Style: House

BPM: 135

Production time: Over a month (on and off, of course)

Comments:  The only thing that remains true to the original version, which I started over a month ago, is the basic drum beat.  This thing changed over time and I called upon my friend, Deven Neil, for input from time to time (thanks, mate!)

To be honest, their will be a revision to this – there are a few levels that I’m not happy with (bass needs amping up) and I am not completely satisfied with the transition.  Ah well.  The good news is that I have an great idea for a filter-house remix.

This track I really went to town on bit-crushing effects and producing my own instruments.  Starting off, we have a standard beat intro – snappy and tight with variation now and again to keep it interesting.  I use crash cymbals to give the track a bit of energy, and to avoid them sounding samey, I vary the crashed between slightly effected (reverb) and several types of delayed echo.

A “trancey” sounding arpeggiated synth is introduced – a simple Operator produced patch.  A low pass filter provides the “emerging” sound.  Also I use an “whooshing” effect in the background which builds over time.  Again, this is an Operator produced patch – just some layers of white noise with a hint of sine to give it a little hum.

The first breakdown consists of a heavily effected Operator preset (tsk, tsk).  I zapped a ton of effects on this – including some serious bit crushing (or Redux as it’s known to Ableton).  I had an absolute blast varying the amount of crushing and I spent a lot of time varying the on/off values of the effect (so the effect alternates rhythmically).  Oh yes, I use a volume on/off command to produce a psuedo gating effect – makes the synth stutter along nicely.

The bassline is another Operator production – some sines and squares where used here.  The bassline actually was something else entirely until Deven Neil focused me back on task, forcing me to actually tie it in with the melody.  The bassline will be getting louder on the second revision.  At this point I introduce a sidechained variation of the synth line (complete with bit crushers and a delayed synth stab – which also has a lot of effect variation built in).

The second transition is one that I am not entirely happy with.  It sounds a little awkward, and it took me a few weeks to get it to the point that it’s at now.  It’s a little stark and the lead-in is rather abrupt.

Despite that, I do like the build of it.  Nicely effected synth stabs with some subtle crunching.  Again, there’s a white noise swoosh in the background.  I also conjured up some lasers and “bass booms” (sine waves which pitch-bend down an octave over the course of a second or so.)

The next portion of the track is more of a “happy” sounding bounce-along.  The synth was built using Analog and I provided a lot of variation by varying the octave of one of the oscillators and applying some well timed filter effects.  I made a cool sounding voice-box type instrument and apply this in the background – it keeps the groove snapping along nicely.

By reducing the instrumentation used in the beats I streamline them which provides a nice transitional framework – back into the original track melody for the finish.

While this is my most technically accomplished track yet (it really took a lot of tweaking ) I really want to go back and smooth over the main transition – it still bothers me, and I think you will all agree.