Recreation of Tsunami - F.A.G. Filter

So…Today i’ve decided to recreate this superb track from GTA II for fun…

Well it was fun until i was trying to mimic bass! :panic:

Does anyone here knows how the fuck to design such bass??

I ran out of ideas, hours of tweeking 303 on top of moogs, complex filtering etc - nothing sounds like this :confused:

Rest was pretty easy

This is a subtle, but interesting modulation going on. And unusual compared to other stuff. Maybe that’s why you have problems nailing something similliar down.

I think this is 2 (or even more) different sounds layered, also rhythmically exclusive. Maybe even the action consists of sampled notes, allowing stuff like the reverse notes, and preprocessing.

Moog plus 303 wasn’t so far away I think. But I heard different action through. 303 - I’d say no, just some bread and butter synthie.

The beginning offers the basic elements, one “moog” style squarewave sub-pluck like bassy note, filter cutoff goes pretty low on the note after a slight snappy fast attack. And one highpass filtered note with more open filter (edit: lp filter on synth, but highpassed to not collide with the bassy note afterwards), but also pluck-like, but slower closing, square mixed with saw (maybe sq one oct lower) and a bit detuned probably, and a bit hissy noise and a distortion on it giving/exaggerating a “plastic” feel and the hiss/squelch. When both combine, they sound as one note, but they are also used for themselves/alternating, giving the whole bassline the nice jumpy feeling. I really think both note’s filters are sampled, static, so no realtime synth modulation action, could be wrong, though.

After sequencing the line the difficult part goes on. As I said, one hit is bassy, the other highpassed and modulated. The high part has some fast delay effect on it without feedback, effectively doubling notes. Then it seems like a filterbank was modulated kind of constantly, making this weird complex sound. Maybe the bank was even used on both base elements individually. Sometimes it seems like both are filtered together, i.e. parts where the subby hit seems distorted and highpassed with the high notes, maybe even filters opened a bit on the sub note - sometimes modulations seems to affect both. somtimes it sounds like the more open plucks are filtered through a vowel filter, but only the attacks. In one part it sounds like the vowel filter is set to a (random?) note on each attack of the highpassed synth note. I think you can mimic effects done pretty well with parametric/graphic equalisers, and automating the eq points, and maybe some simple digital highpass filter as a pre for certain parts. You can also mimic the vowel-like part with an eq, just set peaks right as if they were formants, use only 2 or 3 formants. Also you can make one bell-boost eq into the chain, and automate the frequency (flat response but a single tap with medium wide peak moved up and down), this is another effect that seems in there.

Later on there is of course a slowly up-down tweaked comb filter. And the parts with the reversed notes…or a part of the line played backwards…

Maybe I missed quite some action, or got wrong. I’d not take the exact modulation too serious when mimicking. It is complex, and maybe the artist just stacked some filter(bank)s or eqs on the bass parts, and automated/recorded their parameters without too much planning until he got some good takes to make the tune from.

OopsIFly

Hey man, thx for all of your input!

It seems that we have pretty much same rough judge-by-ear idea of how it should be constructed and modulated (though i never considered it to be fully sampled, even despite the fact of some parts using obvious reverses!)

And yeah, sure thing it’s complex and probably well thought, that’s Craig Conner for you, guy who wrote whole GTA, most of GTA II and some of GTA III radiostations on his own…

Include this 303 japanese madness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXoPbMepqyI

It’s still vodoo magic for me, neurofunk bass secrets was much easier.

Here i couldn’t even land notes right and everything still sounds like non-sense.

Sometimes it feels like i get higher part right, but it’s not obviously.

One thing that i know for sure - this guy is the biggest fan of Korg Mono/Poly

And even in this track, i’m 100% positive that synth part in the middle is this synth, so i’m starting to think maybe some parts of bass was also made by this Korg…

Still can’t get this as you call it “plastic” feeling right.

P.S. I think that this doubling note effect sounds more like short spring reverb, rather than delay, coz it bounces pretty funky and lively.

Enigmatic stuff