LinuxMusicians

Hi, everyone. After I watch the movie, Walt Disney's Oliver and Company, there is the bass instrument from the song called Streets of Gold and I must tell you, I love that bass. I wonder which synthesizers in Linux can accomplish that bass sound as in here:

Oliver and Company - Streets of Gold

I'm thinking I would use ZynAddSubFX using two square oscillators and setting the second oscillator one octave below. If you pay attention to the pitch bend, you will notice that the bass sounded very thick, so even if I add chorus, I don't want to modulate the sound, much less detuning it.

Another songs with bass that defined the 80s are Madonna - Cherish and Like a Prayer, Michael Jackson - Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel (loved the toms in the beginning, though), Black or White, Man in the Mirror, and Harold Faltermeyer - Axel F (love the sound of snare drum).

So yeah, I am really into 80s vibe. Consider my song:

Video Production Project - Computer Center

Does my song sound like 80s? The reason why I ask is because the bass instrument from mid to end sounded similar to Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror -- probably not authentically close, but I want to know your thoughts. It's comprised of sawtooth (ZASF: Power) and square (ZASF: Pulse) with the square wave detuned slightly and turned down a bit and a slight chorus effect added to it. It would be interesting if the entire song could be made way back during the 80s with Prophet 5s and Minimoogs, but I'm only interested in what oscillators/waveforms to start out with and what settings.

You might try some of the DX7 basses from Hexter, layered over some ePiano.
With some subtle Guitarix tube distortion. There is a 'best songs' competition using Dexed,
where your eighties chops might do well, nice prizes for the best few songs, if interested:

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=435624

BlackWinny sorted all the universe of DX7 sysex banks, no more duplicates!
The 9.8 meg .zip file is here: http://black.winny.free.fr/MAO/Dexed/
(the sysex files work in Hexter, too)

A Dexed topic: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=413885

Cheers

Okay, thanks. Are there different categories of instruments to choose from in Dexed? Bass, E.Piano, Strings, etc.? I've been hunting for patches all over the place. In other words, a thousand too many.

I would hope I don't have to have Roland D-50 for some excellent bass from the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson. Here's one example: The 40 Greatest Synth Sounds of All Time

If you click in Next until you get to #29, you can hear the bass that can be done in one particular software synthesizer, but there's no way this can be done with ZynAddSubFX as I've tried. To quote:

Recreating this sound proved challenging with one plug-in, but if there’s one Logic synth that’s up to the job, it’s the ES2 synth. For this sound we used a three oscillator mix, combining triangle and saw waves with medium resonance and low cutoff, some fine detuning between the oscillators for roundness and warmth, the additional sine oscillator for some added low end, a little distortion for some grit and a snappy envelope attack (on both the filter and amp envelope) for punch and snap.

Oh, and one thing: How do I select a waveform for a single oscillator? Or maybe two, such as a square and sawtooth?

GraysonPeddie wrote:Oh, and one thing: How do I select a waveform for a single oscillator? Or maybe two, such as a square and sawtooth?

You can't. The DX7 wasn't a synth where you took a waveform with many harmonics (sawtooth, rectangle) and filtered them away.

There are only sine-oscillators (called "operators") without harmonics. The harmonics are produced by modulating the frequency of one operator by another (including feedback loops).

I don't know if this will get you where you want, but phasex has 4 oscillators that you could set up this way. It's a quite powerful synth. Or if you really want a plugin you might try building the triple osc lv2 port that was started. https://github.com/pgiblock/lmms-lv2 I believe its working but not complete. Or perhaps rogue which also has 4 oscillators: https://github.com/timowest/rogue These are all subtractive synths unlike Hexter or Dexed.

For anyone looking for the synth bass patch, see my new thread:
viewtopic.php?f=48&t=17820&p=88533#p88533

To keep it short, I piped the song from YouTube into Audacity, cut out the mids and highs, and sculpted the sound until I get what I wanted. Not an exact 1:1 (one-to-one) replication, but it works.

Look for 80s Subsynth Bass 2.