To make this sound I increased the gain on some 60Hz buzz that I grabbed out of a bass guitar recording. There’s no bass, just the hum of electrical interference. A lot of boosting was necessary to get an adequate level.
Afterward I time stretched the waveform by varying amounts at consistent time intervals and manged to create this rhythmic pattern. A touch of chorus gave it some stereo spread and a short delay put it into space.
Time Stretched 60 Cycle Hum
I produced this sound by programming a scale in a MIDI clip and then sending it to a virtual instrument designed to allow for freely manipulating granular synthesis through several seven point envelopes. I made several takes while I adjusted the envelops and other parameters.
One warning, this take has some piercingly high frequencies in a few places. The sound reminds me of some sort of scrambled futuristic alarm system. This led me to adding a warehouse reverb to the mix to put in into sci-fi thriller territory.
Reverberated Grain Table Noise
With very little time for today’s sound I resorted to randomizing the parameters in Pluggo’s xmod synth, then resampling the results as I dragged the mouse up and down on the virtual keyboard in Ableton Live’s sequencer. I often use this technique with a variety of VSTs as a starting point to get a new sound, so I thought I’d lay it down, so you can hear a little behind-the-scenes audio.
Random Parameter Keyboard Mash
I am not, nor will I ever claim to be a guitarist, so please forgive the playing in this example. I do like the sound I have achieved here though. To get it I ran a cheap Fender Squire through VST distortion, thickly modulated chorus, followed by delay, and reverb. It’s very 80s, although I was not necessarily going for that. I does seem to go well in the piece in which it was recorded.
Oxotremorine Guitar Sound
I created this synthesized effect using a Korg MS200 Analog Modeling Synthesizer. I often use this instrument with the external sync enabled for arpeggiation and and tempo delay processing. The delay does some strange things with the external sync enabled. As you adjust the delay time it jumps from different units of time within the tempo including triplets. This can produced some future dub, spaced out, synthethized effects when the feedback is up all the way.
Korg MS2000 Tempo Delay Effect