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Article from Electronics & Music Maker, February 1984 |
This month we are concentrating on bass sounds. This is an increasingly important area of the synth players 'vocabulary', especially in bands where there is no bass guitar player. Not only can it be tricky for a keyboard player to think 'bass-line', but satisfactory programming of a suitable sound can be very demanding. The reason for this is that when a sound is played in low register, virtually all the harmonics are in the audible frequencies (at higher registers the human ear cannot hear them), and so we can hear everything that is (or isn't) going on. You will all have noticed that a good sound taken down a few octaves can begin to sound thin and lacklustre. The reason for this is often that when the sound was programmed, the higher harmonics (then inaudible) were not catered for.
So how can we set about making our bass sounds more interesting? Firstly, if we want more high harmonic content, we can open up the filter, either manually (using the Filter Cut-off Frequency Control) or automatically (using the Filter Envelope Amount Control). Of course, this all dependant on there being some high harmonics to listen to. This will depend on the basic waveforms selected. The best two source waveforms to have on the oscillators are sawtooth (ramp) wave or a pulse width-modulated wave (PWM as it is often referred to). On some synths this is available automatically, but on most you will have to program it by routing a slow LFO triangle wave to the Pulse Width of both oscillators once Pulse (or Square if pulse is not available) has been selected.
Here is an example of a beefy bass sound on the Prophet 600 using this technique:
Of course, this patch can be tried on any of the Oberheim polysynths (OB-X or OB-Xa) as well, because of their 'family' similarity, and the only thing that will change is that the LFO mod will not be delayed. Try setting up this mod on the right hand lever instead, and then introduce it yourself after you have played the note.
Finally this month, we have help for those of you who are still struggling to program your DX7s with those old synth sounds. Here is a bass sound by Martyn Phillips (you may remember him from Java, our tape of the month in September). This is a hard 'syne'-type bass sound which makes use of the touch sensitivity of the keyboard to modify the pitch.
Source: Martyn Phillips
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