Percussive sounds with punch

[Polarflux]

Up front, this post could either be in modular synth general discussion or here in synthesis techniques. Either way, here goes…

I’m looking for some insight on getting the most out of the Patching Panda Hatz module I have vis a vie techniques classically used to get more presence and drive from drum machines like the 909, which is a sound I’d like to be in the neighborhood of? One of the sounds I want is that closed hat that sounds like a marble being bounced on glass; super fast transient sharp ‘tick’ sound that cuts through everything. Ableton has a version of this sound in the their basic 909 kit. What goes into this? Compression, super short decay reverb and delay, overdrive and transient shaping?

[meska]

Sound exemple will realy help, we all have ours personal language for describe sound .
but you'r hint a true :compressor i first place for shapping : compressor (after overdrive modt of the time if you whant short click)

[Kattefjaes]

Yes, you have to post a little example from Ableton, after that description

[Polarflux]

Will do when i return home in a few days.

[dragulasbruder]

Dirty way: try programming your pattern with very short decay times and then smash it into something that flattens the tip of the transient, like a hot mixer channel.

Clean way: if you have CV control over decay times, maybe try patching a very short envelope to the decay CV in, so that the decay time becomes longer at the time of the initial transient, and then the decay gets faster as the applied envelope drops to 0V.

Both approaches will have the effect of lengthening the time that the sound is at its loudest.

[Ebolatone]

It's fun to try having 1 to 10ms of "on" time before decay kicks in. DC-capable clipping circuits can cut off the top of an envelope to produce this.

[Polarflux]

I see, just lengthening the transient increases the apparent loudness then. I’ve been roughing up the the Hatz outputs through a CP3 mixer and the compressing. Interesting with the envelope trick, grocked and looking forward to trying.

[TemplarK]

Another easy workaround is to depending on the module is to just play only the longer hat and then run it all simply into a gate sequencer that controls a VCA the pattern is running through then basically just adjust the gates to be super short when you want that shorter drum sound, its probably a bit flakily method that might possibly work better with a noise hat however i don't see it not working with samples or a drum machine either.

edit - I did look at the patching panda module actually you can get what you desire I would think by running a gate sequencer into the hold input which I "assume" is just VCA using the method i describe above.

Run into a compressor like mentioned above or a transient shaper but honestly one can usually make the sound better in modular than settling for a subpar sound thats just compressed without using samples.

[Polarflux]

Here is an example of the sort of hat sound I'm thinking of.

Hats.mp3

(78.57 KiB) Downloaded 2 times

This sample is not quite as sharp as what I was thinking, but it is close. The sample has quite a punchy sound to me. The example I was going to post was the Ableton 909 closed hat sample, but this is pretty close enough to what I have in mind. Again, perhaps maybe it is the circuit in the Hatz module that will not allow me to quite get what I am after, but the technique to dial in the energy and drive of percussive samples is valuable for me to know.

[dragulasbruder]

I see, just lengthening the transient increases the apparent loudness then.

Yes, because our hearing is basically logarithmic. We perceive stuff way more like RMS than like peak. That's part of why the CP3 makes non-rectangular waveforms sound so fat.