Bleeps and bloops

[Amøbe]

Okay this might be silly that I can't figure this out yet, but bleep sounds is really difficult for me to dial in.

Usually i try with sines or fm, but they tend to be either super thing or easily too harsh and bell like. What I'm looking for is sort of very simple sounds that sounds a bit like telephone dials or that sound radars always make in films. They are all over techno (gonna find some examples) and I like how they can contrast a harder groove (the reason I'm asking is that I usually use pads for contrasts, but they are sometimes contrasting too much).

Maybe I should try a subtractive approach - if that's the case, how would you go about it? Is squares good for bleeps, when they are filtered?

(I'm of course going to experiment a bit now, but if anybody has some pointers it would be much appreciated)

[illit_]

I was messing around in Operator yesterday doing bleeps n that. Use 2 carriers and adjust the phase of one by 50%. You can get in a wide ball park of tones pretty quickly without using filters.

Obviously if the waves are the same they cancel out, but Ableton has variations on the basic shapes, and adjusting the fundamental does some funky stuff. Add in some weird pitch bending + play with the time and tone parameter, I had a weird thing going yesterday from that

[Amøbe]

I was messing around in Operator yesterday doing bleeps n that. Use 2 carriers and adjust the phase of one by 50%. You can get in a wide ball park of tones pretty quickly without using filters.

Obviously if the waves are the same they cancel out, but Ableton has variations on the basic shapes, and adjusting the fundamental does some funky stuff. Add in some weird pitch bending + play with the time and tone parameter, I had a weird thing going yesterday from that

Ah cool

So just to make sure I got it right. They are not modulating each other, but are both producing an output right?

[illit_]

I was messing around in Operator yesterday doing bleeps n that. Use 2 carriers and adjust the phase of one by 50%. You can get in a wide ball park of tones pretty quickly without using filters.

Obviously if the waves are the same they cancel out, but Ableton has variations on the basic shapes, and adjusting the fundamental does some funky stuff. Add in some weird pitch bending + play with the time and tone parameter, I had a weird thing going yesterday from that

Ah cool

So just to make sure I got it right. They are not modulating each other, but are both producing an output right?

Yeh that's it. It's changing the wave shape using the phase inversion. If you have the melda oscilloscope you can see what's happening to the shape

[Amøbe]

I was messing around in Operator yesterday doing bleeps n that. Use 2 carriers and adjust the phase of one by 50%. You can get in a wide ball park of tones pretty quickly without using filters.

Obviously if the waves are the same they cancel out, but Ableton has variations on the basic shapes, and adjusting the fundamental does some funky stuff. Add in some weird pitch bending + play with the time and tone parameter, I had a weird thing going yesterday from that

Ah cool

So just to make sure I got it right. They are not modulating each other, but are both producing an output right?

Yeh that's it. It's changing the wave shape using the phase inversion. If you have the melda oscilloscope you can see what's happening to the shape

New stuff to play with - never went down that route! Thanks man <3

[over9000]

the gear lusty answer:
Moog DFAM (or eurorack but thats another topic)
instant bleep madness, i had the same problems as you before i got it

but now i think it comes down alot to pitch and velocity modulation, something which the dfam also does in a excellent way.
I think triangle waves are amazing for bleeps, maybe with a bit of square wave from another osc mixed in.
then play around with the pitch envelope.
to get a nice techno pattern a good delay (echoboy eg) is essential

What i dident find out in the box yet is how to get a synth to be triggered by frequency and not by notes
eg you want something between f and f# and so on
in operator you can do something like it with the fixed frequency for the single operators, but its still fm and not the raw simple bleep tone that you seem to search

this is something thats vital for the magic of the dfam, you dont have notes in the sequence you have a frequency knob for each step, so your never going to hit a note 100%
That way you will do the tuning by ear and it will be coherent but more or less dissonant, which is a main element of bleep techno imo

[Amøbe]

the gear lusty answer:
Moog DFAM (or eurorack but thats another topic)
instant bleep madness, i had the same problems as you before i got it

but now i think it comes down alot to pitch and velocity modulation, something which the dfam also does in a excellent way.
I think triangle waves are amazing for bleeps, maybe with a bit of square wave from another osc mixed in.
then play around with the pitch envelope.
to get a nice techno pattern a good delay (echoboy eg) is essential

