Music Production #FastTracks - vowl. | LevelsFM

Music Production #FastTracks - vowl. | LevelsFM - YouTube

so the technique of the shimmery vowl. synth is get a vocal sample or any sound and uh whack a uh saturate no whack an eq on it and then a gate and make sure sorry i'm just rushing this i'm it let me start again yeah yeah calm down okay okay okay so eq uh a reverb make sure the reverb isn't too high up actually no yes yes and then throw a gate on it throw a gate on it so it's like really pulsating sounds bad um and then a distortion

and then another reverb cool people should loop that and then um another eq at the bottom and basically it sounds really bad but the second eq that's below the distortion and gate you can automate that so that should be low and you kind of automate that and it can make it like go from a really tight gate kind of shimmery synth into this like big like kind of space and then suck it back in and it's like really it's like a distorted uh synth basically because the reverb going into the distortion and gate smothers the sound so it goes from like what would be like a song into just a single sound that's kind of like you know what i mean um so yeah like in my song cold it's literally just the chorus of the song ran through that kind of chain it sounds like a thick like super saw type synth

okay let me just write this down i'm just gonna try and remember to put that in the youtube i'll try and link to cold on the youtube uh thing so let's see 146. um cool so can you tell us what the f what the purpose of the first eq is what are we doing with that first eq in the chain so that would be and also i'll probably send you a message after this podcast just so you can actually have the the order of things so it's not so butchered um it's yeah so a pretty basic eq of just like high passing a bunch of the low end crap that to give room for your like bass and drums and stuff um and then just like softening just a little bit of the highs and stuff so you can really get the crazy distortion and reverb really like high pitched going into the gate um and then

yeah so after the gate you have that extra reverb which is fully turned down but then you automate it and you can make it swell in and out to make big kind of like big like atmospheric synth sounds and tighten it in you don't have to do that but and then the final eq is just to clean it up so you take a fair bit of the high out because obviously you're distorting and you're distorting reverb which sounds pretty mental that's great so when you when you say the second reverb is totally turned down you mean the wet dry mix is on dry and then you're turning it wet to do these big like almost delay throw almost style things fully so it's like the the reverb on that one is yeah like pretty ramped up like it's super like the like mix the depth the decay time like i'll have my decay time on like 11 or something stupid and then yeah it's the full wet

dry that you're automating yeah so it's just like coming in and out and then it is the you set the distortion or saturation between the first and second reverb is that correct or is it after the second reverb yeah so the order i'll just say the order again because i don't it the order is eq um yeah eq the first reverb which you can kind of customize that's like completely up to you like the more reverb you do the more of a washed out synth it'll be okay and the less it'll be more clear so it's eq reverb and then you have your distortion um so you're distorting the reverb and all that and then that goes into the gate which makes it way tighter so it goes from like this big like mess into like right you can control you can control the chaos so what type of distortion is this like a

really distorted really saturated overdrive what is it yeah are you it's like a razor like a razor distortion um like super sharp um so yeah like a blood overdrive or something or overdrive would really work um probably fab filter satin would work too your stock distortion would probably work like um okay and then yeah after the gate it's just you have that wet the wet dry reverb which is huge which you can automate um and then a final eq just to clean it up however you want that's cool but that's like i've used that technique a bunch of times and the first time i used it was in headlock and that was just like a result that i've never heard before and i was like this is crazy i thought it was like such a fluke um and yeah i loved it i i think i know the sound you're talking about in your tracks and if it's the one i'm thinking of it reminded me of the blade runner

soundtrack are you a fan of blade runner at all i haven't actually seen it but i i feel like i've heard the soundtrack quite a bit and sounds epic yeah it reminded me of that it's got that space texture that futuristic space texture that's it um which is cool um awesome dude that's great i love that and i really like it going back through the first time it was a little confusing and then after you went back and walked us through it i think it makes it makes sense to me what what's going on um and people can try that at home and um you know like you say you don't have to do it exactly the same way you do like part of the fun is setting stuff up the wrong way and running into mistakes anyway right for sure and like i definitely want to add on to that is like you can do it with like anything so like as a chord progression or something you've made or you can just sample like your favorite song or any song and if you can just get it in time with gate like it'll

sound crazy oh yeah so like i i use it for like like on any sample and it will sound really crazy it's mainly for like kind of big drops and stuff or like a big climax point but you could definitely use it in like more subtle ways i've used it for ad-libs in like certain songs and stuff and it sounds really cool do you have a a method to maybe we talked about this before but i don't think we did do you have a do you think of song structure when you're writing a song or is it all just you don't even you're just throwing paint at the wall do you think in terms of structural blocks yeah uh it's it's only intuitive when it doesn't work i would say like my song structure is like usually i have a pretty good idea of like how i'm gonna block things out but then when it doesn't work that's when it's no man's land and it just weasels its
way through right it's cool [Music]