Haddaway - What is Love Intro Synth

[astralprojection]

I just stumbled into this thread and thought I'd resurrect it since I'd always wondered the same thing myself. What synth did he use? There are several iconic sounds in this track including the air chords, scratchy bass and weezy lead.

The only people who would really know are Dee Dee Halligan and Karin Hartmann Eisenblätter the German music producers who wrote the song before selecting Haddaway to sing it when he was signed to their label Coconut Records in 1993.

The track is notoriously difficult to simulate using software since the sonic complexity of the iconic chords are probably from real hardware electronics not just noise added to a soft synth. I've tried it many times myself with several different soft synths by adding noise and it just doesn't sound right. I strongly suspect they used a hardware synth for both these chords and the sharp bass, one of the most famous bass sounds of 90's eurodance.

I recently added spectral distortion to Fathom so I thought it might be a good time to take another swing at those chords to see if I could get closer to the real Haddaway sound, here's the result.

https://static.kvraudio.com/files/3302/ ... s_love.mp3

well i think my saw+comb+hp is a bit closer in this case

https://sndup.net/gsj5/
(btw ignore the melody if that helps you its prob not in the right key and def not bpm, i just put notes in to show the patch)

PS Sound is too high and it's more like a plucky sound with a gentle attack. Some filter movements going on, think that causes the "phaser" sound.

that would be a comb filter.

[FathomSynth]

Yes you got the lead closer than I did. How did you do that?

You used Alchemy with a comb filter and high pass filter? Anything else? I can't tell if it is just one voice with a comb filter or two voices just barely detuned.

Your BPM is too slow but I know you probably did that to hear the sound better. There are various versions of the original song between 120 BPM (radio mix) and 124 (dance mix), I chose 123 since it just sounded the closest to my recollection.

The air chords are the toughest part in my opinion I would be curious to see if anyone can duplicate those.

[excuse me please]

Well, it is my favorite 90s track and it's an iconic sound. But these 90s German producers want to keep it mystery afaik. Several times I tried to get info. Seems to annoy them afaik, however.

Hot bread, big deal. I will get there anyway. Then they have a reason for some real annoyment

[EvilDragon]

I think the PWM sound is just something like SH-101 or the like. The distorted organ is coming from Roland JX-1, probably slammed into a Mackie mixer to saturate.

[chk071]

I once did the bass sound in Spire. Here's the preset: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Z4o7 ... rzdAoDOmZg

I frankly don't know how close it is. IIRC, someone said that the original was made with the Yamaha DX7, or something ("Lately Bass"?). Many ways lead to Rome.

[EvilDragon]

The bass is TX81Z Lately Bass indeed, not DX7.

[FathomSynth]

That's the rackmount version of the DX11 which is an FM synth. That makes sense since the FM is probably used to make the base so sharp and cut through the mix. I will try adding some FM to the bass and see if that gets it closer.

The organ chords sound like they have some sort of mid range band pass going from high to low using a quick envelope but the range still set so it stays in the mid range. Wish I had a JX1 to experiment with.

[excuse me please]

I only know this following track where a comparable impression came to my ears. Although the effect itself is far more apparent. Starts around 1:15.
Kind of forget about attempts to recreate the sound because it's still far up my level:


https://youtu.be/gyKARPpUVJc

[EvilDragon]

The organ chords sound like they have some sort of mid range band pass going from high to low using a quick envelope but the range still set so it stays in the mid range. Wish I had a JX1 to experiment with.

JX1 only has a lowpass and a highpass, but not both at the same time.

[excuse me please]

I'm not sure, the gating making things pretty complex, one has to do reverse engineering on the gate effect as well. There's no way around, I'm afraid.

[astralprojection]

Yes you got the lead closer than I did. How did you do that?

You used Alchemy with a comb filter and high pass filter? Anything else? I can't tell if it is just one voice with a comb filter or two voices just barely detuned.

Your BPM is too slow but I know you probably did that to hear the sound better. There are various versions of the original song between 120 BPM (radio mix) and 124 (dance mix), I chose 123 since it just sounded the closest to my recollection.

The air chords are the toughest part in my opinion I would be curious to see if anyone can duplicate those.

yeah just 1 saw, in unison with some detune, heavily highpassed, then a comb filter sweeping across it with a lfo. some some slight envelepe action. (and pretty much any synth thesed days have a compb filter, so you def dont need alchemy, i just love the sound it creates for certain applications.
yes the bpm is at 100 cause thats my default bpm when i open a new project. so i didnt bother changing it since i thought the melody wouldnt matter much when the patch is what is at question.
having said that your recreation sounds more like a remix, and good one at that!

but, after trying it with a PWM pulse, and modulating that, it creates the same "comb filtering" effect on a saw wave, without using nether a saw or a comb filter. but it does it in a bit more accurate way, and yeah, im 99.9% sure now that the original was using Pulse/square and pulse width modulation instead of the comb filter- even though i think in moderns times thats also a good way of emulating the old pwm sound. i always thought PWM was the precursor to unison saw waves, cause it created the same similar fat sound (depending on your Mod/lfo).

[fedrek]

Check this out.

P.S: I'm a noob in FL Studio. I don't know how to properly use and set up effects. I just picked up the song by ear and used a lot of effects in the row. If you are a professional user of this sequencer, it will be easier for you.

I think i came closest to this song.

https://youtu.be/bZs7qcnw2hA

[Spark Attack]

Hi all,

I know this thread is a couple of years old, but for anyone wanting a really good breakdown of this classic Eurodance track, there is channel on YouTube that does loads of them, and here is their breakdown of 'What Is Love' by Haddaway. Instrument by instrument, and it sounds very close!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQQ9h06ysg4