What i dident find out in the box yet is how to get a synth to be triggered by frequency and not by notes
eg you want something between f and f# and so on
in operator you can do something like it with the fixed frequency for the single operators, but its still fm and not the raw simple bleep tone that you seem to search

this is something thats vital for the magic of the dfam, you dont have notes in the sequence you have a frequency knob for each step, so your never going to hit a note 100%
That way you will do the tuning by ear and it will be coherent but more or less dissonant, which is a main element of bleep techno imo

that latter part is really interesting - you can do that on Zebra (which I have) without going into FM territory.

Subsekt is the gift that keeps on giving some seriously great advice in this thread!

[buffered]

this is something thats vital for the magic of the dfam, you dont have notes in the sequence you have a frequency knob for each step, so your never going to hit a note 100%
That way you will do the tuning by ear and it will be coherent but more or less dissonant, which is a main element of bleep techno imo

if you use ableton live, just use max4live to do this.
hook a random~ to the frequency input of a cycle~. Multiply the range of the random to whatever number you want and trigger it.
Basically a s&h in modular. You can also just send the cycle~ numbers which are not note values.
It is very simple.
Also use ringmod/ a ringmod. a sine/triangle into a ringmod(subtle) into a clean reverb gets good results. Keep it simple.

[over9000]

this is something thats vital for the magic of the dfam, you dont have notes in the sequence you have a frequency knob for each step, so your never going to hit a note 100%
That way you will do the tuning by ear and it will be coherent but more or less dissonant, which is a main element of bleep techno imo

if you use ableton live, just use max4live to do this.
hook a random~ to the frequency input of a cycle~. Multiply the range of the random to whatever number you want and trigger it.
Basically a s&h in modular. You can also just send the cycle~ numbers which are not note values.
It is very simple.
Also use ringmod/ a ringmod. a sine/triangle into a ringmod(subtle) into a clean reverb gets good results. Keep it simple.

Ok interesting, but i dont fully understand as i never used max4live, just some preset max devices..
How can you tune the values of different steps to each other when its all triggered by random s&h?

[orchard]

I’ve not watched the video throughout but as it says, recreating the dfam in ableton.
Whether this will give the results mentioned above using m4l, I don’t know but thought it might be of interest.
youtu.be/3U54iMbu1M4

[subvers^v]

Cool, that sounds like it'd be fun to try out ..

[borg]

I’ve not watched the video throughout but as it says, recreating the dfam in ableton.
...

thanks! nice find! couple of hours wasted in a good way.
was gonna say Operator to the original question as well. it's always been my goto synth, but recently bought FM8 for a tenner, and it's got some serious tricks up its sleeve.

[ozias_leduc]

this is something thats vital for the magic of the dfam, you dont have notes in the sequence you have a frequency knob for each step, so your never going to hit a note 100%
That way you will do the tuning by ear and it will be coherent but more or less dissonant, which is a main element of bleep techno imo

if you use ableton live, just use max4live to do this.
hook a random~ to the frequency input of a cycle~. Multiply the range of the random to whatever number you want and trigger it.
Basically a s&h in modular. You can also just send the cycle~ numbers which are not note values.
It is very simple.
Also use ringmod/ a ringmod. a sine/triangle into a ringmod(subtle) into a clean reverb gets good results. Keep it simple.

Ok interesting, but i dont fully understand as i never used max4live, just some preset max devices..
How can you tune the values of different steps to each other when its all triggered by random s&h?

I'll be honest I don't understand the value of s+h in this particular example. (Do you want random frequencies?)

But regardless, you can do anything in Max. You could very easily tune each step differently. And you can use MIDI note numbers, or just a Hz value

[Amøbe]

I’ve not watched the video throughout but as it says, recreating the dfam in ableton.
...

thanks! nice find! couple of hours wasted in a good way.
was gonna say Operator to the original question as well. it's always been my goto synth, but recently bought FM8 for a tenner, and it's got some serious tricks up its sleeve.

Oh yeah - bought that a while back, too (didn't have WiFi, so I forgot about that license again, and just downloaded it) what an absolute beast!!