This summer thing is really taking its toll on me, going so far as to demand that I leave for Mexico this Friday morning at 6:00 AM! Damn. So, this week's song gets only a few short days of gestation time early in the week.
While I often stick to gentle, reverb-soaked synth tones, I occasionally need to indulge in the noisier textures. My technique for such sounds typically consists of several instances of the Cubase 'DaTube' saturator effect, passed through a low-pass filter, and then some epic reverb. So this is the core sound of this week's track, but as is often the case… we must begin with some drums.
Naturally, we kick off with a peculiar drum pattern in BreakTweaker, built entirely by hand from its synth engines. This gets passed through Reaktor's 'The Finger' glitch effect as well as the peculiar BowEcho processor - which is based on 4 delay lines - and sees some modulation in the form of automated delay times and filter cutoff.
Next up: A punchy kick and snare pattern from Maschine, coupled with a mean bass line played in live from my MS-20 Mini. Suddenly, we freeze on a D# bass note while two panned synth melodies bounce around each other. The filter cutoff slowly fluctuates on the bass before opening up to a new drum pattern, while it gets treated to some rhythmic volume automation for dramatic effect.
Key equipment/software used for production:
- Native Instruments The Finger effect
- Inear Display BowEcho effect plug-in
- iZotope BreakTweaker drum plug-in
- Korg MS-20 Mini analog synth
- Steinberg Retrologue synth plug-in
- Steinberg Prologue synth plug-in
- Steinberg DaTube distortion plug-in
- Native Instruments Maschine Studio
- ValhallaDSP ValhallaRoom effect plug-inKey: C Major
BPM: 88
Time Signature: 4/4