| wayfinder |
hahahah i like how you're shouting, does that mean you put it on repeat? :)
this is unrelated, but i wrote a little blurb somewhere else about the track, so i'm posting that here as well
| quote: | the idea of this track came about from an 8bit synth sequence – it's still in there, but not very prominently (you can hear it in the intro, it's that kind-of bass). it was just a rhythmic little gameboyish square, but once i put it through a decimator, it got interesting. so i added a bass and a kick. i re-used a progressive house kick that i knew works well on a big system and made it darker and longer, then used a growling deep bass. it took a while to get the mixing right on these three elements, i ended up taking out a huge chunk of the low frequencies on that bitcrushed synth, and i sacrificed an interesting chord stab in the sequence cause it sounded bad with my snare. the bass plays a G F# C C# pattern with notes that blend into each other, which sounds stupid as a concept when you think about it but is actually a great way to make that schranzy undefined deep offbeat noise. calculated low-freq dissonance.
for percussion, i used some really old hiphop bass drums from tracker times and made a little two bar rhythm. i process that heavily: highpass, bitcrusher, really hard limiting, reverb, overdrive etc, to make it really washed out and broken, and then with a trancegate and sidechaining i get some rhythmic definition back.
hats and claps and such are really basic and standard i guess. mostly 909ish. i like using a very short clap with a huge reverb and then shaping that reverb with a loudness curve into my actual clap sound. i used to do all my drum levelling with volume changes of the sample in the piano roll, but i've grown to like the sound of a sidechained ride cymbal line, so i treat that separately.
believe it or not, i have no buses, no glue compression, none of that. i try and get the mixing right to avoid having to do that.
i made some tonal fx which consists of detuned squares and deep detuned saws, and some noise, run through two phasers with different lfos on them, then modulating the wavetable position of the saw (using Massive) to get movement into the sound. looking back at the track, i should probably given that sound its own moment, cause i really like it.
so that's when i thought, this is a pretty kicking main part, lets make a track from this. i didn't want to do the same kind of arrangement that i would use for a trance track, the elements aren't interesting or varied enough on their own and can't support such long parts, so i broke it up quite a bit. my main weapon was that kick/bass drop that, coming in from a high-passed kick and no bass just slays. that's why there are lots of parts where i take it away, and put it back on. the other main driver are the rides, so i was careful with those. i noticed that i needed another tonal fx element so i made a square alarm kind of thing and did a short stab once in a while. some sweeping noise fx (downsweeps sidechained to the kick, upsweeps sidechained to the off-beat hats so that you get a rhythmic building of tension and a different rhythmic release) to help smooth transitions, and that's basically it.
a little sum compression and limiting and then off to soundcloud to ruin it |
may be interesting to someone! |
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