Pulsating dynamic flow in volume

[Neon Breath]

Hey folks!

Need your input here. Since as few days, I’m revisiting the amazing Amon Tobin’s album ISAM. And the more I’m listening to it the more I’m fascinated by its complex sound design and far-fetched experimental & crazy sounds.

One thing I’ve been wondering and wanted to you ask you guys is what’s your suggestion/idea on how to create those fast rising ‘wavy’ pulsating flow in the volume of some of his sounds? It’s kinda hard to describe in words but as soon as you’ll hear the examples below you’ll see what I mean. From there, how would you create such rising & pulsating dynamics? Any techniques or even tools/plugin that might help?

Examples here:

Around 0:25 https://youtu.be/1WKPwaqpo0E?t=24
Around 1:10 https://youtu.be/1WKPwaqpo0E?t=70

I’m sure some of you guys will have great tips to share.

Thanks a lot guys

[CHOOS]

Tremolo? If it's just volume
But often its the opening of a filter and closing (on a LFO)

[Neon Breath]

Tremolo? If it's just volume
But often its the opening of a filter and closing (on a LFO)

As simplistic as it might look, hey that's a great tip! I tried some extreme tremolo of some pads & bass and yes, it works quite well! Then that inspired me to even combined the tremolo effect with some doppler effect, to create an even more strange pulsating amplitude. Great stuff, thanks for the tip (since there's no shake hands smilies)

[CHOOS]

(since there's no shake hands smilies)

hahaha no problem

[Kwurqx]

Tremolo? If it's just volume
But often its the opening of a filter and closing (on a LFO)

As simplistic as it might look, hey that's a great tip! I tried some extreme tremolo of some pads & bass and yes, it works quite well! Then that inspired me to even combined the tremolo effect with some doppler effect, to create an even more strange pulsating amplitude. Great stuff, thanks for the tip (since there's no shake hands smilies)

In this case it's just the amplitude ("volume") that changes. Since it is nice and periodic, probably by an LFO. Also over a longer strech of time, there's an upward pitch.

Opening and closing a Lowpass filter will usually also change the amplitude, since you're actually filtering/dampening away (some or all of) the energy of the higher frequencies (partials). Making the sum of all frequencies/partials amplitudes that make up the sound less then before the filtering. See FFT/iFFT for info on partials.

By the way Amon Tobin is very much into electronic music and (experimental) sound design. So you can expect less obvious ways of creating sounds and effects from him too.