Wondering if anyone has ever had to cover Straight Up by Paula Abdul, pretty cut and dry for most part, ie Brass, Strings, Flutish sound at end, but one sound in particular I’m having difficulty discerning, it hits throughout the song but is really pronounced at :58 and 1:48 in, considering the release of the songs was late 80’s I’m thinking maybe D-50 or even DX-7 or one of its cousins, any help would be great. Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El1kgCqD7Xk

Hi dvick,

If you’re talking about the synth fill with a quick triplet in it, to my ears, it sounds like a ‘hit’ sample of some kind and may not be a preset sound on any synth in particular.

As the notes get higher, it has the characteristics of a not so well sampled sound, which might be deliberate but likely just applicable to that technological era.

There was a fashion for a while amongst many gear manufacturers during the 80s and 90s in ‘hit kits’, where you had your orchestral hits and the more jazzy brass type ones. (samples of James Brown and the horny horns etc).

The sound playing, if it is the one you mean, has all the characteristics of a ‘hit’ but is obviously not an orchestral one.

It has much more in common with an out of range ‘tuned higher up’ distorted electric guitar.

It may even be a power chord because it certainly sounds like an interval, but tuned unrealistically high. (after recording the sample)

Here’s an example of what I mean, but it isn’t tuned as high.  You hear it right away in the intro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56O1XVmEwEU

You might want to try a distorted power chord sample and tune it up an octave or two, or look for a similar preset voice and play it high up. (and try the perfect 5th interval as well)

You will also need a very short sample or short release.

funny you should say that because that how I approached it last night when i was setting up my splits, sampled a dx7 bass patch with a slight of distortion into my Fantom and set it up to trigger as a sample, just played something in Dm, it’s passable but was just wondering if anyone had any luck with that song in particular. Thanks for the reply!

Don’t have my synth available, so can’t test the sound of that run (sounds like some kind of a phased clavi-type thing to me).

However, the line seems to be a run of parallel minor thirds in triplet (for what it’s worth):

D/F...E/G...F/Ab...F#/A...G/Bb...G#/B...A/C...C#/E...D/F

it’s unravelling, a distorted and phased clav maybe?

If you can make a clip at some point cmayhle I’d love to hear it.  I’m not near my gear now either but when I am, if I find a good distorted guitar, I’ll try to make a clip as well (and clav)

I’ve had go at this today and whilst I haven’t been too successful with a Clav or Guitar, the one thing I did learn was that the most lazy sampling job possible worked very well in matching the quality.  All you need to do is make one sample and map it over a whole octave.  Then make sure it is unrealistically out of range.

I didn’t really focus on the exact notes or what the exact interval is.

I started off with a distorted power chord cut short, it sounded ok but the attack was very different and wrong, then I tried a palm mute with distortion and that worked better with the attack but didn’t linger for quite long enough.

The clav was interesting in that it gave a nice rounded sound, but the timbre just felt wrong, however, there are so many types of clav sound to choose from and clavs can often sound like guitars so maybe a mixture of both would work.

All I can say for sure is again that the most lazy sampling job works nicely and distortion is critical, be it amp simulation or bitcrusher.

It is highly likely that one specific sound works and unless we actually know what it is or have that actual sample, we’ll never really get that close.

I’ve got no audio clips, because they sucked, to say the least!

I’ve decided to go the phased clav route on it, perfect? Naw, but I think it will do for this weekend, after that I may dork around with it some more, I also have a couple DX samples I created and saved in my Fantom, i figure between triggering them and using the clav sound I should be ok, thanks for helping me out, cheers!

dvick,

Try voice “PRE 2 H13 OverTheTop” in the Guitar, E.DST section.  Play below E3 on the keyboard and this should sound close to the sample used in the song.

Unfortunately, I don’t know the note pattern to play, you’ll have to figure it out.

Hope that helps. :)

thank you for the suggestion, I will take a look at it this evening when I get off work, thanks many for the response