Tipper style sound design for Virus TI/TI2

    Tipper is known for using a Virus TI in his production arsenal and I was wondering if anyone here has ever tried creating any patches similar to the types of sounds he can make. I'm particularly interested in the throaty vocal formant style stuff he makes where he makes it sound like the synth is almost talking.


    I've made some pretty cool sounding stuff using a single hypersaw, no other oscillator, combined with the vowel filter, but it doesn't compare to how phat and in your face he makes it sound.

    The first question is to ask whether Tipper does post processing on the Virus sounds or not.


    That said, a good start for formant like sounds is to use the Grain or Formant Oscillators and modulate the Wavetable Index, F-Shift and F-Spread parameters, in addition to working with LP filter and resonance modulation and the more aggressive distortion types. Combining that with the phaser or and filter bank can get you some wild result.

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+

    Danke 1

    Wild is nice and easily achievable with such a marvelous synth like the Virus, but getting that real phat vocalish sound out of it is not something I've been able to do yet. Or with any other synth for that matter. He's got his secret sauce down to a science.


    Here's a good example of what I'm talking about:


    Tiny Face, by Tipper
    from the album Wobble Factor
    tipper.bandcamp.com


    It sounds like a saw oscillator with some kind of formant filter.

    That's not bad, and pretty close. He is modulating the vowel more but you're definitely on the right track with this.


    My problem with the vowel filter is it always seems to muddy up the sound too much. It's hard to get it to still have that grindy gritty texture when using the vowel filter but without the vowel filter you can't get the real vocal formant sound. There's some magical balance to getting it to sound as good as he can.

    Here's a bank with a couple of patches. First is with the concept by Lioio pulse wave with vowel filter. Second is only Grain Complex oscillator. Third is Grain Complex with vowel filter.


    I guess it takes some deeper understanding of how all the elements interact to achieve the Tipper level of sound design.

    Dateien

    Tipper Sounds.mid.zip 2,17 kB – 3 Downloads

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+

    Zitat von ozon

    Here's a bank with a couple of patches. First is with the concept by Lioio pulse wave with vowel filter. Second is only Grain Complex oscillator. Third is Grain Complex with vowel filter.


    I guess it takes some deeper understanding of how all the elements interact to achieve the Tipper level of sound design.

    Thanks

    Good idea for use Shape...


    Thanks for transfert média to .zip and not .mp3 or .jpg LOL

    Me my patch here:

    Zitat von ozon

    Here's a bank with a couple of patches. First is with the concept by Lioio pulse wave with vowel filter. Second is only Grain Complex oscillator. Third is Grain Complex with vowel filter.


    I guess it takes some deeper understanding of how all the elements interact to achieve the Tipper level of sound design.

    Hey thanks that is really awesome of you. I will play around with these later, looking forward to it!

    Zitat von Lioio

    Yes

    And now, more OOOH*


    * Changez l'extension " .jpg " (ici) avec ".mp3 "

    This is the same "problem" I have with it. Once you get more vowel filter effect it starts to sound drowned out. Tipper is able to make it sound super vowel filtered but also crispy and thick and not muddy.


    Now for the hard part: How to get the verse lead sound. Every note is a different vowel, like there's keytracking involved. There's way more to the sound though. Obviously some kind of filter envelope but the sound almost splatters and squelches.

    Zitat von ozon

    a good start for formant like sounds is to use the Grain or Formant Oscillators and modulate the Wavetable Index, F-Shift and F-Spread parameters, in addition to working with LP filter and resonance modulation and the more aggressive distortion types. Combining that with the phaser or and filter bank can get you some wild result.

    Agreed! :)


    Vember, try the F-Shift param in the Complex Grain mode with a square wave such as can be found at the beginning of wavetable Sqr Series. Osc sync sweep functions can take you into this territory, too.

    Wavetables heavy on formant pitch sweeps are:

    HarmncSweep

    Glass Sweep

    Opposition

    Fourmant

    Formantera

    Morfants

    Adenoids


    I love formant synthesis which is what started my interest in synths to begin with! :)

    Cheers!




