Making a Rising and Falling 8bit Sound in NI Massive

When it comes to classic, old school sounds being put to good use in modern music, the 1980’s 8-Bit video game game is a popular one. Here is one way to make and use one!

First what we want is a more unique sound than most people use so ours stands out a bit. We will use all three main oscillators to accomplish this. Load up a Scrap Yard wavetable on OSC1, an Iron wavetable raised one octave on OSC2 and a Melancholia wavetable dropped one octave on OSC3. Each of these are detuned a few bits to create a gentle. natural phasing effect. Both OSC2 and OSC3 are running in Formant mode.

Once you have all the oscillators set up to match the image above, you will want to set up the Modulation OSC panel to match the image below. You can turn it on and apply the Stepper to it once we have set it up.

The rest of this session is going to be spent setting up a Performer and a Stepper. Both will modulate several parameters and automate our sound for us. First the Performer. As you can see in the example below I have drawn in a custom curve that will start the sound at the same point in each step but end in a different place. Since this will reassigned to control the Amp knob of each of the main oscillators, it adds both rhythm and volume fluctuation to our sound.

Now for the fun one. Let’s set up the Stepper. It’s a simple patter I have drawn in, and very consistent through the steps from beginning to end. A perfect controller for some pitch modulation! We will be assigning it to both the pitch and wavetable position parameters for each of the oscillators, as well as the Phase parameter on the Modulation OSC panel. Make sure you pay attention to the way each parameter is being modulated. This is important, as we want part of our sound falling as the rest is rising. If this is not done right, your sound will not turn out the same as the examples below.

There are two audio samples to listen to here. The first is just our sound on its own. The second is with other instruments in play. This way you can get a better idea of how a sound like this one will work in a mix.

I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial on how to create a layered sound that rises and falls at the same time. And maybe even learned a thing or two along the way. If you have a request or would like to share your own tutorials on the site, please send us a message letting us know. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab