Lo-fi percussion & a hypnotic bassline
In his hit „All I Want”, the Berlin techno DJ and producer Alexander Ridha impressively proves that the retro vibe and modern club sound do not have to be mutually exclusive: The minimal track lets driving 808 beats meet catchy vocal phrases and vocal samples. The 80s vibe is provided by a powerful bass line and a tonal percussion sequence that brings back memories of Trio’s „Da Da Da“.
Bass
The musical element with the greatest recognition value from „All I Want“is the minimal bassline. We create the right sound with u-he Repro-1. Here, too, we start with the init patch. The sawtooth waveforms that we already selected for the oscillators are a good basis. Tune the second oscillator one octave higher and detune the two oscillators slightly in opposite directions using the respective frequency controls for a floating sound. For the characteristic snapping sound, the filter and filter envelope parameters must be adjusted as shown. Also adjust the volume envelope as shown in the picture. On the tweaks page, select the driven filter mode, which gives the bass a subtle saturation. Finally, we refine the sound with a pinch of plate reverb.
Percussion sound
While Trio used the inexpensive portable synthesizer Casio VL-1 for the distinctive percussion sound in 1981, Boys Noize relies on a more modern variant. So you can also create very similar sounds with virtual-analog synthesizers. We use the u-he Tyrell N6 plug-in [1] for this. The init preset is a good way to start. Set the playback mode to mono. An oscillator with the square wave is sufficient for the desired clicking percussion sound. The VCA envelope is to be set percussive, with minimal attack and sustain values and short decay and release times. We increase glide to 4.00 for a subtle portamento effect. A plate reverb effect such as IK Multimedia CSR Plate Reverb [2] provides the desired spatiality. The percussion sound plays a one-bar eighth note sequence on the notes G # and D # over four octaves.