Instruments in module music...

So after recently playing Mayan Mishap I was reminded about trying to figure out what sounds/instruments are commonly used in Unreal/Necros style music so I can translate it to using it in say, FLStudio.

Some examples of what I'm describing.

I can tell there's some obvious ones like the reverbed steel percussion, but what about the kinds of synth and such.

Woudn't it be easier to open the modules in an editor and look for yourself?

Maes said:

Woudn't it be easier to open the modules in an editor and look for yourself?

You could do that, but unless there's metadata describing exactly what kind of synth was used to generate the sample, it won't help. I believe BlackFish is asking how the samples themselves were made so that he can recreate the sound from scratch in his own works. I'm quite interested in the same thing, I'd like to make "Unreal-ish" music in more modern software.

Perhaps Yukub1t would know, given that she owns and uses various hardware synths and is already into this kind of stuff.

The few times I bothered with module music composition (looooong ago) I just got the samples from other modules. However, in a few cases, I made them myself. Some were recorded from a proper instrument (a Yamaha PSR-36 keyboard), some were created with a wave editor and a microphone, e.g. the sound of blowing into a bottle's neck.

Sodaholic said:

Perhaps Yukub1t would know, given that she owns and uses various hardware synths and is already into this kind of stuff.

Hah, you're right ;) Except I've sold most of my hardware synths, save for my old Roland JV-1010. But I still have some ideas!

Right off the bat, given the time period and popularity of them, I'd say the first place to look is Roland and Yamaha workstation synths.

In your first video, I'd say the main instruments are a rock organ, electric guitar that isn't passed through a distortion module of any sort, and... I wanna say those drums sound like they're from Yamaha or Alesis. The older romplers tended to have similar sounds. So maybe check out samples from Yamaha, Alesis, and Akai drum machines.

The lead in video number 1 seems to be used in a lot of Necros's music. To me it sounds like something you could generate with an FM synth, or possibly any subtractive synth that can do oscillator sync. Then just add a delay line on it and tweak from there.

Some of the other sounds in other videos, where they have that more pling-y, metallic sound, are probably FM synths as well, or something similar. You might be able to emulate them by starting with a Rhodes electronic piano sound and modulating the hell out of it.

But, if you want that sound at the beginning of the Basehead song, then you'll probably want a combination of FM synthesis (for the "pling" sound and xylophone-like body) combined with some filtered noise, and probably some effects.

I've wondered the same thing, actually, when it came to these sounds. The sampled sounds on romplers are usually complex and layered, where they have multiple components. That might be done in the rompler itself (I know my JV-1010 will sometimes layer 2-4 samples per patch, for example), or they may have done that when recording the original sample. It's hard to tell.

So yeah... I don't think you'll find a silver bullet with these. You'd either be recreating complex patches from romplers, or having to layer multiple sounds. But overall, look at FM synthesis (nice intro video here if you don't know how to work with it) to start out with, or just find samples from older workstations. Maybe like a Korg Triton, or even older things like the Korg M1 (which they even have a VST for). You could also look at the SQ8L VST, which is free, and might give you a good starting point.

If you want a huge library of drum samples... PM me.

yukib1t said:

So yeah... I don't think you'll find a silver bullet with these.

It's a head start though. Cheers. And PM sent.