Hoover sound refers to a particular synthesizer sound in electronic music, commonly used in Hard House music and other styles.
Contents |
Overview
The Hoover is a complex waveform that can be created with three oscillators, each spaced an octave apart, a heavy use of Pulse-width modulation and a thick Chorus effect. The sound is characterised by its thick, swirliness due to a fast LFO controlling the PWM and the heavy chorus. It is traditionally created with the Roland Alpha Juno-2 synthesizer using the WhatThe? patch. Most hoover sounds are generated on this synthesizer as it uses a unique method of PWM, whereby it splits the wave into 4 segments and modifies the width of these. Hoover sounds on many records these days are produced by using samples of Alpha Juno-2 Hoovers and Granular synthesis on these samples. The hoover sound is believed to first have appeared in a commercial production in 'Second Phase - Mentasm' produced by a collaboration between Joey Beltram and Mundo Muzique, and sometimes is referred to as a mentasm. However, mentasm normally refers to the sound sampled from this tune and re-used. The most famous record using a hoover sound is unmistakably Dominator by Dutch techno pioneers Human Resource. This track gained fame in 1991 and became a top 10 worldwide. Characteristic for this track was not only the Hoover, but also the over the top rap: I'm bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher, in other words sucker there is no other... I'm the one and only dominator.. Wanna kiss myself!
Example
This is what a basic hoover sounds like: Basic Hoover Example
Hoover replacements
Although the original hoover sound was created with a Roland Alpha Juno2 there are several replacements to choose from that include, but are certainly not limited to, the Alpha Juno 1, MKS-50 (Rack version of the Alpha Junos), and the JP-8000. The new Roland Juno G has a few presets that feature the Hoover sound.
VST instruments
VST instruments that can create similar sounds. Here is a selection of them:
- JxPlugins JX220
- reFX JunoX2
- JBM Hoovermaker
