Tainted Love sound

  • Has anyone run into, or programmed the sounds for SoftCell's Tainted Love? I'm looking for the famous "beep beep" sound that goes through out the song. Actually, I think there are two different sounds. Seems like an easy one for the Virus.


    Thanks for any pointers.

  • I am guessing you are referring to that "plonk - plonk" percussion that is present from the beginning of the song. If you are referring to the brassy "wham bam" (as in: "sometimes I feel I'd like to WHAM! BAM! run away") then just say so and I'll reply.
    Almost all natural-sounding synth percussion has similar characteristics and they are: (1) amplitude envelope: snappy attack (sometimes even the punch knob is set towards max) and a short decay to zero amplitude. (2) descending pitch. this can be done by either using an LFO in ENV mode to modulate oscillator pitch, or you can route the amplitude envelope you have already made to control pitch, using the matrix.
    The difference lies in how short the envelope is, what is the basic oscillator sound, how steeply the pitch descends, and if white noise is present. In our case: A relatively short envelope, a square oscillator moderately low-pass filtered to get rid of the square wave's buzzing quality, almost unnoticeable descend of the pitch and no white noise.
    You can use the same template to create a whole library of percussion sounds to your liking. You might find the oscillator phase init knob to be useful, coupled with the punch knob, if you want to control the click sound that is present when the oscillator starts responding to a note.
    The reason you might think that there are more than one sound involved could be an almost unnoticeable delay effect with short timing and a single, quiet repeat.
    Hope this helps.

  • I used to play this song in a band too... But before i had my Virus, It sounds like 2 sounds because its got harmonics in it, and sounds, almost like a percussive bell with Ring Mod. The Drum synth that soft cell used to produce that was a custom made instrument or modified.I remember a documentry a few years back about them. I got around the sound by using a drum machine loop for the normal 4/4 bit and sampled the Bell sound you are after, off the 12" mix of Tainted Love, its isolated near the end of the song so was able to capture it into my Triton Sampler, assign a note, trigger it in the loop, hey presto... not a clone but sounds impressive! 8)


    Im sure the Virus could recreate this however, but in the meantime till someone either posts a patch for it or shows you... heres another solution.


    Cheers..

  • If I was to recreate this sound, I would start with an oscillator with a square wave. Give it a percussive amp envelope with fast attackt and short/low decay/sustain/release. Then I would apply a low pass filter and add resonance and play with its amount and the cutoff frequency of the filter until it comes close.


    cheers
    MaF

    Mac Pro 2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (2009), 12 GB, OS X 10.6, Cubase 5.5.2, Virus TI, NI Komplete 6, Korg Legacy Collection, Arturia 10 Years Suite