Aquatic Ambiance and the Korg Wavestation [quick vid]
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
- just a quick video talking about the Wavestation and how David Wise drew inspiration from it to write Aquatic Ambiance... but most importantly: showing the original sounds instead of just talking about them.
iPad footage from
• iWavestation "Ski Jam"...
DKC footage from
• SNES Longplay - Donkey...
I never actually realised the whole Wavestation innovation was in the percussion! Always thought it was the really long strings or something.
Love it when people actually look into the facts that we often hear repeated ad-verbatim without ever understanding what it's actually about
Same thing here @Dillon Tam. @GST Channel, I'm really getting into PC-98 music, have you heard the music of Advanced Power DoLLS 2, for the PC-98? Man all the songs are great, but the song WAVE... Man, there is some kind of witchcraft there. :D
It really depends how you program it, though a lot of the presets leaned into the rhythmic sequencing possibilities. I do mostly ambient programming with mine.
I think it would be more fair to say that it was the percussion and the bassline. Even if you count the high notes in the bassline as percussion, since they sound more like a marimba, the low notes are staccato, but not what I'd call percussion.
Those wavestation percussion noises sound EXCATLY like the clanks in Mining Melancholy
thats totally because they are haha. its the tambourine waveform played low down!
This blew my mind. Just goes to show how inspiration is the foundation of every piece of art.
Actually never knew the connection between the Wavestation and Aquatic Ambiance, so not only was that interesting but the rest of the video was as well.
Also, I always thought it was Aquatic Ambience for some reason, so, huh
the spelling seems to vary between Ambience and Ambiance. I'm not sure what the difference is actually, though by habit I tend to lean towards Ambiance. This spelling matches the first official release of the soundtrack, for whatever that's worth!
So he took the arbitrary arrangements of a preset list of wave forms and not only reproduced it by coding it into the SNES but also built a song around it. Goddamn.
Ikr the guys brain is a master piece! I wish him more years in life & more songs to come.
I love the iPad version of the Wavestation a lot, you can also use it with Korg Gadget. Ski Jam and The Wave Song are classic patches, kinda like how Universe is the classic preset of the Korg M1. The M1 was also populair among game composers, Jonathan Dunn of Ocean Software used the Universe patch on the intro tune of Darkman on the Amiga. It's quite a mesmerising tune.
The Wavestation had a predecessor, called the Prophet VS, from Sequential Circuits of Dave Smith. Sequencial Circuits was aqquired by Yamaha in the late 80's and at the time Korg was also a subsidiary of Yamaha. The design team that created the Prophet VS also created the Wavestation. Korg released a new synth based on the Wavestation's design recently, called the Wavestate.
This is a great video... even the parts just explaining the basic synth stuff, you explained it in a way that my mind could grasp. Your videos are pleasantly short too.
The Wavestation was used on a lot of Björk tracks, and can even be heard on Michael Jackson's "Keep The Faith"
The sample loops remind me of what Roland did in the D-50, the "Jam" PCMs were basically the same thing, except much cruder.
Great video! I loved the connections underlying all of this!
The Ski Jam preset is great. It was used by Paul Hardcastle on Inner Changes. Also used a lot by Jogeir Liljedahl in the mid-nineties. 🤷🏻♂️ Whoever did the sound design on those presets did a great job.
the sound designer is now a youtuber on here, his name is pluginguru!
Oh God your mention of Jogeir Liljedahl made me realize how Wavestation-inspired the drum section at Oro Incenso appears.
@@quadpad_music Hehe, funny you should mention this. We both attended an event this weekend, and he told me the story of how his buddy's father (if I remember correctly) got a hold of a Wavestation, and Jogeir asked him if he could sample it - which led to all of those great tunes!
Also in Keith Emerson Band's version of Emerson Lake and Palmer's The Barbarian (Emerson's take on Bela Bartok), played live in 2008.
I've recorded each audio channel of Aquatic Ambience then mixed it up to 16 tracks as i've split every sound used so it can be explored even more in detail. I'll be using the Wavestation to demonstrate which sounds was used and play some in full
Great video. You have a a new sub.
I love how you spliced the music at the end. Sounded great.
Holy cow!
This is pretty wild to see.
Thanks for showing us. 🤘🏽
Ski Jam was used in Keith Emerson Band's version of Emerson Lake and Palmer's The Barbarian (original by Bela Bartok), played live in 2008.
So the 'step sequencing' is really what gives AA that watery flowey feeling despite having sharp contrast in wavelengths lol
This is a fantastic video. Short, concise, to the point. Superb :)
In editing, I spent some time cutting down my meandering thoughts and was a concerned that I didn't cut enough, but this comment eases those concerns. thanks
I also heard Sonic Adventure’s game over theme was created using Echo Hunter font
Great and simple explanation !
2:00 according to my ear, this is sampled in a song in LittleBigPlanet PSP
ua-cam.com/video/Hce1_7OdTyE/v-deo.html
that is indeed the very same synth patch!
If I may ask, what're you using to generate the envelope shown at 0:42 and if not, is there an alternative that does a similar thing (that you know about)?
that'd be Vital, probably one of the cleanest VSTs out there right now.
fantastic subject my friend
I don't think it'll be possible because of copyright, but I'd like to see a video on Harold Faltermeyer's work on composing for videogames. I think it's only Jack Orlando and Two Worlds, but maybe he can answer that personally if you ask him via his UA-cam channel.
Fucking had a feeling when messing with my wavestate
wait how did he even get the sounds on the floppys then on the snes its crazy
can we get a full version of that edit?
I used to sleep to Aquatic Ambiance.
I still do it though admittedly, i found it only recently
💙
great video, thanks!
It is a replica of a Wavestation sound, only it is not a technique but its essence.
Do you know what the most fun underwater bubble popping sound is or one close thag could help make it?
I can't say that I know what you're referring to...
@@GSTChannelVEVOLike an underwater bubble popping sound that's more high pitched instead of deep like usually
I own Korg DS synthesizer for the Nintendo DS, and I think it's based on the Korg Wave Station. Am I right?
nope, the Korg DS-10 is based on the vintage MS-10, which predates the Wavestation by about 12 years
Vital is a great synth isn't it!
besides just being a great way to make cool sounds, it has an incredibly readable interface. I think it's a great way to illustrate some basic synth concepts, hence it's use here
@@GSTChannelVEVO yeah good thinking. I've never sound designed so fast on a synth. It's a UI triumph
So David Wise had to split the sample into pieces.
I'm confused as to which tracks are the Korg samples and what is generated by the Super Nintendo?
"Hi amazing work! I am writing to you from Argentina, I have a huge project with a hacker rom from Russia, we are going to hack the sega umk3, it will come out in a physical cartridge for the console, and I wanted to ask you, the cemetery The stage never had its own melody like in the arcades, use gems engine could you try to recreate it?
This *is* possible, but I can't do it myself. sorry!
@@GSTChannelVEVO What can't you do exactly? compose the melody?
@@lucasramos7754 I could probably write a song that sounds ok, but I don't know how to get songs data from GEMS into a format that can be readily inserted into an existing game.
@@GSTChannelVEVO if that's the problem, i could talk to this russian rom hacker, maybe he can guide you with something, but he can't compose music
@@GSTChannelVEVO If you could give me an email to get in touch with you, maybe it will be possible to create such a feat
Someone Is watching Splash Wave series :D
whoops, busted! lol
I don't want to disparage Splash Wave because his videos are amazing, but he did kinda zoom into the wrong features of the sound, and he's not the first. But he is the one that spurred me into making this video
@@GSTChannelVEVO Really cool and insightful video as always! And sorry for kinda messing it up.. I really love music and audio equipment but in the end graphics/design is my main area of expertise.
@@strafefox I don't think I can blame you, really! I spent ages researching David Wise and did not find a single source that made this connection to Aquatic Ambiance and The Wave Song. It's just something I happened to know since music / sound design is my main area of expertise. ;)
That was tha original synth ? No computers back then so he just used that synth ? cool
Inspiration? He straight up stole the free sample and claimed it as his original creation. At least Barber Beat producer has the decency to claim their pillage and plunder.
Video is too short! DKC's soundtrack has too many videos of covers, remakes and those dubious 'restorations' that spreaded like a plague. The few videos discussing the soundtrack are about boring music theory. There is such potential in exploring the technical side of soundtracks...
Honestly, I'm not sure what more to say on the technical side! Music theory analysis is something I'm not particularly experienced with, but I enjoy those too.
Are you seriously complaining about DKC covers and restorations? How is that a bad thing?