The sound of Kraftwerk

Lounge
1

Hello there and friendly greetings!

First of all: please forgive my lack of proper tech phrasing, I am aware I’m not really expert of some definitions.

I am listening a lot of Kraftwerk albums lately and I am fascinated by one of their sounds. I know they are not the only one that use them but I’m listening to them so…

If you listen to COMPUTER LIEBE and HEIMCOMPUTER (both from COMPUTERWELT, 1981) you can hear a kind of snapping, popping sound.

The same sound can be heard in DIE ROBOTER (from DIE MENSCH-MASCHINE, 1978) but it is modulated into a melody that is used as a bass.

I think (but I am not absolutely sure) that it is called “high q”.

If you take the module KICKBABA and set the sweep knob to 1, you can get a very similar effect. Not the same but very similar.

Can someone address me more informations about what that sound is, how the Kraftwerk obtained it, if it has a proper name or what? I’m a little bit obsessed with that sound since I was a teen and I am really curious to know anything there is to know about.

Thanks in advance and have a great day y’all!

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Do you mean this sound?

Demo tyumm.vcvs (3.7 KB)

You can play with the FM knob of the VCO to fine tune it.

image

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Thank you for sharing your recipe! It is very close indeed, maybe I should use some filters to sculpt the sound a little bit more but the path is the right one.

:+1:

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Also experiment with various envelope generators and VCOs. They can provide a surprisingly different flavor.

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image230×547 64.5 KB

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yeah, my 2 favourite ones are the VCV one (retrigger rules, I can’t undestand legato on a synth :stuck_out_tongue: ) and the SLAP one (by Vult)…but there are so many, so good :broccoli:

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