Patch Request: Space Mountain - Shimmering Descending Sci-Fi Sound

Patch / Preset Recreated

Hello! I'm trying to recreate a type of classic sound in eurorack (but any successful patch formula for any synth will at least put me in the ballpark, it's a 'shimmering' descending sound... here is a sample from the Space Mountain cue at Disney World, the sound is throughout, good example at 17 seconds:

This example of the sound is very saturated (almost like a solid note declining in pitch), typically there is very distinct VCA modulation with a square or triangle LFO, with what I assume to be an inverted ramp LFO that doesn't cycle controlling the decline the VCO frequency? I feel like the base oscillator would be triangle so as to reduce the amount of harmonics, allowing the spectral space for cleaner spatial effects which I would assume to by typical for this type of patch?

Am I way off? Again, the example provided is almost like a solid tone declining in pitch; there is typically a distinct VCA oscillation as well.

scottwicks

3 years ago

Activity

Joe Hanley

Try this:

Oscillator: Square wave

Amp Envelope: Set the release so that each note rings out

Voices: Poly

Filter: 24 dB lowpass. Bring the cutoff down until you get the round-ish tone. Then boost the res pretty heavily to really make it stick out.

Filter Envelope: We'll use this to create that little attack transient on the sound. Zero sustain, with a really fast decay and release, and just a little modulation amount.

Delay: Quarter note delay, pretty wet so you can clearly hear the delays

Reverb: Medium hall, fairly wet

Two things

Yes you could use a triangle wave instead of filtering a square wave. However, the square provides more upper harmonics for the filter envelope to use in order to make the attack transient
The descending pitch is most likely from playing the actual notes, as opposed to some type of pitch modulation. I say this because the chords these pitches outline change throughout the song.

0 3 months ago Reply