It’s hard to pick a clear winner, but Serum provided a punch and snap in the envelopes that I really enjoyed.
Many people think it’s a binary decision – choose analog synths or soft synths, but I say use both! It was fascinating to see the sonic differences between Serumand my modern analog synths. I love the physical interaction with analog gear – fire up a chord progression or arpeggio, start twisting knobs and embrace some chaos while recording it on the fly. For some sounds, I would overdrive the input and bring down the output to get a different character. This was the best way to wrangle the Buchla Easel’s controls for interesting rhythmic sequences since it’s such an unruly beast of a synth. While tracking them, I would often twist two controls to get a unique interaction – filters and feedback, feeding in the Voyager’s signal back into itself for fatness and saturation or LFO speed and pitch. The overall goal was to capture unique sounds with depth and character, so I recorded quantized sequences w/ Ableton’s arpeggiator, basic chord stab progressions, melodies, drones, and various one-shots. In the future, I will probably track more conservatively at -12dB. Even the drums included were made with synths. Everything was recorded at around -6 to -12dB peaks to allow headroom. Vocals were tracked with a Manley Ref C mic through an Avalon 737, Purple Audio 1176 clone, and LA2A limiter. Synths were tracked at 32bit/44k into Ableton Live 9 through a BAE lunchbox with Neve 1073 clones, some newer Rupert Neve pres, a LaChapell tube pre, and my trusty Avalon U5s. Once they were stabilized and calibrated/tuned, I started recording various 4-bar chord progressions I thought were compelling. I started by firing up all my analog synths, pre-amps, and compressors including: Dave Smith OB6, Dave Smith Prophet 08, Moog Voyager, Buchla Easel, and Virus TI2. For more on this, check out this radio lab episode.
There’s a lot to be said for making music close to the tempo of indifference (94 bpm) – it’s easier to play instruments and gauge timing better. The slower tempo allows so much more groove and chunkiness. I needed to create a pack that was useful for producers beyond just EDM, so I recorded at two tempos: the familiar 128 bpm, but also 100 bpm – which I’ve been using a lot on my latest productions. I didn’t want to repeat other sample packs. There’s plenty of drum fills, huge kicks, risers, and 808s – so I wanted to make something fresh and unique to my sound. I decided to make something that spoke to my strong suits: synths and vocals. So why make my own? Splice asked me to create a hybrid pack. It’s a ton of work and there are so many amazing sample packs it’s overwhelming: Vengeance, Cymatics, KSHMR, 7 Skies – I use all their packs in my productions. Building a sample pack is something I’ve put on the back burner for nearly 15 years.
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