my take on sandstorm

[kensuguro]

a colleague plays sandstorm at the workplace to the point of pissing people off so thought we could use some variation. So I rebuilt Sandstorm from scratch with more variation. I'm still working out the kinks in the mix, but you get the idea.

Only special note on instruments would be FL Drumaxx, which I used for the first time. It's supposed to be a "modeling" percussion synth from the FL studio guys. It's a strange little creature. It's got a noise portion, a osc portion that does the membrane sim, a sub osc, and couple of filters. The noise has minor controls like "mallet amplitude", "decay", but seems to be a regular noise source. The membrane osc adds in harmonics depending on the combination of "tension", "size", "material".. but most of the time it's sort of unpredictable and very sensitive so I found it difficult to aim for a sound I want by just feeling. It's more like tweak, tweak, and tweak 'till it's right. Very time consuming. The sub osc just does a "zip" or "snap" with a downward pitch mod. The filters are tough to tweak since there's no indicator of frequency. There's a mid and high.. you can't really turn them off, just dial them back at 0db level, which was a bit of a UI hassle. It does have modeled hihats and cymbals which sound pretty good. At $99, I think the hats and cymbals alone were worth it. Not sure if I'd use it for kicks and snares, esp for classic drum synth sounds since it's much easier to create those with a normal drum synth. Sadly, I didn't find any awesome sounding acoustic snares in the presets... (ironic)

[kensuguro]

slightly updated mix:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/kensuguro.com. ... -final.mp3

[hubird]

respect

[kensuguro]

to me for doing this for my pissed of colleagues? Or to Darude for making a career out of a distorted sync lead?

[hubird]

no, I just meant 'well done'

[hubird]

what makes the solo synth sound btw?

[kensuguro]

Thanks!

just the freebie Live subtractive synth. Any saw with 35% sync should make that sound. And a lot of overdrive.

[faxinadu]

like it, good build, better than the original

[kensuguro]

ahh, that's what I like to hear. Thanks.

[hubird]

I liked the good control of added harmonics, as they don't wrench (too much) the inherent style of the track.
I namely don't here any scale modulation in your chord moves, but I'm not good in this so I could be wrong.
Then it's even better done

Only critic: the original lead synth carves more than your's.
Yet the carving quality of it is what makes the old track still hot.
I bet you've tried everything with the freebee, hm, don't know what synth is used in the original track, Nordlead maybe?
It was 1996 then, if I'm right.

[kensuguro]

The lead. ya, I actually had to tone it down so it didn't take over the entire mix. The sync creates some edge, but most of the grittiness in the original seems to come from overdriving it afterwards, and with the sync having an edgy sound already, it's really easy for the overdrive to give it too much power in the high end. Works great in the original where the lead is the main element... which I agree is what gave it its driving character, but also causes too much fatigue, and pisses people off because of its repetitive nature.

You're right about the chords, nothing complicated here. Just a subtle notion of "could be like this with the concept of chords". Didn't want to completely make it anthemy and epic like since the original was all about drive.

[Music Manic]

Some tight sounds there. I noticed you added more space in the second mix.
Darude uses the reverb and delay to give it that really big club sound.

Well done!

[kensuguro]

Interestingly, I used a delay -> reverb for this one. Not that this tune particularly takes advantage of a spacious sound. I never tried reverb -> delay, sounds good for a space of galactic scale. hehe. thanks for listening.