PauL Kalkbrenner

[mpetersen3]

I'm a massive fan of Paul Kalkbrenner, but I still scratch my head at how he manages to make such great synths. In this song @ 1:44 a high pitched synth comes in, can anyone offer some advice on making a similar sounding synth? From what I can guess he is using some sawtooth waves with distortion, delay and maybe some ring modulation (and a hp filter of course). Also if you have never heard his music or seen the film "Berlin Calling" I highly recommend them both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_hxLasoo5g

[minimal]

Altes Kamuffel! one of my fave tracks.
When I drop this, it kick starts the dancefloor the crowd goes wild.
I love the production of his tracks. tight tight.

[mpetersen3]

yea he is excellent, so professional sounding, I'd love to spend a day in the studio with him

[Fatlimey]

Bell-like sounds are best created using Ring Modulation. You pretty much described the recipe in your post. Ring mod, high attack, fast decay, push it through a stereo echo on, say, 5- or 7-beats and then through a reverb.

Something like Ableton Live's Operator would be a good starting point.

[mpetersen3]

Does anyone know of any good articles on the DSP behind ring mod? One of the areas (along with fm synthesis, although is it not a form of fm synth?) where my knowledge is lacking

[Fatlimey]

Ring Modulation is just a multiply between two signals - imagine two sine waves f1 and f2. The result of the multiplication f1 * f2 is to make two new sine waves at frequencies f1+f2 and f1-f2.

f1 is usually called the "signal" (the normal sound you would produce before ring mod) and f2 is called the "carrier".

If f1 is very low frequency it sounds just like amplitude modulation but as the carrier frequency rises you can hear the two frequencies separate. Bell noises are made by modulating against a fixed frequency, say 2500hz. Space noises can be made by modulating against a swept frequency.

[mpetersen3]

damn euler's law lol, I thought they only used these for radio, never considered the sound potential for em. thanks for enlightening me.

[mpetersen3]

oh fatlimey one other question, I initially said a sawtooth wave, although now I am wondering if it was a square wave, but with what kinda wave ring modding it? do you have any idea?