How can I make this frequency sweep sound?

May 10, 2023 11:28 PM

At 0:55 in Prism's Spaceship Superstar, a low note sweeps or swoops smoothly up several octaves in pitch. It sounds like a sine wave to me, but I'm no expert. I'd like to duplicate that swoop. Difficulty: I'm cheap and lazy...

I have an old copy of Reaper and I'm hopeful that there's a free simple vst instrument out there that can make the sound. Ultimately I want to mix it into my version of Spaceship Superstar, so I guess something that runs in the daw would be most convenient, but maybe you have a better idea. Some external program that generates .wav files maybe? I'm all ears. Meanwhile, I might dink around with the webaudio api.

posted by mpark to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

I think you're right in that it's basically a sine wave sweeping slowly up an octave or two, but there's some effects on there as well - a reverb, at the very least, and I think a chorus and possibly a delay/echo, too. It's a very basic sound, and you should be able to recreate it using a free VST like Synth1.

Looking at the architecture of Synth1 (but without trying it myself), you want to use the mod envelope with a slow attack routed to Osc2; Osc2 set to a sine wave, with the mix control set to only Osc2. Shouldn't need any filter/lfo/amp. There's an effects section over on the right that you can tweak until it sounds right.
posted by parm at 2:56 AM on May 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

(for what it's worth, and while you're messing around with synths - the whooshing sound leading up to that is essentially just some white/pink noise run through a swept filter - it sounds like they're playing with the filter manually - and then a flanger, which you should also be able to recreate using Synth1 with some automation on the filter)
posted by parm at 6:32 AM on May 11, 2023

Response by poster: In fact, Synth1 was my first attempt at this but my random knob-twiddling was unsuccessful (for some reason!), but I'll give it another go with your hints. Thanks!
posted by mpark at 8:41 AM on May 11, 2023

It sounds like a sine wave to me too, with just a bit of reverb.

If you can find a steady sine tone sample, you could probably use Audacity or something similar to put an upward pitch bend on it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 11:29 AM on May 11, 2023

Best answer: This site has a frequency sweep generator tool that will let you save the output as a .WAV file. Setting the sweep from 60-3000Hz over 4 seconds, uncheck Logarithmic mode, seems to come pretty close. You can then process this WAV in something like Audacity to add a little reverb or whatnot.
posted by xedrik at 1:20 PM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

You might want a Shepard Tone generator
posted by music for skeletons at 2:19 PM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm pretty sure audacity also generates sine wave tones, so you might be able to do the whole thing in audacity
posted by cubeb at 3:13 PM on May 11, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Ha, xedrik! I probably should have checked back here sooner. In the meantime, I hacked something similar: simple frequency sweep generator
posted by mpark at 3:44 PM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: FWIW, Reaper has a Sine Sweep generator as a JS plugin (that's meant more as a testing/diagnostic thing but you might be able to wrangle something out of it) and it's own ReaSynth VST instrument, and I'm like 99% sure they're both included in the initial Reaper install.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:46 PM on May 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: In case anyone's interested, the final result: https://youtu.be/kU4R19vwRCg?t=246
posted by mpark at 11:56 AM on May 29, 2023 [1 favorite]