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Chicago IL

also: my 8bp release was almost entirely reason, except for one melody loop i wrote in LSDJ

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Boise, ID

I make most of my chip with reason! It's nice to see that a lot of other people here like it too.
here's some of my techniques...

for drums, I usually load 2 or 3 Redrum machines with samples from the NN-XT patches/drums&percussion/drums&kits/click house dub samples. there are a bunch of cool blippy sounds in there... sometimes I also just load a plain drum kit and "bit crush" the Redrum with a scream 4 set on digital and with P1 under 10.

A lot of neat chip percussion sounds can be made with Subtractor also... In my song "delumitate", thats all I used. You can make snares and hats by turning the Osc. mix way to the right (osc. 2 has to be turned off) and messing around with the noise parameters.
I make the kicks like this:

and from there you can get a lot of abstract blippy sounds by adjusting stuff in the mod envelope.

I rarely use any of the instrument patches for the synths, I just load up a bunch of subtractors and make my own sounds. I use the DDL-1 all the time with a little bit of reverb too.

another fun trick I use is to make two identical synths, then run the 6:2 line mixer under each of them and pan them all the way in opposite directions. Write an identical little tune in each of them but automate the octaves to switch back and forth, opposite of each other. I did this in parts of my song "bits".

I hope this is the kind of feedback you're looking for smile

Last edited by ShintarouMusic (Jan 10, 2013 8:40 am)

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Chicago IL

Also, the NN-XT supports soundfonts. http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-soundfonts.php

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D D D Detroit, not the burbs

due to funding right now im only writing with protools for midines.  Its cool for writing but impractical for live purposes

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sweden
walter b. gentle wrote:

how do you make "fakebit" without a daw?

With hardware synths and samplers. I did that for years.

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Westfield, NJ

Here is a very cool phase distortion lo-fi VST that was released last year and is free for Mac / Windows / Linux:

http://www.extentofthejam.com/

Great for fakebit.

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Ohio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYs0-Bu … ata_player

Part 1 of Tettix's "Fake n Bake" series on YouTube.  It focuses on Reason to make fake bit.

It's a three part series, FYI.

Last edited by BTS (Jan 10, 2013 3:05 pm)

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New York City
walter b. gentle wrote:

oh lol. dont listen to me then. but i can say ive never seen anyone on the forums refer to reason that i can remember at least. hopefully someone helpful can chime in. q

Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I was simply trying to explain my affinity for Reason. I know a lot of people are apprehensive about using Reason for the fact they don't use plug-ins. And even recently with the unveiling 3rd party plugins, it kinda a proprietary plug-in, not a standard like VSTs.

Saskrotch wrote:

i use reason and ableton together

I've never been able to get into the workflow of ReWiring them together. Do you recommend I try? What are the benefits?

SketchMan3 wrote:

I don't really use them for true fakebit (well, I did once...), but I do use them a lot.

What do you mean by "true"? I might have a misconception on the definition of fakebit...

nitro2k01 wrote:

Doing this will not sound as "dirty" as say a Gameboy because a Gameboy has other artifacts like DC offsets that create various clicks and a 16 step volume envelope.

If you're actually using Reason (and not stuck with Reason 5.0 for "unspecified reasons", *cough* *cough*) I recommend you check out the rack extension PX7, which is Prop's own DX7 emulator. I'm sure you could make it do some more simpler FM sounds that could fit into a fakebit context. Maybe add some bitcrushing to that (Scream 4 in the "digital" mode, low damage control and adjust parameters P1 and P2 to taste.)

Awkward 'cause I'm still on 5.0. It's a legit copy(I'm a personal anti-piracy), but I haven't been able to shell out the money for the upgrade, even though it $100. I've played with PX7 on demo of 6.5, and liked it, ALMOST made me get the upgrade. I have been using Scream4, but funny enough, not on digital, I feel like it's to harsh for melodies, especially when I use the RPG 8 Arp, because it tends to stack.

You mentioned added artifacts, do you think maybe there's a way to emulate them? It'd be cool.

nickmaynard wrote:

the maelstrom has some great synth sounds (square waves, triangle waves, pwm) and i'm pretty sure it comes with nanoloop drum samples. also the nn19 has a lot of great patches in a folder called "synth raw elements". you can find a lot of "fakebit" synths in there.

Stupidly, I never actually looked at the presets/patch bank, thanks for the heads up, I'll check'em out

shintaroumusic wrote:

I hope this is the kind of feedback you're looking for

0hm@hgawd, this is beautiful.

One thing I like doing is all under a Combinator, take two synths, both with a Scream 4 and RPG 8. But one RPG8 is an octave drop and the other an octave up, them use the Spider merger. Sometimes I'll set the Arp rates at different speeds. So when I hit a chord, it'll activate both synths, and it'll give a Daft Punk Tron-esque sound.

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NC in the US of America
ParallaxMoon wrote:
SketchMan3 wrote:

I don't really use them for true fakebit (well, I did once...), but I do use them a lot.

What do you mean by "true"? I might have a misconception on the definition of fakebit...

I don't use them to try to actually sound like real 8bit.
At least, I haven't yet except for that one time I made that 8bit remix of the Megaman Legends "Main Gate" theme.

I'm probably splitting a hair here and making up a distinction that does not exist. Carry on.

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HAHAHAHAAA

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babylon
nordloef wrote:
walter b. gentle wrote:

how do you make "fakebit" without a daw?

With hardware synths and samplers. I did that for years.

makes sense. coolio.

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Chicago IL
ParallaxMoon wrote:
Saskrotch wrote:

i use reason and ableton together

I've never been able to get into the workflow of ReWiring them together. Do you recommend I try? What are the benefits?

I mean there's a ton of reasons to do it. Using Ableton as a mixing / mastering suite for Reason alone is worth it (to me at least). But basically, anything you can't do in Reason, you can do in Ableton. Such as: Chipsounds, iZotope's oZone, Instajungle, some soundfonts (Reason can't read them if they use ROM samples), Ableton's built in effects (which to me are way better than any of Reason's effect modules, and so on.

I'm almost at the point where I'm only using Reason for Dr. Rex, since I prefer writing i that that to cutting up a break in ableton.

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New Jersey

I use Ableton.  I've just been using it for such a long time that moving into the fakebit realm just felt really natural. 

I literally only use these VSTs along with Ableton's Operator.

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Chicago IL
MostNoble9 wrote:

I literally only use these VSTs...

lol

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New Jersey
Saskrotch wrote:
MostNoble9 wrote:

I literally only use these VSTs...

lol

Haha, I know it's ridiculous.  It's just more about limiting myself than anything. 
Too many options has me building sounds for way too long instead of actually writing music.

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Westfield, NJ
MostNoble9 wrote:

I use Ableton.  I've just been using it for such a long time that moving into the fakebit realm just felt really natural. 

I literally only use these VSTs along with Ableton's Operator.

I didn't even know these VSTs existed and now I am mega depressed that they do not work on Macs.