Style: House

BPM: 130

Production time: 5 days

Comments: This track went off in several different directions before slowly gelling together – the number of mental blocks on this one was almost unbelievable.

I kept the beats nice and simple, and opted for closed hi-hats on the off-beats to keep the track less muddy. The snare sound is actually layered – two electronic snares and a clap.  That seemed to keep the beat nice and punchy.  The kick is another layered and slightly tuned drum – a bass hum, some mid range knock and a hi frequency click – makes it stand out even on a system which lacks bass.

The cutting vocal sound at the beginning was simply created by taking a vocal snippet and using Ableton to trigger the sample at different start points.  Incidentally, I was going to use the whole vocal, but it just didn’t fit with the track so I axed it.

The bassline really is a simple affair.  It’s bouncy enough, but certainly nothing special.  However, it does hold the beats and the arrangements together fairly nicely.  Made using Operator.

The vocal really came together during the last day and a half of production.  I was going to use a lot more of The Streets vocal talent, but it proved very hard to work with.  Mike Skinner tends to alternate between narrating rhythmically and simply talking.  So, I took a nice snippet, warped it to get it in time and I was happy with the results.

From the vocal came the vocoded synth – and I feel this works pretty well, too.  The vocoder is actually a free VST plug-in programmed by TAL.

I nearly went out of my mind drying to look for a kick drop (you know, a kick that alters pitch, like a booOOOm sound).  In the end, I simply programmed the bass boom in Operator – amazing what a couple of sine waves, a saw wave and some tweaking of the pitch envelope can do.

The actually breakdown is a little contentious.  Origianally, I wanted a hands-in-the-air piano or string arrangement, but I didn’t have access to my keyboard which really reduced my ability to come up with any semi-complex arrangements.  Instead I settled for a trancey breakdown (which I am a little concerened doesn’t really fit in with the house vibe) using a nice beefed up synth sound from the Synth 2 NX VST plug-in.

The swirly “wind” sound used in the build-up was generated using Operator and a bunch of white noise (with a little sine for harmonic flava).  Sync the LFO with the bear and add some pan effects and you got a fun swirly wind.  Of course, I gradually opened the low-pass filter to add to the tension.

There’s a great percussive sound in the build (also used throughout the track) which progressively gets higher in pitch.  This was originally a synth riff, but it was pretty boring.  I added a bit-crusher effect to the synth and the end-result was this cool rhythmic noise.  By alterating the sample rate the sound becomes quite lively.

Not really too much else to add.  There will be another mix down the line – possibly more electro or handbag house – depends whether I can get to my keyboard.

Enjoy