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Emulating 80's synth sound

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Hi All
I need advise on how to create a certain sound. I'm from the UK and play in an 80's synth rock pop tribute band. We've been asked to play a certain song from said decade from UK synth band Erasure.
I have a professional midi version and i know how to sample but i'd personally like to recreate a particular sound/sequence for this song. The track is called "Stop!" It has a panning/filltering intro lasting no more than 4 bars but to know how to build that sound using the parts and fx in Montage would be great. Where I need help is what parts and effects i need to use and what they are called on Montage! Any advise would be great.
Thank you.

 
Posted : 24/01/2020 9:08 pm
Jason
Posts: 7912
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I'm not going to find the sounds for you. Someone else may may fill that question. I'll just focus on the filter and/or pan.

You have options.

1) You can "ride the knobs". Use the [TONE] button and use the knobs for cutoff and/or resonance to get the filter effect. There is a knob for "pan" - but it's outside of the [TONE] mode. So you cannot "ride the (standard) knobs" for both filter and pan at the same time. So here I'd give up pan for filter - which is the dominant effect I would believe.

2) Instead of using standard knobs (aka "knob functions" ) - you can use the knobs in assignable mode. Press the [ASSIGN] button to place knobs in this mode. Generally, every Performance already has the knobs in this mode. Then you would edit the PART that has this intro sound, find/select the "cutoff" (or parameter which you believe achieves this effect), press [CONTROL ASSIGN] then twist one of the 8 knobs. Then also, for this same PART, find/select the Panning parameter and press [CONTROL ASSIGN] and spin a different assignable knob. Now you can ride these two knobs to both pan and filter. Or you could elect to twist the same knob and one knob would both pan and filter. You may want to go and edit the curves after-the-fact so perhaps the ratios would be different between the two (faster rate for pan vs. filter -- or what have you).

3) Same as above - but instead of turning an assignable knob - turn the super knob. Now you use superknob to both pan and filter at the same time. Again, after the fact, go and edit the curves so you get the right kind of movement vs. the knob rotation.

2,3a) NOTE: for 2 and 3 you can also assign a foot controller ("expression pedal" ) to turn superknob or, in the case of #2, as the "knob" itself. Instead of turning an assignable knob you can move the foot controller. This would free up your hands.

4) You can setup a motion sequnce to automate the pan and filter. This is more involved - but the net result would be that your first note press will start the sequence off and the motion sequence engine would handle "automatically" changing the pan and filter over time. As long as your tempo is the same every time you play this - the automation will work fine. Certainly there's a way to source tempo from external sources so even if the tempo is different from gig to gig - it would still work. But this is not something I deal with - synchronizing to an external clock source. And feel that tap tempo'ing to compensate for the band tempo is too evasive for use during a gig. Anyhow - there are options available - but I would just generally use this expecting the band generally plays the same enough tempo for my motion sequence programming (with internal and fixed clock timings) is close enough to work out.

Overall this option is more involved as you have to program the motion of the controller "knob" (it's called a lane in motion sequence) and program (as you did in #2, #3) the association of the controller (lane) to the parameters which are being modulated (filter and pan).

5) You can setup two PARTs where one PART is hard panned to one side. The other PART is hard panned to the other side. The 1st PART is at one end of the filter (brightness) spectrum - and 2nd part is at the other end. Then you use superknob, a foot controller, or assignable knob to morph between the 1st and 2nd PARTs (volume of 1st PART goes down while volume of 2nd PART goes up). This would sound like pan and filter movement.

6) Same as #5, but automate the movement (morph) using motion sequence so you do not have to physically turn knobs or stomp on expression pedals.

7) You may be able to handle this instead of with filtering by using one of the effects - and use any of the methods above to either knob-control the effect (for pan + "filter" ) or motion sequence to automate it.

That's the high level. There's pictures in tutorials and probably a follow-up by someone else with pictures.

 
Posted : 25/01/2020 5:22 am
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