Cajmere “Percolator / Rubber” sound

Elektron Gear Analog Keys/Four
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How can I recreate the Cajmere “Percolator / Rubber” sound using an Elektron Analog Four?

I’m trying to get as close as possible to that classic Chicago house sound. Does anyone have any tips for the oscillator, filter, envelope, and distortion settings on the Analog Four?

Any help or example patches would be greatly appreciated!

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Is there an example you can post up? I don’t know that style of music well, and hence have no reference as to what sound you mean.

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Wow, not sure how I’d go about trying to recreate that with synthesis. To me it sounds very much like a sample… But as far as a lot of the early Cajual/Relief stuff, a lot of the bass and lead sounds sound very FM like to me. I know, not much help.

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Cajmere is another alias of Green Velvet, and he is known for fattest and punchiest productions in early 90’s, on par with Jeff Mills.
This track is not so hard though, I hear both drum machine, probably 808, and sampled analog synths and synth drums. In other comments I found that SH-101 was used. Definitely an analog console with sort of overdrive was part of the sound.

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I can’t find the “Rubber” mix on YT/SC, can you paste the link or snippet?

As for the sounds in the original:

  1. synth toms: very Analog Four-ish, there are many such sounds in the standard library
  2. high synth beep: something to do with the sawtooth or two osc and pitch envelope, probably something from SH-101. Absolutely doable on A4 with its multiple osc options.
  3. main “quack-quack”: sounds like some synth blip, maybe low pitched version of the first sound. Definitely sampled, as it sounds muffled and lacking highs. Need some experimenting to find the exact pitches and envelope settings, but doable.
  4. Woodblock-snare: on 3rd minute there is a sample of natural percussion, definitely sampled from it and pitched down
  5. Kick - anything from A4 kicks
  6. 808 Snare - trademark of A4, absolutely possible
  7. Hi-hats: sounds like sampled from elsewhere, there is sampler “grit” on it, not a clear 808 sound

Main Cajmere ‘weapon’ was definitely some popular sampler, not only because of abundance of one-shots, but the beat was usually very tight, too tight for 909/808

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I obsessed over relief records. Bought everyone I found record digging back in 90s and early 2000s

Loved that jacking Chicago sound

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Pretty sure he was using a FM for those noises and a cheap one like a porta sound or the Casio CZ. You can hear it used on his green velvet records as well. The toms are a 606. Not sure about the other drums.

He is a legend and super nice.

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I’m just here to co-sign on Percolator. I explained to a friend from Ukraine what would happen if this came on pretty much in any mostly Black neighborhood back home ha.

Ubiquitous tune that sets it tf off!

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It’s a sound similar to what one can hear a lot in Sophie’s music. The main ingredient is a fast pitch envelope.

This is a slighlty similar sound I have on DNII, it’s using filtered noise, where the filter is doing the pitch envelope.

Edit: Triangle wave with pitch envelope

Here, I’m slowly adding the envelope, and then I added a second oscillator that is about 4 halftones detuned:

That’s the basic principle, but with different envelopes, waves etc., lots of possibilities emerge.

It almost sounds like there’s a Delay on it, but it could also be the pitch envelope looping.

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I imagine you already knew the track. Where did you hear it first?

Did you have an immediate reaction to it? @Jeanne