Going into this project, I decided I aimed to finally make a song that sounds good without an obscene amount of reverb. Reverb makes sounds that are not well-recorded or well-chosen sound less bad when put together. Also, I particularly love songs with extremely open, reverb-heavy sounds. These have both led me to drown my projects in reverb in the past, and for this project, I decided to make sure it sounded okay without reverb too.
The song is about two people I was close with in high school, and my feelings about leaving each of them behind when I came to college. My theme is leaving the past behind – because I am also leaving bad production techniques in the past!
The song started as just synth hits on the 40SC, a synth bass from the 40SC, and a kick sample and a snare sample that I acquired two years ago. I was feeling great about it and it was the best four-track song seed I’d ever made. I showed it to some friends who said it reminded them of Charlie Puth. He’s one of my favorite pop producers so this was a great compliment, and I decided to roll with this for the rest of the song. Below is the song after one day of working on it (plus the effects I later added to these tracks).
I made extensive use of lowpass filters on this song. I wanted it to have a dark, sultry, and reminiscent mood, and putting lowpass filters on many tracks helped me achieve this. I put one on both of the drum tracks and multiple other miscellaneous tracks. I also think that automating a lowpass filter sounds really good in intros and outros (for a fade-in or fade-out) although I’ll admit it is a little bit gimmicky and I don’t normally hear it in real songs.
I had a great relationship with the 40SC synth in this song. The presets were enlightening in how the 40SC synth works. I spent a lot of time isolating one of the waves in a multi-wave preset to see how they interacted with one another. I ended up using only modifications of presets in this song, but I feel like I could make a decent synth sound on my own with the 40SC.
Subtractive was much more difficult to use. I wasn’t skilled enough to create a synth sound in subtractive that sounded like it fit with the rest of my song. No matter what I tried it sounded too grating. By this point I also had plenty of synths from the 40SC, so I decided to go for white noise in Subtractive. I made a sweep with it that I used a few times in my song by automating the cutoff frequency on a lowpass filter.
I wrote the lyrics and recorded in the practice rooms in the basement of Pierson College. I recorded close-mic style so that I would not have to bring down the levels of all of my other tracks by an extreme amount. Here’s a sample of the vocals, with WAY less reverb than they originally had. Looking back on it, I think I still could have backed off on the reverb a little bit. Even without pitch correction, I actually feel okay about how these vocals turned out. Here is a section below to hear my vocals with their final processing.
There’s also a vocal harmony that I recorded and two vocal effects – both “ooh”s. One of them you can hear at 0:19 on the audio at the bottom of the post. The pitch is atrocious because it’s not in my vocal range and I probably should have gotten a friend to record it. I still think it adds a nice touch and I drowned it in reverb, which I think was appropriate. It acts as sort of a whistle or a chime and it is supposed to sound really far away, like the whistle at the beginning of Magic by Coldplay.
In the future, I would like to find a better dynamic balance between the vocals and all of the other tracks. I think the vocals ended up too loud on the verses and too quiet on the choruses.
The drums are sparse, and I realize that there is no hi-hat in my song. I started with the kick and clap and moved on to other tracks, and I developed a dark tone that I decided sounded better with no hats at all. The drum tracks both have lowpass filters on them for this effect.
The tempo of the song is 90 BPM which is fairly slow for a song of this genre, but I have a quick melody and a steady sixteenth note synth bass, so the song does not feel slow.
Okay, below is the full song. My main takeaways:
- I still need to rely less on reverb, and maybe experiment with more dynamic effects – compression, chorus, delay, etc.
- I learned how to use and automate a lowpass filter to sound super good (hopefully you agree!)
- Gained lots of experience with the 40SC, still need some practice with subtractive
- Learned how to make a bus
Awesome track, Ethan! The vibes are immaculate, your instrumentation and vocals were enticing, and your mixing levels were satisfying. Great job overall. One thing I’d recommend is seeing if you can move your lowpass cuttoff automation in the chorus to a filter envelope in the synthesizer—that way you might avoid some of the artifacts you get at the transition and save yourself some time should you need to go back and edit anything (If you really want to use automation, then perhaps just smoother transition between open sweeps?).
I absolutely love this song! This definitely gives off Charlie Puth energy, and I love his music as well. I really like the beat that you contain throughout the song and your vocals being soft was something that I really think was a good artistic choice for the song. The lowpass filter worked really well, I agree! I’m curious to know why you prefer using 40SC over Subtractive, what do you think is a gain from either?
Loved the instrumentals. Solely from the clip of the first few seconds I already started jamming out to it. The sixteenth note bass added a nice feeling to it.
I feel like the vocals had a bit too much reverb even with the reduced amount. It had a somewhat tinny sound and I think that with either a better recording or further processing, the result could have been better and produced a sound nearing more towards the side of ethereal than an echo chamber.