|
Steal This Sound: Daft Punk's “Derezzed”
|
By Mitchell Sigman
If your idea of video games involves stacking quarters on the Defender machine at the local 7-Eleven, then you were likely a fan of Disney’s original Tron movie. Now, its primitive computer graphics and glowing rotoscoped effects look positively quaint, but the soundtrack, composed by the legendary Wendy Carlos, was groundbreaking. Last year Disney released a sequel, Tron: Legacy. Soundtrack duties went to French synth wizards Daft Punk, who cooked up a cutting-edge electronica feel. This month we’ll recreate the insistent, swirling lead of the club-stompin’ single “Derezzed” using Native Instruments Massive.
Step 1. Choose saw waves for OSC1 and OSC2. With Massive you’ll select “Squ-Sw1” and turn the “Wt-Position” knob fully right. Select the “RoughMath II” wave for OSC3. If you don’t have Massive, it’s not critical, we just want something high-pitched and “digital” sounding—you may need to experiment.
Step 2. OSC1 should be at nominal pitch (zero), OSC2 down an octave (-12), and OSC3, our digital-sounding one, should be up two octaves and detuned around eight cents (+24.08). Set OSC1 and OSC3 at full volume, but set OSC2’s volume halfway up—we’re using just using it for a little sub-bass.
Step 3. The filter section is bypassed entirely. If you’re using a synth that doesn’t do this, simply open the cutoff to maximum and set resonance to zero.
Step 4. ENV4 sets our volume to a simple on-off envelope with a little attack time to take off the initial “click.” Set the attack up just a little, attack level full, decay full, decay level full, and release up just a little.
Step 5. Turn on the Feedback module and set the knob exactly halfway. Then, put a hard clipper effect in Insert 1, set fully wet with the Drive knob fully up. These only affect the sound subtly (at least after we apply all the effects in Step 6), so don’t fret if you don’t have these available.
Step 6. Insert a heavy stereo phaser in Massive’s FX1 section. In the Logic instrument channel that hosted Massive, I inserted a GoldVerb with a 0.65 second decay and 50% wet/dry ratio. I then inserted a Logic Distortion with Drive at 34.5dB, Tone at 2,900Hz, and output at -16dB (careful, this plug-in can get loud). If you use a different DAW, its mid-grade reverb and any distortion with a tone control yield similar results.
Placing time-domain effects like phasers or reverbs before distortion is usually a bad idea, but here, the smeary, distorted, stereo mess gives the “Derezzed” sound its character. Rules were made to be broken!
Click here if player below doesn't load correctly.
11-2011 Steal This Sound - Daft Punk's "Derezzed" by KeyboardMag
About Daft Punk's "Derezzed" Patch From the Tron: Legacy Soundtrack.
|