section 16: tips for designing effects sounds
16.1 create a better storm sound:
Colin wrote:
• Turn on White noise only, set its level to 50.
• Turn on filter feedback.
• Bring up Filter 1's LPF set its level at 25
• Turn its resonance to maximum.
• Filter cutoff at 1.5 (khtz)
• You should hear a howling noise :)
• Now slowly increase the level of LPF at PostFilter mixer. At 30-35 it should sound like a winter
snow storm. AT around 45-50, it kinda sounds like a camera mic in a snow storm:)
• Leave it at 50, and then slowly back down the Noise level to about 40-45, the sound should start
to crackle a bit.
• Set the cutoff to 11 or higher. And then turn noise/feedback to max.
• Adjust the filter cutoff to taste. Modulating these parameters can be cool. Kinda sounds like an
old dusty vinyl crackle with lots of woosh :)
• You might want to set the playing mode to mono, as each voice's filter will sound rather different.
• Interestingly, if you bring up the 24db filter, the effect is lost. The crackle only happens with the
12db LPF. Don't ask me why :)
• Another variation is to turn on Ext In FM in Filter1's page. Less whoosh, more static. Great vinyl
or old radio type crackle!
• Playing around with it some more, you get louder pops by mixing in some BPF at level 10.
Higher levels bring in larger thumps. Adjust the cutoff freq to taste. Kind also sounds like a
crackling campfire when I think about it :)
And here’ s a tip from Chad, the author of this document:
The Andromeda is one of the few synthesizers that allows you to feed a sine wave oscillator
past the filters via the post-mix. A great technique for storms is to add a “ rumble” using this
method.
To do this, take an oscillator that you are not using (storm patches typically have the levels
of the VCOs set to 0, and the noise set to either white or pink). Set the VCO really low, say
around –48 .
Now, modulate the pitch of this with an LFO, by clicking on a free modulation key. A good
modulation amount is around 5. The LFO that you select should be set to the “ Noise” shape
or “ Random” shape. I found that Noise works better for this purpose, it’ s a little more
organized. If you have two oscillators free, you can repeat this step with the second
oscillator, only with a different speed of noise. This will get you a better effect.