Originally Posted by Rat Souffle
Great, Danny! I did already know most of this, but what I was thinking about was the way that Peter Howell did it to begin with (a lot more time consuming) which was to record the main bassline (constantly 1/4 bass notes and the top part) and then flip the tape over so it played backwards, and then add in the bending notes, but playing them backwards (which I tried yesterday and failed miserably; getting the timing right when you're listening to something backwards is harder than it sounds!) which gives a smoother feel. Then all that you need to do to complete the 'rhythm' track is to (keeping the bassline going backwards) add some soft white noise bursts in some parts(quite sharp attack, 350ms release), mix them in so that they can only be heard slightly, and then flip the tape the other way round again.
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I know what you're getting at here. What Peter Howell did to the final recorded bassline tape is reverse it and then add some reverb, then reverse it again to get that subtle reverse reverb pre-echo effect. There must be some white noise on the bassline sound itself, which is amplified into a "wisp" like sound with the reverse reverb, and I think that's what you're hearing. (Amazingly, on the original full-length recording, it actually serves as quite a good substitute for the original Derbyshire hissing!)
Originally Posted by Rat Souffle
The part that I find the hardest is actually recreating the raw bassline sound. I have had the CS-80v for a few months now(I didn't buy it, way to expensive; if I had enough money to buy a synth plugin for over £100 then I'd buy a real CS-80, only about £7000-£8000 you know), but I find it quite hard to program (harder than a real DX-7, which was incredibly tedious), mainly because it is so complex. To be honest, I'm more used to the layout of a Mini Moog, glide, mono and tuning on one side, oscillators and waveforms in the middle, and ADSR and filter on the right.
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Tell me about it. I've been living with the CS-80V for over a year now and originally I was crap at it too (for quite a long time, actually). Now, though, I was able to produce both the bassline and second layer sounds you heard above in just a few hours. It's just something you have to live and work with... it really does get easier with time! Since I'm nice though, I'll give you some advice to get you started on a generic Howell bassline sound. This was the very beginning point of my bassline creation. (You
will have to work with it a lot from here, but it's as good a starting point as any.)
- Open up the Square wave preset (under Templates > Waveform I believe).
- On the CS-80V internal preset buttons (the two rows of 1-12 above the keyboard), select 10 on the top row and 5 on the bottom row.
- Adjust the Mix slider to the right of the preset buttons (the one that controls the oscillator mix) to around 0, or halfway.
Originally Posted by Rat Souffle
Also, on FL Studio (read as Fruityloops) my CS-80v gets all mucked up and all of the buttons go out of alignment, so when you click on one, it moves the one slightly above it.
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This is a known problem with the latest versions of every Arturia synth (CS-80V and Minimoog V I know for sure) in FL Studio. There is a fix, but it sucks. It's called "go back to CS-80V v1.5." I wouldn't recommend that, though... v1.6 is a significant step up from v1.5.
What I'd recommend instead is getting Sony ACID Pro 6.0. I used FL Studio myself for a very long time, but I simply outgrew it after a while. I have a feeling you might be ready to do the same (or nearly ready). This bug here was what made me finally stop using FL Studio altogether. I'd say it's worth it, if you're ready to move up a bit in terms of music creation. Good luck with it, if you decide to do it. (I don't know if you've heard my Fool's Gold mix, but that was made using ACID.)
Let me know if you need any more help with any of this! You know I'm more than happy to do it!
