Heartland

This has been on my mind recently, how the heck did Andrew modify the Doktor to sound so mean especially on Floodland, more specifically on Neverland (A Fragment)? It sounds like a whopping thunderous drum beat that is ready to kick your ass anytime you hear it! Has any of the fans here tried to create something similar drum-machine-wise, if so post your results for the sake of it! Help the Doktor rise and reverberate again!

http://www.the-sisters-of-mercy.com/tech/doktors.htm is probably a good place to start:

By the time 'Floodland' was recorded, we had an Akai S900 sampler. Like manna from heaven. Most of the drums on 'Floodland' came via the Akai.

I recall a now extremely old posting on here that had a link to playing an Oberheim online at your leisure....

Floodland, at least, sometimes has boatloads of reverb applied to the drums. Sometimes I think hear a bit of delay as well (ie, the Bonham-esque drums on Never Land).

Also, many drum machines allow the user to tweak pitch, decay, etc. on the samples.

I think the drums on Floodland are using gated reverb, a specific type of reverb that was really popular in the 80's (it's the effect Prince used to make his Linn LM1 sound so bombastic). There are also other effects placed on the drums at different times. John Ashton says here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuQm27kgheQ that when producing Alice they plugged the drum machine they had (I think it was either an 808 or a 909) into an amplifier and recorded it with a mic to make it sound like it did, so perhaps Andrew used the same method on Floodland?

markfiend wrote:http://www.the-sisters-of-mercy.com/tech/doktors.htm is probably a good place to start:

By the time 'Floodland' was recorded, we had an Akai S900 sampler. Like manna from heaven. Most of the drums on 'Floodland' came via the Akai.

And it goes on to say he used the Akai to sample the kick and snare from a Yamaha RX5, the sounds of which you can find around the internet. For example: http://www.denhaku.com/r_box/rx5/rx5.htm

demolitionsisters wrote:This has been on my mind recently, how the heck did Andrew modify the Doktor to sound so mean especially on Floodland, more specifically on Neverland (A Fragment)?

Play around with equalization and distortion, and delay and reverb like mentioned above, and bass drum #2 and snare #1 above should begin to sound VERY familiar.

I think an actual RX5 has EQ built in but software like Reaper or Audacity, downloadable for free, can do the job as well. If you're fairly tonedeaf as expected (or required?) of a Sisters fan, I noticed in trying this that it can be helpful to try to match the frequency spectrums visually instead of by ear. I could post directions for my own attempt at the Never Land sound if I get it a bit more faithful, but some distortion and top end EQ seem to bring the RX5 samples pretty close already.

Hello majorsixth & welcome to myheartland

The Akai samplers also add their own character (low bit rate, etc). There's a plugin that tries to model the sound here https://www.mathieudemange.fr/rx950-cla ... converter/

not Floodland, FALAA-era-related, I found this vid in youtube about a modified oberheim DMX drum machine ala sisters' style, click here people ----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIKOAsfz6Sk

demolitionsisters wrote:This has been on my mind recently, how the heck did Andrew modify the Doktor to sound so mean especially on Floodland, more specifically on Neverland (A Fragment)? It sounds like a whopping thunderous drum beat that is ready to kick your ass anytime you hear it! Has any of the fans here tried to create something similar drum-machine-wise, if so post your results for the sake of it! Help the Doktor rise and reverberate again!

maybe not the same as dr Avalanche but close to orginal and a lot of fun Especially in quarantine time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_IbizAOlPI

Our main stuff is Yamaha RX5 via MAGIX software, synth BASS from MAGIX with a lot of DISTORTION (really awuf :/). All paths in MAGIX with a lot effects like EQ, reverb (in snare 3 different reverbs) delay, copression, Gate

the official site articlen pretty much covers the tweakling up to the PC era. DMX's inititially had no individual sound of their own, utilising as they did pre-chipped 80, 909 etc sounds.
ive owned all of those apart from the DMX at one time or another. 808 was the best.

Sorry to grave dig, but I have to add some more information for anybody looking. Floodlands is an RX5 snare sampled through an AKAI as mentioned. The snare was then put through a Yamaha SPX90 and a Drawmer DS201 gate. That will get you close, but I think it needs to go into a compressor like a DBX or something at the end of the chain.

Oh and one last thing, the DMX had it's own original samples and they're some of the best ever made.

Hello @replaceablehead & welcome to

what would then be the approach for the the bass drum, almost sounding as having a snare added, on the 85 live circuit, like at the beginning of FALAA from Newcastle/disguised in black? thats one of the most reverberating sounds. thanks

jost 7 wrote: ↑15 Dec 2022, 07:33 what would then be the approach for the the bass drum, almost sounding as having a snare added, on the 85 live circuit, like at the beginning of FALAA from Newcastle/disguised in black? thats one of the most reverberating sounds. thanks

It's just a snare on the same beat as the kicks, at least in that era (84-85);
on the modern version, it's a tambourine sample.

thanks husek, but practically with DMX sounds which i guess it were. any idea?

jost 7 wrote: ↑15 Dec 2022, 20:23 thanks husek, but practically with DMX sounds which i guess it were. any idea?

Well imho, the DMX part is the easy part, there's a whole chain of fxs and EQ though, that makes it a little bit harder to replicate.

for the intro itself, I like the results better when I combined a Kick + a Tom (with custom pitch);

Also the kick/hh have a custom pitch/mixing, here's mine:



I didn't have the time to explore it a lot, but I found the results acceptable, though they sound more like the royal albert hall version than disguised in black:

thanks again Gabriel. just loaded the Reverb sample set and will have some fun with it

finally a DMX-kit is set up and running in groove agent. nice

Most of the sound modification is done outside of the drum machine, which is why the live sound can sound a lot 'thinner'.
Move to the DMX allowed line outputs at 'pad' rather than (stereo) 'kit' level so you can apply different gating and effects to e.g snare / kick / hi-hat.
Not easily reproducible without a big old recording studio desk