Waldorf Attack Operation Manual - page 27
Attack
Waldorf
27
Operation Manual
of the two oscillators. The noise was split in two parts: there is always some low pass
filtered noise during the whole snare drum sound, while a high pass filtered sound is
routed through another envelope whose level can be controlled by the "Snappy" para-
meter.
One Attack sound doesn't feature as many different modules as the TR-909 snare drum
had. One solution can be to use two sounds, one emulating the first oscillator and the
low pass filtered noise, and the other emulating the second oscillator plus the high pass
filtered noise. You will have to play the two simultaneously in your track, but this
shouldn't be a problem because the Attack has sample-exact timing.
However, you can re-create the TR-909 snare drum with just one Attack sound instead,
by doing the following:
Set up Oscillator 1 to play a sine wave, modulate its pitch slightly with Envelope 2, and
add a little FM to it - around 0.1 to 0.5%. When you set the second oscillator to produ-
ce noise, you will hear that the sine wave gets smeared, which means that you are not
hearing an exact tone any more. This already sounds very close to two slightly detuned
oscillators and a low pass filtered noise. Now you only need the "Snappy" part, which
is added simply by using Envelope 1 to modulate Oscillator 2's mix level. You can high
pass filter the noise with the Pitch control, but in fact the result is already quite similar
without doing so. If you want a little more punch, use the Drive control carefully until
you can hear a slight distortion at the beginning of the sound.
Another variation can be heard in the sound library that comes with the Attack. This o-
ne uses a very low noise signal level that is boosted greatly behind the high pass filter.
The reason for this is that Oscillator 2 plays the tone of the snare drum while the high
pass filter dampens this tone heavily. To raise it back up to a good volume, Drive bo-
osts it to a normal level.
Simmons SDS-5 Snare Drum
The Simmons SDS-5 Snare Drum module was laid out identically to the Bass Drum
module. However, a number of parameters were set in a different way internally to
create snare drum sounds.
When you want to create Simmons snare drum sounds on the Attack, just keep in mind
that you should use a very short envelope to frequency modulate the first oscillator, set
the envelopes to almost linear shapes, and use the "Vel" control for all envelope mo-
dulations.
TR-808 Side Stick
The TR-808 Side Stick (called RS on the 808, which stands for Rim Shot) sound is very
tricky: although it consists of only two oscillators running through an amplifier and a
high pass filter, the sound is very complex. This comes from the fact that one oscillator
seems to “cut” the other oscillator and that the VCA is used to add high harmonics.
How Roland did it is something only they and maybe a handful of people know. If you
happen to be one of these people, let us know!
If you want a sound of this type from the Attack, use the representative sound from the
library instead of trying to simulate it on your own. Look at the parameters and try to
find out why it sounds quite close. A couple of hints: Crack is used with a very high
frequency setting doing amplitude modulation on the oscillators’ summed signal, and
Drive is used to add further harmonics by distorting the signal.