in Tempest, Uncategorised

Tempest Recipes: Apito – The Samba whistle

So it’s been a while – life and all that – but I’ve somehow found time to rekindle my love for the Tempest. Let’s get back to the business of making sounds on this thing.

To start, a nice ‘n’ easy analogue take on the apito – the brazilian samba whistle – otherwise used world-over by your friendly local match official.

  • Start with 2 Triangles – around F6 and F#6
  • Apply extreme detuning to Osc 2 (fine +/-40)
  • For the Amp envelope, use ADSR with a decent amount of sustain and shorten the default release time to around 30.

Sounds vaguely familiar, but needs some movement…

  • Arm LFO1 with the random waveshape map it to Osc1 frequency – a high rate 126 but only a small amount 5.
  • Map LFO 2 (square) to Osc 2 frequency and give it some welly with a rate of 120, Amount 83. This mimics the little ball inside the whistle.
  • Try both filter slopes with lots of Filter FM and a slight envelope to emphasise the attack. Also, use the high-pass filter with a setting of about 50.

As always, not set in stone – play around with it. You can spice it up, perhaps by adding a little pitch envelope or noise to model referee spit. 😛

Plenty of bonus sounds open-up when played chromatically, especially at low and high octaves where Tempest’s analogue character really shines through.

Try it through a nice delay. Mmmmm.