Need Help Getting This Sound

[Legion]

So I'm trying to figure out what instrument is playing at the very beginning of this song:



I heard it again in a Beach Boys song today and thought it would sound great in a song I'm working on, 'Sunrise In Ponyville'. I honestly can't tell if it's a string or horn or what, so it'd be awesome if you guys knew. Bonus points* if you can point me towards a soundfont/vst/something that can get that sound. *Bonus points don't actually get you anything.

[Peak Freak]

I hope you don't mean the violin, but the space sounding synth, which is also playing the main melody o_o

If you really heard it in a Beach Boys song, it is a Theremin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
But from what I hear it is more a simple Synth, with enough portamento/glide/however you call it.
I neither have Theremin samples nor VST's, but it might be easy to rebuild with a Software Synth:
You just need one Sine-OSC, put a low shelf filter over it, and then you just need a lot of glide/portamento.
You can add some Vibrato on your modwheel, Theremin players often use a lot of vibrato ( because it is so hard to hold a tone upright ).

Hope that helped a lil bit

[Legion]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure what I heard in the Beach Boy's song was something different, but from what I can tell by a Wikipedia page, you were spot on with the Theremin.

As for the synth, I have no clue how to do most of what you just said, but this is my queue to learn, isn't it? Thanks a ton for the instructions, I'll definitely put them to good use.

[Versilaryan]

That's not a theramin in that song. The theramin has a MUCH brighter sound. It sounds like lowpassed triangle wave (maybe layered with a sine wave) with portamento/glide and some delay. You should be able to do something like that in synth1 pretty easily.

If you want instructions:
Set oscillator 1 to sine, oscillator 2 to triangle. Set osc 2's fine-tune to 12 o'clock. Go to the amp section and turn the attack down a little bit. Turn off the chorus. Set it to legato, and turn the portamento to around 10 o'clock. Mess with the filter frequency and the mix as needed. Leave everything else alone, and you should be fine.

[2Noponies]

^^^ This sounds like a recipe for awesomeness

[Legion]

That's not a theramin in that song. The theramin has a MUCH brighter sound. It sounds like lowpassed triangle wave (maybe layered with a sine wave) with portamento/glide and some delay. You should be able to do something like that in synth1 pretty easily.

If you want instructions:
Set oscillator 1 to sine, oscillator 2 to triangle. Set osc 2's fine-tune to 12 o'clock. Go to the amp section and turn the attack down a little bit. Turn off the chorus. Set it to legato, and turn the portamento to around 10 o'clock. Mess with the filter frequency and the mix as needed. Leave everything else alone, and you should be fine.

This wound up working REALLY well. Just gotta do some fine-tuning to perfect the sound, thanks a ton for the help.