You certainly could pick up random shit like that at times, not nowadays though.
Personally I don't think it's a CS of any sort though. I think the BOC sound is alot of roland or something similar in filter character. You can get a BOC sound from pretty much any analogue or VA though if you strip back the layers of post processing. It's all just usually basic waveforms, filtered and Pitch modulated with LFO.
might be wrong but i believe they mentioned not using computers to sequence the last lp...
still my theory is stuck in analogs plus samplers, re-sampling through tapes, boutique fx.
they just got their shit together in the studio + have the time and ear for melodies to be able to make some of the best tunes
Sun Drugs wrote:might be wrong but i believe they mentioned not using computers to sequence the last lp...
still my theory is stuck in analogs plus samplers, re-sampling through tapes, boutique fx.
they just got their shit together in the studio + have the time and ear for melodies to be able to make some of the best tunes
thats it really, lots of experimenting, happy accidents, keep everything, archives and archives of it.
theyre one of those groups you'd just never know how they got it if you tried, field recordings that sound like drums, real drums that dont sound like real drums, endless time to play.
Geogandhi wrote:You certainly could pick up random shit like that at times, not nowadays though.
Personally I don't think it's a CS of any sort though. I think the BOC sound is alot of roland or something similar in filter character. You can get a BOC sound from pretty much any analogue or VA though if you strip back the layers of post processing. It's all just usually basic waveforms, filtered and Pitch modulated with LFO.
im with you....sh101 for a bunch of stuff. no one EVER mentions the sh1000...
an akai s1000 + sampled real instruments.
but after geo...it feels all vst/computer-ish
no one mentions this one either....AKAI vx-600
part 2
jump to 8:15
part 1
jump to 4:04 play till 5:30 [tip of the hat to BoC at 7:28] [i think watching this guys demos...start to finish is worth it for both]
AKAI ax 73...can connect samplers to it, can hold samples. jump to 2:45
Last edited by re-phaelam-ed on Thu May 22, 2014 6:34 pm, edited 3 times in total.
they use really roundabout ways of recording. On Smokes Quantity I think they recorded the tracks onto r2r and then used the internal mic on a mid-fi cassette deck to get that murky quality and the reels spinning down at the end. Also the drum track quality sounds unaffected so it was likely done afterwards
If they ever get to use this one to make some music (even though it's like somewhat impossible), it would create like the ultimate sound of crispy and soothing old nostalgic sound.
I don't believe in a single 'secret weapon', maybe a 'secret method', but to reduce their sound to single piece of gear or a gear system seems too easy.
Anyways, yesterday I was watching Blade Runner, that as everyone knows had it soundtrack composed by Vangelis almost entirely on a Yamaha CS-80, a mythical synth that is expensive as an automobile and almost as heavy as one (hah). On a scene around 1:04:20 where Deckard is at home talking with Rachael a single note immediately reminded of the first note of Under the Coke Sign.
I know this doesn't prove anything, but if anyone want to check it out it's there.
I could get that with most of my analogues that have a noise source. There is a seperate bass note which sounds Roland like then a two osc synth or poly pad with noise. possibly a bit of hpfiltering on the pad too. They have been processed together to merge them into the same timbre area. there is also alot of shellac and noise source over the top too.
All analogue synths have big overlaps of what they can do and sound like and BoC don't dig deep at all into synthesis to get their sound. The main character to their sound is when they use a LPF sound with a bit of Res as you can here the character of the filter rather than the oscillator. That's why their stuff sounds Roland like.
Not saying that it's not CS70/80 etc though ha. It's just does not sound like it to me.
I know nothing about gear (well not the stuff you play heh), but I've always thought the Secret Weapon could be summat home made by an audio engineer. Like a very talented individual who has constructed a piece of hardware in his workshop and that is unique and customized. If you get my drift.....
When was the statement released. A good few years ago anything could have been considered a secret weapon as most electronic artists were following the software route as everything was new. Hardly anyone was using vintage stuff and tape.
If it's a synth, I'd go with a Jupiter 4. anything else, it could be a tape machine or some unit that they put the final mix through to get their overall sheen.
I don't know why i'm getting into this though, I don't particularly care haha. Whatever they do use, it's great and it works.
If I had to guess, I'd say the effects unit on Cold Earth is a 70s Soviet guitar pedal called a Lider-2. It has a weird synth simulator that sounds like the "deathray sound" in it
Guys, I bet you'd be surprised how much of their production is digital.
I'll bet a lot more is arranged and recorded on a computer than you think.
I think it's a combination of analog equipment (tape recorders, synths) and a real DAW to tie it all together (I'll go out on a limb and assume it's Logic).
We, the BoC fans, think we have an ear for real analog stuff, but we really don't.
Often we mistakenly hear a lo-fi sound and assume it's an analog lo-fi but it's really an Akai sampler at a low audio rate. Stuff like that.
I thought that was a given. There is no way anyone could arrange pieces like they do without alot of editing in a DAW. You'd need some serious sequencers especially for the more complex drums in various songs to which their are not many. Even Elektron sequencing would need individual tracks recorded and heavy editing once in the DAW. I don't think anyone ever said that they are exclusively analogue, but there is certainly a lot of analogue source and processing in various chains.
It's a given that Dayvan Cowboy as a prime example was likely put together with a computer of some kind, and The Campfire Headphase's incredibly tight, meticulous and detailed production was likely done with the help of a computer. That's not to say analogue didn't play a big part in it, but it's likely
Tomorrow's Harvest, they said, was all recorded on analogue, possibly straight onto this Magic Eye 16-track.
I'm not surprised BoC aren't complete High Fidelity-esque audiophiles, I'd assume they're more concerned with making a good finished product rather than obsessing that everything always has to be done analogue. but it makes me think of a lot of this "analogue and digital" acid that started coming about after the Analords, and even more so after The Tuss, where analogue equipment is often recorded onto DAWs, or digital equipment is recorded straight to analogue. A lot of the time, you really can't tell a great difference between the tracks as to which is digital->analogue, and what is analogue->digital.
I don't think it really matters to the consumer as they won't tell anyway. I think it has more to do with the artist enjoying the medium/process etc. That's why I use what I do because it's the most fun I can have journeying to the end result. I cannot stand turning virtual knobs with a mouse.
And yeah out of all their albums TH would be the easiest to produce outside of a DAW.
