus (Silver Saw) worked well for the lead of the main melody, the preset from VTS JUNO 106 BR Juno P-Saws works well as a background for Silver Saw.
I also found a kick sample in my collection that seems very similar to the original.

Maybe I can finish this remix as other sounds can be recreate.
This is my early demo in Renoise

[juno987654321]

The very first sound is not that trivial at all: it could be a bandpassed pulse with some resonance and some FM modulation (from another wave) as well as maybe a chorus effect to further shape the metallic effects. It isn't easy to set the parameters exactly right for this one.

That pad afterwards to me seems to be a supersaw. You can set it to 7 voices and detune it by 7 %. Then have a LP12 at 488 HZ and strike chord A. This one to me seems easier to be recreated than the first one. As always with pad sounds give it some attack time, etc.

Next, there are some hardly audible effects in the background but those are highly interesting. The first one in my analysis is a very high pitched saw wave which has been bandpassed. Then they let a phaser sweep through it with very specific parameters being set. Those are not easy to be figured out exactly. You get a moving metallic sound as you can hear it in the track.

After that, there is some sizzling (a bit like rain or mice) at around 19 seconds. I have no good idea yet how they created that but it is definately worth finding out. A phaser might be involved in this one and some specific noise which is very narrowly centered around 12 K. It would be interesting to get to know something more concrete about this sound.

This track is a nice one for this forum. It offers itself well to an analysis to people who want to find out more about the art of designing sounds.

The original sounds were produced by David Brandes and (probably even more importantly) also by his mentor Domenico Livrano in or at the border to Switzerland, I believe. Those people are professionals who know what they are doing. So if we get stuck we might try and ask them.

Be back with more suggestions later...

[juno987654321]

... The next 4 bars that follow on the cue of "Oh Max" at 20 sec. may be the most difficult ones in the song!
That's because there are now many tracks coming together to build up and this makes it difficult to the listener to keep them all apart in the mind as we listen to the whole arrangement.
Let me now just write about these 4 bars and focus on the context of the 3 new sounds which we can find in there.

On 2 tracks we only get our continuation of the pad sound and the reso sound from the beginning but this already interferes with our purpose of trying to analyse the song clearly. We don't have the individual tracks but we can only use our ears and our mind to separate things apart again. The producers here were in a less difficult situation than we are in now.

Anyways, during the next 4 bars 2 new tracks (let's call them A and B) join in with possibly saw waves as their base, but both e. g. have a resonance filter sweeping over them,
and in the end there's also the "airplane" effect mingling in there, too, on yet another track, call it track C.

Track A, I think, has some gater effect played on 3 notes along the 4 bars. The rhythm of the gater effect comes in 16th notes.
Track B has an arpeggio-like melody that consists of 5-6 notes.

Before one could talk about the sounds from track A-C, one would first have to be conscious of this underlying structure with the context they are set in.
Only then could one find out what waves or noises the sounds from track A-C are based on and if the suggestions I just made were right or wrong.
One could then go on and reconstruct each sound, apply the effects and see if it becomes possible at all to recreate everything - which is a nice challenge that may be worth it.

[hinson]

Thanks. I don't want to focus on all the sounds, especially those that are totally in the background, effects like that around 19 seconds you mentioned or very quiet percussion elements (eg in 42 seconds) but the most important ones.
The first sound I just sampled. Nothing else plays in the background, so it's the best option. The pad is also not that important, I think there will be a suitable preset.
There are actually two sounds left, the one at 2:56 and the arpeggio melody.
In the arpeggio I hear two sounds, one more or less (3:36) in which the effect glide or portamento was definitely used and then another (3:52) without these effects.
At weekend I'll try to guess how these notes are arranged in a piano roll.
From 4:12 in the background of the arpeggio there are another notes of the saw wave, but I won't be able to guess them, they too fast.
And the one from 2:56 was left, it looks like they used automation on cutoff and resonance.
I experimented a bit on some Sytrus preset and more or less it would fit, but of course in other and not so extreme settings that I used here (in the original these automations work little different and slower).

https://sndup.net/cz8h/

[juno987654321]

This track has made me curious. I'd now like to find out exactly how the sounds were made, especialy the more difficult ones such as the very first sound. We can take our time to do this and others will probably join in and add their ideas. Don't worry about it.

