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Synthesising handclaps
1 Synthetic handclaps are a classic electronic percussion sound – Boss even made a box called the HC-2 dedicated to making them. Claps are dynamically quite complex, however, so to create them we need more than just the standard ADSR envelope. Luckily you can have just the freeware synth: Green Oak’s Crystal. Download it from greenoak.com and load an Unused patch.
2 Click the Voice 1 tab at the top to bring up its editor, then head to the Oscillator section in the lower left-hand corner. Use the Type menu to select Noise from the Synthesized waveforms category. Play a note or two. It should be clear why this waveform was selected. You may need to increase the level of Voice 1 using the control in the top left-hand corner.
3 The amplitude envelope is where most of the sound’s interest is found. Crystal has a large envelope display in the Amplitude section – there you’ll see a nine-stage envelope. Click the yellow point and drag it down and to the left. The parameter display (under the Poly button) should read 0.01, 0,00.
4 Drag the green point horizontally to the left until the parameter display reads 0.01, 1.00, then drag the aqua point down and to the left until the parameter display reads 0.03, 0.00. Audition the sound. It’s pretty obvious where we’re going with this! The multiple attack and decay stages create a sort of ‘multiattack’, not unlike that of a few hands clapping simultaneously.
5 Drag the rest of the points into place. The purple one should be at 0.03, 0.80, the next one (dark orange) at 0.05, 0.00, and the following point at 0.05, 1.00. The red point should be set to 0.10, 0.03, and the final dark blue point at 0.21, 0.00. Audition the patch. That’s pretty good – in fact, we could even save it and use it as is.
6 We think a little filtering wouldn’t go amiss, so we head for the filter section for Voice 1, just above the envelope we’ve been working on. There’s a Resonant Low-Pass filter selected by default, and that’s perfect for our needs. Set the Frequency to about 3050Hz and the Resonance to 0.320. Once again, you’ll likely have to increase the overall volume – and there you have it!