Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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illit_
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Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by illit_ »

Yo, I have been trying to work on my cymbal synthesis. I have read the Sound on Sound article that talks about how a 808 generates cymbals ( https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... thesis?amp )

Anybody have tips they can share? The ones I have make lack the shimmer and come out a bit too much like a whistle. I have used white noise in the past but im trying to branch out :D

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timc3
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Re: Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by timc3 »

There is another SoS article about creating cymbals as well if I remember correctly.

But maybe look into karplus strong synthesis? I have a feeling that is the approach WMD took to making Crucible

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mindstuff
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Re: Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by mindstuff »

I once was on this quest. Good luck. :)

I'll give my personal tip but I'd still recommend using a sample instead. Get a good white noise sample. Throw that into a software sampler. Ableton will do. Make sure its sampler so you get the attack curves to better shape the sound. Use the FM in the modulation tab to apply some FM for those interspersed resonance peaks. Sometimes you can get lucky. Then even over that I might layer some white noise again with maybe a diff amp envelope depending if I wanted a harsher attack or maybe a longer tail, saturate, bit reduce, maybe even some Ring modulation...but experimentation is key! Or use a good sample.

Bonus
http://www.colinfraser.com/tr909/my909.htm
Contains three wav files for the hi-hats, crash and ride using the actual data from the 909 roms. << Samples!

illit_
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Re: Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by illit_ »

I hadn't heard of Karplus synthesis so that was cool, can make some springy plingy percs with that. Thanks for the bonus link mindstuff! I have a free afternoon today so will try and make some different hats !

museumoftechno
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Re: Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by museumoftechno »

808 (hugely simplified) is... several square (?) waves at odd intervals to each other, mixed and distorted and high-pass filtered so you don't get much fundamental... all of which means you're hearing lots of harmonic series that don't mesh with each other.

Maybe an alternative to get a similar result might be 2 or 3 simplish metallic FM sounds (for interesting harmonics), then just play about high-passing them to get rid of fundamentals, clipping/distorting them, then filtering again?

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Re: Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by museumoftechno »

Just to test that FM idea, I went into Reaktor and just threw together 3 little FM instruments playing random intervals, then 3 or 3 layers of high-pass, low-pass filtering and saturation. Then I recorded a bunch of hits (you can download them from my Dropbox if you want to try them)... and put them in an Ableton Drumrack to do a quick demo.

It sort of worked, although I think it's all about getting lucky with distortion vs filtering vs FM settings.

Samples: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/txkqiqmtrrri ... T0Yja?dl=0
Demo: https://soundcloud.com/joey-dendron/fm- ... al_sharing

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timc3
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Re: Resources or tips on synthesising cymbals

Post by timc3 »

There is a PDF on this page: https://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/ms-20-mini-drums/pid154/ for making different drum and percussion sounds, including cymbals. I haven't tried it, and it's aimed at being done on an MS-20 but perhaps it gives you some more inspiration.


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