Basically title. I was wondering if people here had ideas/resources on how to replicate the various timbres of the Korg Mini Pops drum machine. This is mostly an effort to try and better understand sound design on the syntakt, but also I was going to be jamming with a friend who is a fan of vintage drum machines and I thought I would surprise him with some recreations (as best I can manage) using the gear I have on hand.
videos for reference:
I figure I could do some due diligence and see what comes up in a google search.
I found a reddit post from about 6 months ago on r/aphextwin where OP asked what drum sounds he used on minipop (i actually forgot he had named a song after this piece of gear) and u/Vreature generously replied:
Snare
That snare is mostly white noise which is different from pink noise. White noise is a random signal that is equal volume across the entire frequency spectrum. Pink noise is a random signal that is equal volume across all octaves. The way we perceive sound makes Pink noise sound dull and low energy. White noise, like static on the radio, sounds higher energy and like I said it fills out the entire frequency spectrum, quite literally making the mix dense. Being Aphex Twin, he masterfully plays with cutting it off abruptly and turning it back on in all kinds of cool patterns.
There is a thick reverb on the snare. The tail of the reverb “slaps-back”. This means the reverb trails off in volume but then before it ends, it comes back to the forefront of the mix. When the volume shoots back up, it does so rhythmically and fills out the frequency spectrum where the snare was previously.
Kick
The kick is bigger and beefier than most of his kick drums, meaning it’s got some extra volume on the second octave above the root note. People usually take this out because it sounds muddy. It doesn’t sound muddy in Minipops because he’s an elite sound designer. Dense.
Shaker/Tambo
But most of all, it’s the tambourine/shaker/hi hat sound. Usually Aphex’s hi-hats are short little clicks. In This track, they are directly in the foreground, and they are and drawn out. There is a heavy amount of “swing” to them, meaning they are heavily syncopated. Syncopated means they are “off the grid”. They don’t land on the 1/8 or 1/16th notes, they land in between them. This fills out the spaces in between the main pulses; kick and snare. Again, this is mostly white noise which fills out the spectrum. Dense.
Fanfare
Then of course, he’s got what I call fan-fare. Fan-fare to me is all the other interesting percussive sounds that pop up out of nowhere adding all kinds of interest. Bongos and weird analog drum sounds.
Ride
Then there is the acid breakdown where the ride cymbal is in the loudest thing in the mix which is somewhat unusual for him. He does a similar thing in the first half of Omgyjya Switch 7, which on the whole has the same type of drum pallet.
Bass
The midrange of the analog synth bass is heavily filtered out, which gives space for the drums and makes them sound more prevalent.
I know the descriptions here are specifically in reference this one song, but it’s as good a jumping off point as any.
The one he used is this version which is different to the one you posted.
But most organ style rhythm machines sound “similar” and to recreate it probably depends on whether you want to make a drum hit that sounds like the clips and clops of a rhythm machine or you want it to behave like a rhythm machine while playing, the second task would probably be considerably more difficult.
When Syntakt was released there was a guy who made a video that included a minipops kit, might look at some videos from around its time of release to find it. A big part of that sound to me is the clicky percussion, I often use an analog filter pinged by an impulse machine with keytracking on it for a big part of the sound. Noise overdrive filter vca to approximate cymbals, and then tweak various machines while comparing with minipops samples to get the other sounds. I’ve done it for cr78 with a rytm. Probably want to use sound locks/sound pool with some analog voices to get more of that authentic grit
Good point, I was noticing that the different models looked VERY different but I was hoping that the sounds were similar enough to overlap. The clips and clops were definitely the starting point I had in mind. I had been planning to bring the syntakt and the SH-01a to the jam. My plan had been to just set up a bunch of patterns and switch between them, definitely not planning to go full aphex twin.
As I understand it, he just sampled it anyways.
As far as sounding different it’s like looking at car tires or something else subtle: unless you approach it looking for sonic differences then a lot of rhythm machines are in the same ballpark.
MiniPOPs sounds awesome, one of my favourite. Syntakt should have such capabilities, especially because of having a filter after full drum oscillator. The best way would be using analog channels, but there is only 4
(I’d even buy such preset/kit pack lol, to go full Krautrock mode)
brilliant, getting instant results! how do I turn on key tracking again? 
It’s been a long time since I messed around with the sound pool, but this makes a lot of sense. I was definitely planning to focus on the analogue tracks.
I have a sound in an earlier project that’s quite close to that claves sound in that first video… I can share it here tomorrow.
And +1 on the pinged filter technique, instant vintage drum machine territory,
Short answer right now, sorry, might contribute with more later 
much appreciated
FUNC + ••• (to get to the sound menu) and it’s the first option under Setup
This thread is making me want to create a minipops “kit”…
There were some great minipops style sounds in Sonic Charge Microtonic’s “Vintage Tonic” library, made by machine learning algorithms… I’m pretty sure you could also make those sounds with a syntakt.
4 analogue voices is still plenty, you just need to sound lock around. The best vintage DM patterns IMHO are sparse with complementing elements going around each other, no need for a lot of polyphony
Captain Pikant has a video on how to recreate the Oxygene 4 drums (which were made with the Mini Pops 7) on the Syntakt:
well I suppose that 1 of the analog tracks isn’t like the others, but yeah I am finding just the analog tracks to be more than sufficient.
ok dang! this looks like the motherload! Not only do I get the sound design tips that are basically what I was looking for but one of the iconic patterns I was going to try and recreate as well. thank you!
A little late sorry, here’s a quick attempt at that claves sound in the first video.
I was going to post that Captain Pikant video as well, he does a great job of capturing the Minipops 7, which is what Aphex Twin used on Syro. He pretty much nails it. I guess the hardest parts are the two rubbery sproingy sounds. Very characteristic sounds, unique to the MP7. Sounds like they require a particular resonant band pass filter sound to achieve an exact replica. But CP gets pretty close.
fantastic result!
Thanks! Let me know if you want the project file. I did a quick attempt at the two “rubbery” sounds as well, but didn’t get any closer than Captain Pikant, so if you follow that video you will get pretty close I guess. Good luck!
Great sounding clave, although it reads to my ears as a rimshot somehow. Which machine was that again? I could have use for a sound like that
thanks
Thanks. It’s actually two tracks of RS Hard, so your ear is spot on 
I needed a little noise to properly ping the filter.
I’m not in front of the Syntakt now but this is what I remember:
It’s a bummer spending two tracks on one sound, but I found it crucial to achieve that dual peak effect of that particular clave (or whatever it’s supposed to be). I couldn’t remember a machine in the ST that has two resonant peaks, but I didn’t search. One of the IMP sounds has a filter on the SYN page, but the resonance setting won’t verge on self-oscillation like the main filter on the FILT page. Maybe you could achieve it with another machine that has more of a sine shaped body to provide one of the peaks, but you still need something that provides a sufficient spike to ping the filter, to get that second peak.
This topic certainly deserves more analysis 
Plus he is replicating some of the sounds using digital voices, so you are not necessarily constrained to the four analogue tracks.
