Dragon's Den (3 hours)

I heard a demo deadmau5 put out, and wondered how he was getting that super thick kick drum. I've heard many many trance tracks and a lot of them have that signature thumpy lush sound. I know the high end gear has something to do with it, but I have a plethora of indie and free VSTs that might be able to do the trick just as well. I thought I would try to recreate it to the best of my ability. Last night I created a sketch for a straightforward trance piece with a fun lead in the chorus (hopefully), and this is what I get to begin with today.

Listen to it.

I don't like the intro at all but that's because I haven't given it much thought. I know I want to do a very texture heavy ambiance to sort of just help move the beat a long. The current intro is really just the lead mushed up with delay and some fast LFO modulating the cut off freq.

The percussion needs to be a lot more interesting for this kind of intro to work but I'm getting to that. The bass synth that gets introduced is straightforward, but I hate the melody. I want to make it cool. As far as the sound I will think about deepening it a bit. Also, Triangle 2 is solid.

I haven't any compression to anything at the moment, the only thing being the mixdown with fruity limiter so everything comes up better for your listening pleasure. However I'm no master of the process mind you, so bear with me.

I used to use Waves Compressor because it rocks, but since I'm flying straight and I never bought it I can no longer use it. If anyone has suggestions towards a solid freeware compressor, preferably with built in db meter, let me know!

I use a chorus effect on the bass but it's not set in stone. I just wanted to enrich it at the mid level a bit. I took away one LFO to keep the bass defined, however it's not good enough and I might try messing around with T2 instead. The key of the entire song is also in limbo, as I've yet to really experiment. Lot's to do.

I used fruity kick for my initial (and current) kick sound. I got a nice thumper going. It's not enough though, but I think it's a good starting point. Now I have to lush it up somehow. Any ideas? I'm going to try layer in some brown noise perhaps with a low cut filter enveloped to curl down as the kick fades. Sounds like I've done it before but I haven't, I just know noisy can sometimes equal lushy haha. We'll find out. :P

Kick as it looks like in Edison, and the elementary Kick sound within a measure.

I'm using some pseudo side chaining to give the kick more room, and that obvious ducking sound. I use fruity peak controller on the kick channel, and fruity balance on the duck channel. I like to use fruity balance because that saves me the channel volume for fine tuning the mix. The effect is subtle but works for clearing out some of the minor elements when I really want a thump but the real reason eludes me. Maybe it just sounds good?

So the rest of the instruments are mostly composed of 3X Osc, including the hats. I plan on varying rhythms ofc as they're boring at the moment. I rely on Ohm Forces' OhMyGod! to do lots of magic. It really creates some nice textures. The lead is Green Oak's Crystal. Its only using 1 osc, that might be the issue I'm having with it. I think it can be spiced up a bit, but I'm afraid it'll lose it's lead feel if it's too complex.

I'm using Ambience in my Send 1 for reverb, great unit. My go to verb. :)

I wanted to note that my speaker setup is really poor. I believe it will remain that way until I can figure something out. They are sitting on my desk, about 40cm from the wall. :S They're also not very far apart, and slightly behind my monitor. Ouch.

Those are two Behring-er Truth B2030A. I have the bass trim on them both :P Good enough for me. :) For now anyway.

So, next post I will update you on my results with the kick, and try to figure out some nice textures for engaging the listener during the intro. I'll be continuing to read Music Theory for Computer Musicians since I'm nub with theory haha. Anyways, a much recommended read.

Cheers!