MATRIXSYNTH: Da Funk Lead with MS-20 mini


Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Da Funk Lead with MS-20 mini


Published on Aug 13, 2018 0th

"The lead from Daft Punk's Da Funk is one of my favorite synth sounds ever. After getting a Korg MS-20 mini, I decided to have a go making it. I hope you like the results.

My first step was to dive deep into the internets and see if anyone else has tried. Of course many people have made awesome videos. My issue with those videos is that when I tried the same settings, my MS-20 mini didn't sound quite the same as their videos or when comparing to Da Funk. I think this could be for a number of reasons, the biggest is probably because my MS-20 mini isn't a vintage MS-20.

The video shows all the knob settings and cable connections in detail, please try it yourself!

So here are a number of things I did differently from videos and other online sources. (mainly added just so that if I try to make this sound again, I can!)

1. Oscillator one on a lot of examples is a saw tooth, but I found that the sounds ends up being a bit thin, so I made it a pulse wave with about a 30% pulse width (60% knob position).
2. Oscillator two on lot of examples is tuned to a fourth or something else. I felt like that setting didn't go high enough, so I ended going up 2 octaves up from osc one.
3. My filter and envelope two settings seemed close to most other examples I found.
4.From the main signal out, a patch cord is routed to the external processor signal in. This is absolutely necessary to give the sound that distinctive bite. Then from there, the output of the MS-20 comes out of the external signal processor out.
5. When A/B comparing Da Funk's lead to mine, my MS-20 was still sounding too clean. So I routed the pink noise into the VCA. Control input was the mod wheel and the output of the VCA was sent to the external signal in. I turned the pink noise down just enough to not notice it.
6. Portamento on the pitch wasn't enough and to me it sounds like the pitch bends a bit. So I routed the EG-1 reverse out to the freq input and bumped up the frequency mod knob for EG1/EXT just a bit to keep the pitch from feeling a little flat.
7. After getting the rest of the settings as perfect as I could, when I compared the original to mine, it sounded like it was being run through an external filter. Like after the attack, the cutoff frequency was going low, but if I recreated going low with the MS-20 mini cutoff it did not behave the same way. So I ran it through an external filter (Moogerfooger MF-101). I grabbed the EG-1 positive out and used that to modulate the external filter cutoff. Perhaps a vintage MS-20 doesn't need this or my other hacks to get the sound as close as I could. . .

That's it! Enjoy!"

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