What's new

Crazy, distorted, heavy synths (geez...)

If I had to guess, some of it seems to come from a 6 string bass with lowered tuning and ran it through distortion and a bunch of fx. Plus the huge hits w tails.
Also maybe mixed w some sort of low brass.
But it’s a lot going on the low and high end so it masks it. The very low distorted stuff is not very clear pitch wise but it does seem to be doing what a lot of trailer sound design does. And with al the metal screech and weird distorted flute it gets a very cool tense texture going.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KEM
In terms of how to get that timbre of distortion Trash 2 or Saturn will both get you there... Trash 2 ftw IMO. It's can turn anything into utter brutality. (I REALLY wish Izotope would do a trash 3 !!!! 🙏 :emoji_fingers_crossed:)
 
In terms of how to get that timbre of distortion Trash 2 or Saturn will both get you there... Trash 2 ftw IMO. It's can turn anything into utter brutality. (I REALLY wish Izotope would do a trash 3 !!!! 🙏 :emoji_fingers_crossed:)

Been wanting to get both for awhile now, all I have as far as heavy distortion goes right now is Decapitator, which is great, but I’d like something with more control, and both Trash and Saturn have that.
 
Been wanting to get both for awhile now, all I have as far as heavy distortion goes right now is Decapitator, which is great, but I’d like something with more control, and both Trash and Saturn have that.
Decapitator's definitely nasty but Trash is a lot more extreme... You can completely obliterate things, get all kinds of crazy unpredictable glitchy artifacts, even do guitar cabs... Prefer Trash 2 to Saturn by a mile but YMMV of course... Whenever you're ready to pick one up you should demo them side by side and see which you prefer...
 
  • Like
Reactions: KEM
I've been chasing similar sounds for a bit, haven't gotten there yet but I can tell you that distortion alone won't get you there. The sound source itself is the key.

Besides the heavily distorted aleatoric string stuff and distorted low brass, seems like a lot of the synth stuff is coming from some pretty out there Eurorack modules. I've been watching what this guy is doing cause I'd like to pick me up some wacky ass modules that do things that nothing else can do.

 
  • Like
Reactions: KEM
I've been chasing similar sounds for a bit, haven't gotten there yet but I can tell you that distortion alone won't get you there. The sound source itself is the key.

Besides the heavily distorted aleatoric string stuff and distorted low brass, seems like a lot of the synth stuff is coming from some pretty out there Eurorack modules. I've been watching what this guy is doing cause I'd like to pick me up some wacky ass modules that do things that nothing else can do.


Oh without a doubt. The bulk of the low filthy sources are synths for sure... Definitely other stuff like strings and scraped metals in there, but that sub filth is mostly, if not completely synthesis blown out with a metric ton of distortion... Knowing Wallfisch Modular sounds about right... (Although I'd imagine there's a little Zebra hiding in there as well...)

Definitely a bleeding edge score. Hell I haven't even seen the film, and I went and bought most of the OST yesterday after seeing this post as this is the kind of stuff that's always gotten my blood flowing... Thanks KEN for posting this! It's so in my wheelhouse!
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: KEM
Oh without a doubt. The bulk of the low filthy sources are synths for sure... Definitely other stuff like strings and scraped metals in there, but that sub filth is mostly, if not completely synthesis blown out with a metric ton of distortion... Knowing Wallfisch Modular sounds about right... (Although I'd imagine there's a little Zebra hiding in there as well...)

Definitely a bleeding edge score. Hell I haven't even seen the film, and I went and bought most of the OST yesterday after seeing this post as this is the kind of stuff that's always gotten my blood flowing... Thanks KEN for posting this! It's so in my wheelhouse!

Anytime! Definitely recommend watching the film, I was actually watching it on my phone in bed and I when I saw this cue and heard the music I was blown away, even on my tiny phone speakers it sounded huge so I immediately paused the movie to see who scored it, and I was not the least bit surprised when I saw Ben’s name, such an amazing composer!!
 
It's pretty easy to do this. You run shit through Trash or anything else and turn the dist up. The difficult part is to know when it's too much. When does it sound aggressive and rich and when degraded and not usable anymore. I think these examples are interesting. There is a trend to more distorted sounds and percussion but many times it's still best to keep the sound clean. Tough choices.
 
You'd probably find it easier to add real analog distortion instead/in addition. I have several expensive and several cheap saturation and distortion plugins. None of them do what the OB-6 distortion does or sound as good doing it when applied in large amounts. Consider looking at an Elektron Analog Heat 2. It's on my wishlist, so I can run softsynths etc through it. Oh, others praise the Sherman Filter Bank hardware for distortion. Analog distortion won’t really be glitchy or anything, which is why a combo is appealing. Digital for cold destruction, analog for warm destruction.

I've been listening to industrial music evolve since the mid-80s... there's no "trend" in using distortion - it's part of that genre :grin:
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: KEM
Top Bottom