How to make a Prodigy Voodoo People-style lead sound

Image: © Toru Hanai/Reuters/Corbis

Voodoo People's dirty lead sound isn't one that you'd take home to meet your mother, but it's certainly a useful patch to have in your locker. We're going to recreate it using Novation's classic V-Station synth, a demo of which can be downloaded here. The techniques shown can also be applied to other instruments, though.

Step 1: We'll start by using the V-Station's built-in distortion effect to create a guitar-style lead. Select one of the User patches to initialise the settings, then activate the effects section. Call up the Distortion and turn the Level fully up.

Step 2: To get a really dirty sound, we're going to adjust some parameters in the Filter panel and give our distortion more bite. Increase the Resonance to 104, and the cutoff Frequency to 60. Keytrack is set to 127 by default, so the cutoff frequency will be modulated by note pitch.

Step 3: Select the Reverb effect and the algorithm S Hall. Change the Level to 33. Next, activate the Delay and increase the Level to 15. Keep the Ratio at 1/1. Adding these processors gives the sound a sense of space and extra stereo action that makes everything that much bigger.

Step 4: Change the Wave shape to pulse, and set the PWM (pulse width modulation) to 15. This makes the sound more nasal - the higher the PWM, the thinner the sound. It's subtle, but if you turn the effects off, you can hear how much more aggressive the patch is.

Step 5: Turn the effects back on, then set the Amp Env Release time to 0, making our lead as tight as possible. Finally, select the Extra tab and set the Voice Mode to Mono. This limits the synth's output to one note at a time. And there you have it!