Has anyone come up with a realistic (IE actually mimics the circuits) model of an 808 handclap - or failing that, any techniques/tips for killer handclap noises generally? I've been messing around with filtered / sample-rate-converted / modulated noise for a while, but nothing that really cracks without a bit of SoundForge to scrunch it up a bit...

A while back, Dave Pape was asking about 808-style handclaps. I've been working for a long time on getting exactly *that* clap sound and it seems pretty difficult on the Nord Modular. I can get very close, but the timbre always seems a touch off the mark. At any rate, I've attached my 808-style handclap patch to this message. Sorry, but I haven't annotated this patch yet. So, some guidelines...

This patch is based on how I understand the 808 clap sound to be generated. Basically, two sawtooth LFOs act as the main sound source (i.e., they are used as if they are oscillators). They are also used to envelope a couple of bandpass filtered noise sources. The phase of the two LFO's is offset (Knob 6 can be used to change the phase relationship between the 2 claps - making the sound fuller or more thin). It sounds to me (and people have described) the 808 clap as being composed of 3 cycles of these LFOs. For more flexibility, I've enveloped the LFO's rather than using a counter to trigger exactly 3 hits. You can tweak the number of individual claps by playing with knobs 2 and 3, which control the hold time and release for the "Clap Env 1 and 2" envelopes.

Also, it's unclear to me exactly what frequency the 808 claps occur at -- Knob 5 adjusts the frequency of the LFOs -- effectively putting the claps closer together or further apart (if you turn it down too far, you must increase the hold time to hear a full 3 cycles or more of "claps").

In addition to the inititial "crack" of the clap, the 808 clap sound has a "reverb tail" simulated with an AD envelope that (I suppose) uses the same noise sources. In this patch, Knob 12 controls the mix between the initial crack and the reverb tail. Knob 15 can be used to adjust the length of the "reverb".

There is *a lot* of other sublety going on in this patch. First, while I'm *sure* that Roland used sawtooth type LFOs as the main sound source for their clap sound, you get a whole hell of a lot of extra low frequency energy from these sources that I do not hear in an actual 808 clap. So, you'll see that I use Filter C1 and Filter C2 to take out almost all of the low frequency energy and, at the very end of the signal path, yet another 12db highpass filter takes out a bunch more of the bottom end. (Also, the Smooth modules help to get a little closer to the particular timbre of the 808 clap.)

Another thing that is not immediately obvious about the 808 clap sound is that the timbre changes from high to low over the short length of the sound and I've simulated this with the "Clap Freq Sweep" AD envelope which modulates the bandpass filters.

Speaking of -- I've come to the conclusion that it is the unique sound of the filters used in the 808 that contributes most of the character of the 808 clap. You'll find by tweaking Knobs 14 and 15 (which control the center frequencies of the two bandpass filters), that you can get a wide range of clap sounds out of this patch and you can even get pretty darn close to the 808 clap timbre... but not exactly. Knob 11 controls the balance between the sounds emanating from the 2 filters, by the way.

Other stuff: Knob 16 controls filter resonance, Knob 18 controls the color of the noise sources (surprisingly, this is not particularly useful), and an Overdrive module at the end of the signal chain gives everything some much needed punch (varying the amount with Knob 13, can make things mellower or more aggressive).

Anyway, this is a pretty cool starting place for exploring the surprisingly complex world of analog claps.

Jeez dude, that's pretty close! Here's a tweak - I just pushed the top end a bit and boosted the volume a load, and diddled with default resonance settings: again, not exactly an 808 clap, but it's actually quite close to a real handclap sound. I guess it's always going to be the way, isn't it: we'll be skirting round the exact noise, but never get there... I tried to take your notes as a starting point and write my own patch, but wiped out cos I didn't have much time to throw at it.

Don't know much about 808 handclaps but here's some thoughts/experience: handclaps IMHO sound good when they come as a 'cloud'

made up of several individual hanclaps with different timbre, amplitude, pan and rhythmic precision. They kind of fall together around the (back)beat

The way I do this on the Nord is by using white noise through two shapers both on full exp position, and sending that through a hp/bp filter with the audio signal also modulating the filter cutoff (maybe the audio signal went through an env follower first (can't remember) this gives a cool flikery sound, which can go through a multi stage envelope with a quick attack at about half volume, quick decay and then a louder env

with a longer decay, this kind of imitates one of the 'clappers' clapping ahead of the others. Now what's nice is to tweak the beat so that the claps come in a bit before, on or just after the beat(*), or even better have them in different places depending on where you are in the phrase.

Try the daKNEWKNOBfunk.pch on the archives, I think the claps use this principle.

(*) List of recordings where you can really hear the benefit of being behind on and/or ahead of the beat, being in/out, quantized/notquantized

puff daddy: bad boy for life (rolling all over the place)

d'angelo: how does it feel (unique sloppy tightness)

brandy: can we / what about us (futuristic sci-fi groove)

wamdue project: king of my castle (gotta lova those open hats)

Also when you hear african percussion it sometimes has this sort of strange pulsation where you could say that time is not equal in all parts of a phrase, some of them are pulling the beat others are pushing some are just riding on it...

And all the hints about shaping white noise and the multiple envelopes are well worth hearing - I've been learning to love signal shapers over the past 6 months but like an idiot I haven't really put them on noise sources yet. Now my mind's been opened that little bit further, I'll give it a go. Although you're right, I'm more on a techno tip than a hip-hop/R&B thing, so I'll probably experiment with distributed swarm-claps, and then just overdrive them, sample them up and crop so I can drop it to within a microsecond of the on-beat - such is the dead, cold accuracy I demand.

PS I know what you mean about the African percussion thing - I've got a RealWorld CD of Ndiyaye Doudou Rose playing - in fact his whole extended family playing - and every beat is a kind of multi-person rumble. REALLY nice, kind of rolls your head around...