Waldorf Edition - Manual (Page 30)

Waldorf Edition
User Manual 30 Waldorf
harmonics. How Roland did it is something only they and maybe a handful of
people know. If you happen to be one of these people, let us know!
If you want a sound of this type from the Attack, use the representative sound from
the library instead of trying to simulate it on your own. Look at the parameters and
try to find out why it sounds quite close. A couple of hints: Crack is used with a very
high frequency setting doing amplitude modulation on the oscillators’ summed si-
gnal, and Drive is used to add further harmonics by distorting the signal.
TR-909 Side Stick
The TR-909 Side Stick is made of 3 resonating band pass filters that are triggered by
a short impulse. Behind the band pass filter cluster there is a distortion unit, followed
by a VCA with an envelope and a high pass filter.
Its specific sound comes from the cutoff frequencies, the resonance, and the volumes
of the trigger impulses of the three band passes. These settings are:
* 500Hz, 20ms decay, full volume
* 222Hz, 45ms decay, half volume
* 1000Hz, 5ms decay, full volume
Now, the Attack doesn't have three band passes plus a high pass filter, but there's a
way to simulate the architecture with the Attack.
What produces a resonating band pass filter? Nothing more than a sine wave. So,
why not just use two oscillators producing two sine waves, plus a high pass filter that
uses the lowest frequency setting as the third sine wave generator. Thus the filter will
include both oscillator signals and add its own resonance to the sum.
The high pass filter is therefore set to 222Hz, with a resonance of 100%. Oscillator 1
produces the 500Hz sine wave, while Oscillator 2 is set to a 1000Hz sine wave, but
is controlled by a very short Envelope 1 set to around 75% to produce the 5ms si-
gnal. The fact that oscillator 1 plays longer than 20ms can be ignored, because it's
not that noticable. Don't add it with full volume, however; set it only to a level of
around 25%. This comes into play because there is an additional high pass filter on
the original TR-909 Side Stick that dampens lower frequencies.
Finally, add a good amount of Drive (around 30dB) to the signal, set Envelope 2 De-
cay to 45ms, and you will have the sharp attack of the original sound.
TR-909 Hand Claps
TR-909 hand claps are made using the same signal routing as in the original TR-808.
However, due to the differing parts and internal parameter settings that were used in
the TR-909, the TR-909's hand clap sounded different. Essentially, the "Crack" (or as
Roland called it "Sawtooth Envelope") was clearer, and the reverb effect was longer.
Hi-hats
For hi-hats, we don't use references to classic drum machines, although there is a
quite good emulation in the TR-808 set included in the sound library. Hi-hats can be
made in various ways: