Hi Guys,

1st off - I'm really loving the demo of MT3. Lovely sounding Kicks with just a few tweaks.

Wicked little plug!

However - I'd like to make 808 / 909 style kicks, but dont seem to be able to quite nail them. I seem to be coming up with something usable (which is still fantastic..) but still I'm fustrated as to where to start. I've got a few music mags here that I'm going through, but I've still got brainfreeze.

Looking at different patches, there seems to be different ways to approach making a Kick, whether its based on an EQ ramp - or a pitch fall in the sine osc. I'm not sure where to begin - thats if I've understood it correctly.

Would it be possible to get a pointer as to where to begin?

I too was having the modulation from the noise Q issue that a chap previously posted about - so thanks for resolving another question that I had.

Cheers,

J

Hi,

Any update on this yet Lads?

Cheers,

J

I'll be honest.. I love microtonic - but I'm a little disappointed at the length of time that its taking to get an acknowledgment here :blink:

Is it nearly 8- 10days now? I would SO appreciate it, if you could take a couple of minutes to support my query B)

Fingers crossed for a response :)

Cheers,

J

Sorry for the late reply. This is not a trivial question to answer. I designed the sound engine in MicroTonic to provide great versatility on a small number of parameters and I spent a lot of time analyzing the circuitry of mentioned x0x groove-boxes. There are enough tricks in MicroTonic to mimic most of these sounds, but there are of course some details that are impossible to recreate 100% accurately.

That said, kicks are usually the easiest to faithfully recreate, as their analogue circuits are rather simple compared to sounds like the cymbals etc. Basically you use the sine or triangle oscillator (with a base frequency around 50 to 60 hz), add a quick pitch decay and then some subtle distortion and eq on that.

Here is an example preset of an 808-imitation that is part of the "Xmas 2003" patch package: NE Eight-O-8 (100).mtpreset(17.5kB, 785 downloads)

The 808 and 909 use very different techniques to achieve their sounds (which is why they sound so different of course). The 808 kick is created with a circuit that is equivalent of a highly resonant filter producing a fairly steady sine tone. The click in the attack is accomplished by quickly modulating the filter frequency. In my imitation above I chose to emulate this with an extremely quick pitch envelope.

The 909 uses real voltage controlled oscillators. The snare and toms use more than one oscillator (which makes them hard to simulate in MicroTonic), but fortunately the kick uses only one. The oscillator is a triangle that is waveshaped into a sine. There is quick pitch drop plus a short noise-burst mixed in for the attack. One of many small things you can't reproduce 100% in MicroTonic is the form of the amplitude envelope. It is a "gated" envelope with a "hold" time before it starts to decay. That said, you can use the MicroTonic distortion cleverly to approximate this effect.

Here is an attempt at a 909 kick I just made: NE BD NineO.mtdrum(0.55kB, 896 downloads)

I hope these examples help you a bit. It's all about experimentation. Tweak, listen, tweak, listen, wash, rinse, repeat.

Just wanted to say thanks for that.

Going to have a mess later & will get back - but just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you going to all that trouble for me. Cheers!!

I have been experimenting lots - and reading & watching tut's for all sorts of different synths etc.. - I honestly know so much now about the 808/909 character.

I think though that no matter how much experimenting you do, its nice to know the individual strengths, quirks & tricks of the software that you are using - so once again - big respect for the inside perspective.

This has made my month. Will let you know how I get on B)

Thanks for this awesome 909 patch.
Tried to recreate a sound from drumazon with microtonic and this patch is far the best.

Thanks for sharing it!

greetings

i'm very happy with this mate, the tr kicks are spot on, cheers been looking for ages for something like this!