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The other day I was listening to Murcof, and he uses a lot of percussion sounds which aren't really much like any real percussion instrument. An example is in the tune below - the sound first heard at roughly 1:33 which has an almost wood-blockish quality to the attack, but then a metallic sort of sustain.

I've been trying to make these kinds of sounds, and I've had some success with very short attack and decay on amp and filter envelopes, but to make a really percussive sound, the latter part has to be too quiet/filtered to have a nice sustain.

So my question's are: what properties make a sound percussive? Can I make any synth sound I choose into a percussion sound by fiddling with the envelopes? And how can I make a sound percussive at the start, but still audible and interesting when sustained?



His production is unreal, the drop at 6:13 is so cool.

The sound you mentioned at 1.13 sound like a processed Xylophone sample to me

Maybe by splitting up the frequencies and applying some light reverb on the high end?

Bump for the right answer, would love to know this as well.
Awesome post!

drokkr wrote:The sound you mentioned at 1.13 sound like a processed Xylophone sample to me

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same sound man. The one I mean starts at 1:33 and is used almost like a snare, and played for both very short and slightly longer durations fairly often in each measure. It sounds fairly synthy rather than acoustic to my ears. Cheers though.

Sound at 1.33 sounds like a woodblock hit to me, that he's automated the processing on to get that glitchy stutter effect, or possibly manually cut it up, but I'd doubt that.

As for the question of what makes a sound percussive, I think pretty much any sound can be percussive depending on how you use it, you could have 10 really unusual samples as long as you give them all rhythm and they work together to achieve a flowing percussion pattern it should sound good. Then the rest is just processing it how you want it.

methinks its the reverb patch on said woodblock that is bringing the magic to this one, and the parts immediately following first hit where it changes pitch sounds like filter resonance, w the frequency automated and its being fed into a delay and big reverb