The sound at 2:56 is a noise sweep, isn't it? I can send you the patches if you tell me what plugin you use because I'll recreate them for practise anyways. I'm just getting into sound design again after taking a longer break so I can use some practise. Do you use Serum or Vital?

I think you principally got that right about the automations they used. Many parameters are being automated at some "transitional" passages (e. g. at 19 sec., 2.56 min.). You created a patch where you actually also automated the amplitude/volume though you didn't mention this. That sounds very interesting to me and I think it's basically the right way to go. The more extreme settings you used for the change of amplitude makes it sound even better and more dynamic than in the original in my opinion. I like that pumping effect! Leave that in as your signature in the recreation of your remix! I'll see if I could find out the exact ways in which the parameters change over time but this needs some real close listening for sure. It's a complex thing to be pinned down but I also do this for my own education and as a challenge.

The notes in the arpeggio-like melodies could be figured out, even the fast ones in the background. There's some variations in them: I could hear the glide effect variation that you pointed out. Maybe there's even more variations? You also got the notes and the rhythm of the basic motif melody right, I believe. The variations and automations as well as the background sounds all make the track appear more lively and more appealing to listen to as a whole, do they not? This is the good old style from the 90ies and they knew what they were doing. At the same time the many nuances make it become a more difficult task to recreate all the parts it consists of and get it all together.

[juno987654321]

...So for track B which on closer look actually constists of 2 arpeggios (5+6 notes played on note D or E) the filter movements (automation curve values in your DAW) from 20 seconds onwards may be as follows:

[juno987654321]

The 3 sweep (airplane-like) sounds from 24 sec.- 36 sec. are difficult to be figured out. I couldn't manage to do so yet. Can someone help?

[hinson]

Thanks juno. I use Vital but also often built-in plugins in FL Studio, not counting romplers.
If you managed to create a some preset for Vital, you can upload it here.
Finally I found some time and I was able to guess the melody of the arpeggio and to my ear it sounds like in the midi file in the attachment.
This remix is amazing. It sounds much more modern than the other Eurodance songs from 1994, which were more simply made and it use more advanced automation techniques.
This track also has a lot of Glide effects on the notes but E-rotic was known for it and most of their tracks use this effect.
They combined Eurodance and Trance in this remix and the effect is brilliant.
Maybe CHOOS will still be able to recreate some sound.

[juno987654321]

I see that you created the arp sounds on 2 octaves. This is possible if the sound is on 2 octaves, although you could also use 2 oscs for the sound itself with one being an octave higher than the other and then just type in the midi notes on one octave. But many roads lead to Rome. Some even use arpeggio plugins and then just type in sustained base notes as midi for each arp sequence (after having programmed the arp sequence into the plugin itself)...

...Anyways, I'll now send you the (easier) sweep sound from 2.46 min.
and the string pad sound from the beginning (starting on chord A (notes A+C+E played together))

[CHOOS]

It's been a while boys!

https://rumble.com/v25wa7i-max-d

Presets & midi

Max.zip

ont-have-sex-with-your-ex-remix-sounds-in-vital.html

[juno987654321]

Thank you so much for being back with us again and for just being there, Choos! This is exactly what I was missing. So interesting to see your takes on those sounds! I can now be reaffirmed that I wasn't too wrong with e. g. the bandpassed FM sound from the beginning and with the fallers but on the other hand you added some really really valuable further details there that helped me see things from further and new angles as well.

Always very much of a pleasure to watch your tutorials with hightened attention! This is serious and in-depth sound design at its best - as opposed to just staying on the surface of things. Wish there were more people like that around who are really devoted to doing this in a serious style or in that selfless fashion of yours. Strictly educational, never any tacit and hidden commercial bullsh (that we find too much elsewhere) and always straight to the point! To me you are a kind of role model in this field and you made me become more and more enthusiastic about spending my free time on this, too. It's because you help people to develop in this field when there's (more often than not!) no one else there who would even bother to reply anything.

In today's lingo:
If y'ask me, I'll definately choose Dr Choos instad of Dr Commercial or Dr InduRstrial! (hint, hint...)

[hinson]

Thanks CHOOS glad you're back.