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This patch has always blown me away. I’m not talking about the sqaushed drum patch, but the main riff patch. Sounds like a detuned saw witha short attack. But the pitch is so strange. I can’t tell if it’s a simple sequence with delay and an lfo to the pitch for the randomness? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a convincing cover version of Numbers. The drums and zap bass are standard patches but the crazy detuned sounding sequence… I just don’t really know where to start???
Try starting with this (I used Serum):
1. Oscillator: Saw wave. Double and detune it, or use a 2-voice Unison, and set the Detune amount as small as you can, maybe 1 cent, so that it flanges.
2. Amp Envelope: 0 Sustain, really fast Decay around 180ms.
3. Filter: Low Pass. I liked 24 dB slope for this. Enable key tracking since the part is played across about 2 octaves and we want a consistent level of brightness across our range. Turn the Cutoff pretty far down, to be modulated by…
4. Filter Envelope. 0 Sustain and also a quick Decay, even shorter than the Amp Envelope’s, like 70 ms. Also add a little Attack, around 30ms, which will create the fat horn-like filter shape this sound has. Turn up the amount until you get that horn-ish sound.
5. LFO 1: Route to pitch, very slow rate, triangle wave, small amount. This will create the wonky out-of-tune pitch effect as you play.
6. LFO 2: Route to the Filter Envelope amount, with a very slow rate, and a triangle wave. Now the sound will gradually get brighter/darker as it’s played, but each note will always end at the Cutoff, giving us that consistent horn-ish sound.
7. Delay: 1/8th note. A little wet. Decent amount of Feedback.
In regards to setp 6: Considering they were working with synths that are more limited than today’s plugins, they may not have had the ability to modulate the Filter Envelope Amount (I’m not sure what synth they used). But they could’ve done that manually by turning the knob up and down as it played.
Thanks for the replies! I’d already tried most of that “recipe,” but hadn’t tried modulating the filter envelope with an LFO??? Brilliant! I’ll give it a whirl and see how it goes.
I searched for Anthony Rother and found the Nummern track and it was the zap bass and distorted drum. Didn’t hear the crazy out of time sequence. I’ll keep searching:) Thanks again!
It’s really easy to set up on my ARP Odyssey, and it sounds bang on. Highly likely it was made with this synth. It’s just a plucky synth with a bit of random pitch modulation. This synth has an odd mod matrix. When you play around with it trying to make strange pitch modulations, many classic Kraftwerk sounds just leap out of it. This synth has given me many aha! moments. Every Kraftwerk fan should spend time with one. Korg do a great software version too.
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