SBTRKT/Mount Kimbie/James Blake Synth Sound..

[fateallatease]

First let me tell you how glorious this day is..I've been into this style of music for so long and just learned today that their is a name for the stuff. I've already found so upwards of 20 different artists that are incredible, my favorite musical style for sure. Normally find new tunes every day, but today I found that there's a genre of my favorite style of music..and even better there is a production forum for it as well!!

Back to the point, I love the squarish (i think) sounding synths these guys use for prolonged chords/harmony, but have never had much luck reproducing it. Anyone care to offer me some advice?

Outro from 2:20 on..


Don't mind the video, only studio copy i could find..but from 1:10 on


Also, short little percussive blips used for leads by all of these guys such as found here...

Comes in around 0:15 and gets louder


P.S. Excuse me for the old songs, just branching out with the search function on here now..Synkro and phaelon =

[Stealth Elf]

The square sounding synths are literally just a couple of slightly detuned square waves (Blake one actually sounds more like a saw + square), maybe with a bit of saturation too. Short attack and release. Dead simple to make the patch, fucking IMPOSSIBLE to make it sound as good as they do though because the real flavour they produce comes from the chord changes rather than the sound design.

As for the blips, fuck knows. Could be sine waves arpeggiated with short on ever value of envelope ADSR and harmonics added + little bit of distortion.

[rosserik]

The square sounding synths are literally just a couple of slightly detuned square waves (Blake one actually sounds more like a saw + square), maybe with a bit of saturation too. Short attack and release. Dead simple to make the patch, fucking IMPOSSIBLE to make it sound as good as they do though because the real flavour they produce comes from the chord changes rather than the sound design.

As for the blips, fuck knows. Could be sine waves arpeggiated with short on ever value of envelope ADSR and harmonics added + little bit of distortion.

Blake has a prophet '08 keyboard for that sound, or at least he always uses one live, probably lends to having its own tone a little but you're definitely right the chords make it, no point spending hours on an amazing sound if you're going to feed it shit

[TheSoundCenter]

A bit late on this, but it also might do well to throw in a noise oscillator on those square wave synths. Aside from sound design, I've also heard some nice and subtle side-chain compression (with the drums) on those synths in a few of James Blake's tracks, so you might want to give that a go as well. I also agree that you need some nice chords for this synth! It has a unique purpose, almost like a pad, but much more in the forefront. Not at all impossible to make it sound good as a previous post said, you've just got to have a really nice harmony going on. . . I think I'm going to go work on this and incorporate it in a track (as I've been meaning to do anyhow. I love all these producers! ), and fill you in on the discoveries.

[Kolendo]

I've managed to replicate a variety of synths used by SBTRKT by messing around with bells and brass instrument sounds.
Particularly a vibraphone and horns.
Hope this helps a little.

[semmei51]

In interview on Japanese magazine, James mentioned the synths he used in "James Blake" album are NI massive and Arturia CS80 v2. He only used softsynths to make those sounds of all songs there(!!!). He also mentioned about heavy use of izotope ozone too..

[Casset]

Maybe someone could post a Massive patch or so? I don't feel like getting close at all. I'll post mine when I get to my computer.

[arXter]

Blake has a prophet '08 keyboard for that sound, or at least he always uses one live, probably lends to having its own tone a little but you're definitely right the chords make it, no point spending hours on an amazing sound if you're going to feed it shit

The Prophet 'brass' tone is such a beautiful sound. I'm not particularly a Radiohead fan but the first time I came across it was in Everything from their 2000 album Kid A:



Can be considered an influence on (or at least an ancestor of) the 'James Blake sound.'

[slowpokecity]

in regards to that Prophet keyboard, i love how the sounds these synths make have become more popular than the sounds they were trying to recreate in the first place! i think ever since i watched Blade Runner i've been in love with crappy 80s keyboard "brass" and "strings" haha.


gonna have a go at trying to make this now.

but like someone mentioned a few posts above, it's in the sound rather than the sound design. keep in mind a lot of these producers are influenced by Soul and R&B which is where the "emotion" comes from.