SSLS #5: That Blawan sound (Syntakt)

Elektronauts Science Lab
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Welcome to Syntakt Science Lab Special #5!

Time to get filthy. It’s been suggested a couple of times that we do a lab dedicated to Blawan and his fascinatingly heavy, gritty, phasey and not least shifting sound. Spanning a career of more than 15 years, Blawan Ternesc (one of Jamie Roberts’ multiple monikers) has carved a niche with his gritty, hard-hitting sound. His sound also develops quite a bit from one release to the next, so there’s a lot to choose from here.

The point of this lab is to take inspiration from Blawan’s sound and music. How you approach it is up to you. If you want to “replicate” a track or a particular sound, that’s fine. If you just use Blawan’s music as inspiration for your own, that’s fine too.

Rules

  • Use any Syntakt machines including SP Twinshot
  • Use any available Syntakt function and trickery
  • Other instruments are not allowed, it’s a Syntakt lab after all :wink:
  • Please restrict the use of external processing. EQ and compression is fine in small doses, but if too much of the resulting sound relies on external processing, part of the point of this lab is lost. If you end with something great that uses a lot of processing, then please post two versions: one “raw” Syntakt file, and one with all the processing.
  • Post as many sound files as you like. and a few words about your goals and your inspiration
  • It’s fine to post music that you’ve posted on the forum before, as long as it’s relevant to the lab.

Some cool tracks to get you inspired :slight_smile: Post your own favourite Blawan tracks if you like.

This lab series is not part of the regular machine-by-machine labs, but is focused on special sounds, techniques or challenges not limited to a particular Syntakt machine.

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Nice thread!
Jamie does a lot of his signature sound with Model cycles :slight_smile:

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Nice! ST and MC are relatives in some ways. Maybe we should open the lab for Model Cycles users too :slight_smile:

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I’ve rewatched Blawan’s masterclass he did for Home of Sound. Since that’s behind a paywall, here are some notes about his process:

• He starts with a simple sound source, sent through a complex chain of filters & distortion. In the masterclass example he’s using a bassy sine wave drone from his modular, sent through a distortion/waveshaper, then into a 8 notch filters (Rossum Morpheus) that create a flange-y sort of effect, then another notch filter (Xaoc Belgrad). The filters are being modulated by some envelopes, and by hand. Some of the modulation isn’t synced, and some of it is close to audio rate, creating a sort of ripping/zipper sound. Signal is being sent through an Eventide H3000 which creates even more flanging, and then recorded into Ableton as a long take.

• Of that recording, he loops a small section in Ableton. Slows it down, uses plugins (Unfiltered Sandman Pro, Soundtoys FIlterfreak, Unfiltered Dent 2) to further mess with the sound until it sounds like “a ship breaking apart”.

• He mentions that he uses the same sampling / resampling process for drums as well.

• Next up he pulls up a a previously-made loop coming from a Digitone, and it sounds very similar to the more complex method described above. That he sends through outboard envelopes and gates that are unsynced from the rhythm pre-baked into the Digitone loop. Gates are triggered by a Cirklon sequencer. Sends that through a short delay from the H3000, again for a flange-y type of sound.

• Again, longer takes are being recorded while he manipulates the sound by hand, messes about with the effects, etc. From that, shorter loops are chosen in Ableton, further effected and resampled.

~ • ~

Hopefully this will be useful to some of you. It’s all about the method, not the tools used, but I thought specifying those tools will free your brain to think of alternative ways to achieve the same thing instead of trying to guess what he might use.

Another thing I noticed:

A random thing from his studio that he doesn’t even mention in the video, but I noticed that he also has a vinyl cutting lathe sitting around. Judging from what it looks like it seems to be based off of a Technics turntable chassis, so it’s nothing that can be used professionally to cut records, but I assume he uses it from time to time to cut dubplates. Which might explain why some of his older tracks sound like sourced from vinyl if you listen on headphones. Just an interesting detail (to me at least).

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@crispi Wow, that’s really kind of you. Very interesting read, and it’s obvious he goes to great lengths to get the sound he wants. I really like his older stuff too, though less aggressive and “cutting”, it’s cool knowing that some of them might actually have been recorded to/from vinyl.

It might be easy to feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer mass of cool gear that he uses, and poor little Syntakt will possibly feel a little feeble in comparison.