    Presented by:

    Rapturenaut Digital Christian Studio

    Houston, Texas

    "glorifying God through electronic music"

    Zitat von vember

    This is the same "problem" I have with it. Once you get more vowel filter effect it starts to sound drowned out. Tipper is able to make it sound super vowel filtered but also crispy and thick and not muddy.


    Now for the hard part: How to get the verse lead sound. Every note is a different vowel, like there's keytracking involved. There's way more to the sound though. Obviously some kind of filter envelope but the sound almost splatters and squelches.


    I did some more trials, and came up with more approaches, TPPR 06 using only OSC 1 with a pulse and the classic Virus filters as LP and HP in series. To do vocal like sounds, you have to understand how the human voice works. The sound generator is actually just a repeated noise burst by the vocal chords, which are shaped by the resonances of the throat and head. It is quite similar to the Karplus String synthesis concept where an exciter (short noise burst) is run into a resonator (filter bank) and is then delayed and fed back to the input. The formants of the human voice mostly have two prominent spikes, which move in divergent directions to form the vowels.


    This can be approached by a very narrow pulse wave, and two or more resonant filters for which the frequency changes in opposite directions. The Vowel Filter is one way to achieve this quite fast, but it can also be done with other types of filters, like a combination of HP and LP.


    Regarding the challenge to have e different sound for each note: Use LFO 1 or 2 in Sample and Hold mode with Envelope Mode on and quite a fast Rate to ensure a different value with each key on. Modulate the filter frequency with that LFO. You get a different vowel for each note.



    BTW, all of my patches use the EQ quite heavily to make the sound brighter and more aggressive and counter act the dulling of the applied filters.


    Additional to that, the Virus TI has a Vocoder. You could use a plain Square / Pulse and run it through the vocoder, which is fed by a vocal. That would probably provide the most talking like result.


    New version of lib attached.

    Dateien

    Tipper Sounds.mid.zip 2,42 kB – 6 Downloads

    Bass Player and Synthesist.
    Virus TI2 Darkstar | Virus TI2 Desktop | Sub 37 | Voyager RME | Machinedrum | Analog Four | Digitone | MPC Live | NI Maschine+
    Mac OS 13.5.1 (Ventura) | Cubase Pro 11.0 | Ableton Live 9.6 | Logic 10.4 | MainStage 3.4 | NI Komplete Ultimate 13 | RME Fireface UFX+

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von ozon ()

    Gefällt mir 2

    Well done Ozon.
    You give words to what “I hear”. I love the synthesis. Your approach to this type of sound opens up avenues for me. Thanks for sharing the file. So your vision is interesting.
    In my turn, attached 2 patches (one for ooooééééé) and the other for "ééééooooo" = because one time we go from positive to negative vs the other we go from negative to positive (difficult to group on one same patch this toggle).
    Thanks to your examples, I will give my patch the directive to use the "Saw/Pulse" as you dared. with modulation on the PW :)
    But I have additional data (thanks to this waveform) to use….
    With our 2 patches I think it will be a good school…



    EDIT:

    exemple05 = OSC "sawtooth" / Ring Modulation full/ Pan Spread

    Zitat von ozon

    This can be approached by a very narrow pulse wave, and two or more resonant filters for which the frequency changes in opposite directions. The Vowel Filter is one way to achieve this quite fast, but it can also be done with other types of filters

    This was explained really well and that's exactly how I've done it in the past using LPF and HPF together. Different kind of sound but still cool.


    Your patches are awesome especially #4. It sounds almost just like it if you play it while playing the verse riff. I think he must be layering synths in the mix to make it sound as huge as he does. It's probably not a sound that can be done with one single patch. There's some kind of sub layer that thickens it up on top of whatever wizardry of post processing and mastering that's going on.


    And Lioio pretty much nailed the intro sound with that patch too nice work.


    I'll play around with those wavetables you suggested also GESchwalm thanks.


    I've attached a patch I made the other night before I made this thread. It's more "Tipper inspired" than directly trying to recreate the sound as I always seem to veer off coarse in my attempts. If I come up with anything in further experiments worthy of this thread I will post them.