But there are so many ways of being creative. For example, with samples available in the ST, one option could be to record longer takes of messing about with the Syntakt into a DAW, edit the good parts into samples that you then put back into the ST. I know that for me personally it was an eye opener playing around with @mishpult 's sound pack, which consisted only of samples of the Syntakt through a Monotron delay. So much flavour that could take on new forms as samples.

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This one really is the definition of Blawan’s earlier creations that defined his style IMO

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I LOVE the M:C a lot. Sold mine when I got my ST, but often consider getting another. It just sounds ‘different.’ Not better or worse then the ST, but for sure a different flavor. Some of my favorite tunes I’ve ever written were mainly M:C tunes.

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No Blawan thread without the one that started it all :sunglasses: (for me at least)

I’m definitely in but work is piling up at the moment so it’ll have to wait a bit :slight_smile:

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I discovered blawan a month ago and it inspired me to do some bass heavy/post-dubstep tests, I recorded these experiments a few days ago and I guess it kinda fits the vibe !
I focused on the percussive sounds, especially the kick. It is a bd hard + sy bits noise + sp twin shot playing one accoustic bass drum. No processing, raw syntakt output.

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Interesting, where did you hear this? I only know his early stuff but gonna dive into some of his later work after reading some of this thread.

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Haha exactly the same here. I found the syx backup of my MC recently and thought about picking another up. The distortion was amazing when you overdrove tracks

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I had tons of fun reworking some old patterns last night. Just messing around, trying to capture the Blawan vibe.

Maxing the FX track is tricky, it’s always a balance between that awesome distorted sound, and pure mud :face_with_peeking_eye:

All recorded straight from the ST, no post. Track 2 uses a SP Twinshot kick sample, otherwise this is all made with the synth machines.

Screeching delay

Digging in the dirt

FX-track p-locks

A milder, more bouncy track

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Now I know where you get your inspiration from. I admit I never heard of Blawan before and I´ve been listening this morning at work. Your tracks are better man! It´s hard to believe to what extend you have mastered the Syntakt. I truly believe that, when Elektron were conceiving the idea for ST, they said smth along the lines of “let´s make this unapologetically mean drum synth that is both cold and filthy and can do those massive, massive piercing sounds and it´s surgical but also unpredictable and it sounds like this…” and what you make, it´s the actual manifestation of the machine in the form of music.

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I don’t think that’s true at all

I’ve been a fan of blawan since he was associated with the UK post-dubstep scene. In an episode of knob twiddlers hangout he specifically said he generally doesn’t like elektron due to menu diving, except the model SAMPLES which he used live alongside modular as part of Karenn. I bet they just put their own synthesised samples on it.

He’s used Ableton, then mainly modular, then modular + looper, then now lately back to just a laptop and MIDI controller for this last album

I don’t think any Blawan track features model cycles synthesis at all. The M:C afaik was never part of his studio setup & certainly is not core to “his sound”.

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I’m tryna do something like this track about 50% of the time I make music lol

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Same. Or this:

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All 4 tracks on that EP are god tier and form a great cohesive whole

I think it was made when he was still mainly in the box. It sounds like clever ableton drum rack modulation resampled many times and put through amp sim. Maybe the drones are from a hardware synth I guess.

Would be curious what elektronaut eggheads think is the process behind this sound.

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I feel like his earlier work was more intentional. Programming interesting rhythms in Ableton. His later work is clearly more experimental, making sounds and then building tracks out of them.

Interestingly, his recent album was done ITB (using recordings of his gear maybe?). As usual, I don’t think it’s about the gear…

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I sense what you mean going by the feel of the music goes for sure, but something tells me his process was always quite experimental like that tbh, I think a lot of these sample rhythms are not directly laid down with steps but emerge from modulating samples. That’s how I’ve gotten the closest to these kinda beastly hell-workshop rhythms. A lot of samples consisting of foley “phrases” with several hits where I go wild modulating playback speed, create new transients with effect & amp modulation, jam out recordings which then get chopped and looped further

I do this with an intergrated back and forth resampling process between Logic and my Octatrack. So I should probably get out of this syntakt thread - but I saw blawan and had to post

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@mishpult Wow, that’s too kind :black_heart: Thank you, that means a lot to me :pray:

@GetsCold Nah just get a Syntakt, fill it with your favourite samples and join us :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: