Akai Force 3.0.6 Drum Synth and Workflow Tutorial: Making a Techno Track from Scratch

[Music] hi guys welcome to today's special it's finally there the long-awaited akai force 3.0.6 update aka the drum synth update and therefore we will have a special i will show you how to make a techno track from start to finish and we will of course introduce the new drum synth and so that you have an idea what we will be making today it will sound like this [Music] so [Music] all right guys let's get started with our tutorial as you can see we've got an empty project the only track that is already there is my voice i plugged in my microphone into input 1 so that you all can hear me but besides that it's completely empty so let's get started from scratch um the first thing that we would do is press plus here and since today's challenge is all about using plugins no samples we will choose plugin of course hit shift and clip and now we are in hype double click on hype and you can basically choose between your for standard synth that you already know and here is the star of our show the brand new drum synth plugin so as you can see there are many different plugins to choose from the problem is let's say i would put the kick on one clap on two hi-hat on three and so forth and so on i would have used up all the eight tracks for plugins and i couldn't use baseline electric hype and all the stuff we know because you only can load eight plugins and yeah they're already basically used by drums so what i do what makes most sense to me is i always separate the kick from the rest yeah that means for the first channel i would select the kick and for the second channel let's go to plugins again so for the second channel i would use this here drum synth multi so here you have let's go over there here you have all the regular uh drums that you would also have on a sample page you all have them right here we will customize them of course in a second but this is how i would get started so basically the drum synth or the kick basically as the first track and then the multi as the second track this way we still have six tracks left where we can use several yeah several of our old synth of the already known synth like tube synth hype and so forth and so on let's have a closer look at the kick drum as you can see we have lots of parameters to mess with i could of course tap on all these parameters and change them but i can also press and hold the knobs button go to screen here already did that then you've got all the parameters on the left hand side on knobs page one if you move to knobs page two then you have all the parameters on the right hand side but noise and noise col are missing for some reason so you would basically have to select them like that and change them okay so how do you get started with the track so i want my track to be in e flat minor you can already see that my scale is set to e flat minor velocity to full at the moment so the first thing i would do is of course tune my kick drum accordingly so there we are minus 4 minus five um actually let's zoom in a little that way you'll have a better look at the screen what's going on okay this should be enough so we are minus four at the moment and now our kick drum is exactly tuned to e flat let's go to the step sequencer have a listen pretty deep let's scroll through the different types of kicks i could also of course go to knobs page 1 and scroll through here i will already start with the 4 to the floor pattern in that case here then we can hear all the effects [Music] and all the changes okay so we are going for a hard techno track today um so ah hard one sounds good to me but there is way too much high end and of course we need to tune that again so if you change the model you all the parameters will start from scratch so let's quickly tune that kick drum to e-flat okay that's done whole parameters so what else could we do so hold let's shorten that one a little then decay let's make that shorter too there is a bit too much of distortion for my taste noise we can put that down too sounds already pretty good to me let's see what happens here okay seems to be the attack volume quite loud already 75 should be okay then additionally i could also mess with the transients therefore i have to activate the transient fx and then here you can see on the next page i could increase the attack i can make the attack smoother i just like to have a little more attack and i want it to last longer so i go up in shape and important oven sustain that was basically too much so this already sounds like a powerful kick to me i can also mess with the eq settings of course nothing will change if i do not activate them so let's activate eq cut a little bit of those highs so this already sounds like a deep dark techno kick nice to create that warehouse feeling that you have in detroit techno we need to add some reverb to our kick so let's go to the mixer tab we could add the reverb right on top here but then our kick would lose all its punch therefore we will choose the mother ducker input then next thing is we want to have the reverb as a send effect so i will press master and i would like to have that reverb over here at channel 3. there is nothing yet to make things quicker i will load a preset that i already created so let's press load go to fx chain kick reverb let's load that one so i will go through all the settings in a bit let me just show you first what the effect is i will go to send press master again and i will increase the send effect now and you will instantly notice the difference it makes so let's get started our dry kick from before and now we add a little bit of reverb to give it this warehouse tail okay and this really dark and aggressive sound well then let's go through the settings i will go to master again effects the first effect i've on there is the mother ducker threshold somewhat between 11 and 12 o'clock ratio about one o'clock the gain is turned down a little so next i try to boost the reverb with a compressor but i found it was too much so i muted that compressor here it's not really active then next thing would be the reverb type is set to concert hall room size 65 time 25 of course since this is um ascend effect we will always have it cranked up to a 100 percent and then last but not least i've got a low pass filter here um to filter the high frequencies and only have this low reverb another thing that might be important to show is if you click on that tab here you can have a low cut um so everything below 155 hertz in terms of reverb is not coming through so that the kick stays for itself it still has the punch in the low end and then from 155 hertz onwards we have our reverb tail now let's have a look at the second channel therefore i will zoom out so second channel which is of course on channel three i have to press master again go to that plug and track and there here we've got our multi perfect i will also label that one multi drums there we go okay so since we already have the kick on two i don't need this one to be a kick therefore let's hit shift and clip and here i can have a look at all the different drum synth and change them to my liking the way i set up my multi track here is i would like to have some toms low toms on one and five claps and snares over here and then the rest here should be high heads and shaker stuff like that okay so let's go through it momentarily we still have the kick drum on pad one we will change that to percussion we need a dark percussion this doesn't really sound dark [Music] okay nice that's good we will fine-tune everything later but let's just set up all all the different percussions and further drums that we need so here that's drum synth number five like to have a low tom [Music] sound pretty similar not bad you know what let's have a listen to percussion again i heard another nice sound [Music] yeah the darbuka i'll go with that too so these are our two percussion sounds our two tom like sounds next on drum synth number two i'd like to have the snare that's okay then on 6. i want to have some collapse let's go to collapse okay and then it's time for some hi-hats drum synth 3 short 80 hi-hat that's good then we need a longer hi-hat oh the decay is a little too long okay that's good this way the short hi-hat will also cut off the longer one um because i've deactivated one shot let's have a look at drum synth 8. that's a crash i don't want to have that one let's have another hi-hat so yeah that sounds good and finally on drum synth 7 let's add some shakers there we go okay so these are our drums and now it's time to make a few patterns in order to make some drum patterns now we will go to the matrix mode create a new pattern let's go to clip two bars is okay step sequencer and i would just you know have that longer hi-hat on the off beat then i would like to have the shorter one right after to kill it give it a little more groove to add some further groove let's go to dc time correct settings a little bit of swing a little bit of time shifting that's okay let's see what we've done what always works great too is if you select all those different nodes you could just nudge them a tiny bit okay this sounds quite nice to me already and that would be our basic pattern then let's copy that one let's copy that one and now we will build on this pattern here that we already have and we always add a little more and then go row by row and create a more complex pattern so for pattern number two let's go to the step sequencer and could be a little louder we could also crank it up a little okay sounds good but the first drum synth is also not huge okay that sounds good okay is a little too long let's go to drums so as soon as i deactivate one shot it will be rather short i don't like that let's leave it as it is okay that's fine with me pattern two is already created let's copy that complete row and let's work on pattern number three in our second pattern i have layered the second hi-hat here so we have this hi-hat and that one let's quickly do this for clip select clip for clip or pattern number one two of course full velocity let's have a listen also not bad of course that's not what i wanted to keep it simple percussion then we haven't changed pattern 3 yet so let's take care of that one we've got our shaker a little bit of variation let's see what happens if i notched that one yep over there it's a little loud let's play with the tone decrease the decay okay so there we have our third pattern time for pattern number four now we will complete our fourth pattern let's go just to the regular clip mode and we will add let me see if i can change something about the snare sounds already pretty good to me a little bit more noise maybe thank you flat yeah sounds good a little down this one is already tuned okay so i accidentally down a little bit more room yep so those four patterns are okay that's a good start of course we will create some on the fly for the breakdown but so far that's quite okay with me um one thing i would always like to do is assign the kick to the fader or we could also mute the kick now and already create some kind of performance yeah you know what let's go back to that clip mode that sounds better to me yeah definitely so i guess i'll change that uh i like that one even better that's how it goes sometimes if you hear all the patterns together you see that less is more okay i think we can move on now so it's time to do some fine tuning therefore we go to the mixers page and as you can see we've got an overview about everything here about all the different drum synth parts we can add effects and so forth and so on because at the moment our multi sounds a little dry and we also want to create a little bit of room here so let's do that right now okay so now let's play a little bit with the panning put the clap a little to the right over here good percussion let's send the hi-hats to so okay got a good stereo feel let's play around with the volume okay that's good so far but i think we're clipping so let's go to the master track next volume so it's time for us to turn the other channels down so this way we still have enough headroom for all the other instruments coming a little louder yep that's okay so after the mixer section if you tap that one again you can activate the different transients equal compressor not necessary right now we can send delay and this is what we will do now so let's get started with the reverb ah that's one thing you cannot do that really sucks you kind of press solo and then just you know solo each pad you have to go in here in that next section go to solo exactly solo it here then let's add some reverb oh wrong hi-hat that's the right one so let's have a look at the effect stadium let's change that one to room sounds better hi-cut is already in there let's add a little bit of diffuser too let's go to the diffuser settings um and a little bit of delay let's play around with the delay time resonance yeah i don't think i want to add that delay in there it's already okay so let's unsolo this one let's have a look at the next hi-hat nice and let's go to our last hi-hat over here just solo that one put some reverb on there too okay so let's listen how everything sounds together yeah okay so our drums are ready let's keep on moving so before we continue with our main base and main lead sound it's basically two in one we will have some kind of background melody and for the background melody we will choose a hard lead sound and there let's go for the octave major notes mode a little too high yeah that's good delay could be a little shorter even 16th [Music] now that sounds good and we don't want all the low end to come through here since our main lead and our main melody will also cover lots of low end okay so let's go to the matrix mode go to time correction need to hold it let's turn it on strength shouldn't be too high so that it still sounds natural okay yeah let's record two variations the first pattern should just be one bar long and the second pattern is two belongs so let's get started let's on the track yeah this one is a little late so let's select this one here and let's nudge it that's yep with me let's create another clip another variation here or office variation so we'll have the two bars and a little variation in the second bar record arm the second take was better i don't really need to change anything what's always really nice is if you uh select everything and then just move it really slightly to the right so first pattern okay so we will now move the second pattern over here delete it from there and at the beginning we'll have the longer pattern and then this the more melody and different other parts um come in then we would choose the shorter pattern so let's copy that one over here that one over here let's see how it sounds if we only take shorter pattern you know what i like this one better so let's copy that one over here delete everything and let's start off with the simple one right away so background melody [Music] okay good i'm quite content with that let's move on with the main melody so for our main melody i'd like to have some kind of stefan bootseen sound um i want to recreate yeah his mooc sub 37 that he uses quite heavily therefore we won't pick hype we will pick tube synth let's go to synth and i think analog wall is a good starting point so first of all the second saw could use a little more noise it's already detuned that's okay [Music] let's move on cut off could be lower let's add more sub [Music] we already have so much bass because of the reverb and the heavy kick i think we'll leave this up for now then if you want to have this gliding sound then you need to go to setup go to legato this means it's now a monosynth no okay [Music] should be good for now don't want to spend too much time on that all right um okay let's play in a melody therefore record we will know here we will now have no set clip length let's just see what comes to mind so so i like the first version better not bad so when i have a little variation of this pattern let's copy that one over here now we're in overdub mode let's see what we can come up with so yeah that's the one i'd like to have so let's record that in [Music] let's have a listen deactivate record something's wrong with that note how does it sound without the background melody let's have a listen to my taste the sound is a little thin i want to give it a little bit more substance and i will layer a second plug in this time it's hype again and there will uh there i will go to the strings and brass section and let's see what we've got here analog horns sounds good to me [Music] so what we do now is we would just copy that clip over um let's go to the launch mode we'll just copy the clip over from lead one over here let's see what this sounds like i think we need to go and octave down definitely that's better and i don't think that little riff would sound too good so i would just copy that one over here and let only lead one play that little riff with that glide time around so let's have a listen [Music] okay to give our lead sound the final touch we will use some of the automation that came with the 305 update therefore let's go to macros we have column one selected and we want to add some effects here let's make some parameters changes the first thing we would like to do is being able to change the cutoff of the filter frequency here and the second thing is we want to add some delay delay send was on channel 2 as far as i know let's have a look effect delay return channel 2. okay so let's go to macros again there we can see that everything is changed selected here and mapped to the first column let's go full screen and let's have a listen so yeah okay let's record that to our clip let's undo some of the things let's record that again uh unfortunately the send is still open here okay let's give it another try so so so delay doesn't sound too good to me so what's really important is that at the end of the clip you need to go down otherwise the cutoff and the scent sliders and everything will stay as it is and we want it all to go back at the end of our clip here with the color frequency it's okay we don't want to cut it off completely otherwise we won't hear anything okay our melody is done next let's pick some atmo for the background um what do we have sound fx atmospheres analog atom let's have a listen [Music] sounds cool enter the ghost too so let's see what we can come up with usually it's just one chord one note or really subtle chord progressions if no changes at all so let's try to keep it simple let's see how that sounds yeah i think analog atoms fits a little better although enter the ghost sounds definitely yeah darker and creates a more scary and creepy vibe let's check it out once again i think i go with enter the ghost attack is a little too long why not let's keep it that way okay we just play an octave here of the first and the third of the e flat minor scale so let's record that in clip should be two bars long [Music] so i don't want to steal too much of the low end this is why i will definitely erase the lower one here okay select those two move them over here edit the end like that and here too [Music] it's definitely too loud we could try out something else let's go to the effect page and let's use uh the mother ducker let's listen to what that sounds yeah that's good let's kill the low ends [Music] so this one it's called atmo yes that looks good to me now there is only one part missing a nice arp in the background and we will take care of that now so as a suitable arpeggiator i think we should choose something plucky therefore let's go for hard plug there we are and hot percussion would [Music] a little more delay maybe all right so i could go into arpeggiator mode play for example some stranger things like arpeggiator of course i need to activate it before that [Music] but we won't do that today i'll show you something else that i also use quite often for bass lines and for arpeggiator and that's the step sequencer mode um there we go to lanes mode mono and we can basically enter our notes here so let's just put one okay as we can see the clip is too long even one bar is too long so let's reduce that one to just half a bar like that let's have a listen two and we need a little more delay okay i'm already quite happy with that one um what you could do for example um if you want to have a polyrhythmic arpeggiator so we have half a bar now we could also choose yeah an uneven length therefore let's go to 240 over here okay before we do that i should definitely copy that clip first so launch copy that one over here this is the one we want to change so again 240 over here and we also use 240 over here so now we leave out the first part and since this is not an even amount we have some kind of polyrhythmic ever changing arpeggiator sounds quite nice let's have a listen in comparison the other one both are quite quite nice so we have all our main elements together now it's time to arrange all the stuff all right let's give this track a little structure of course we wouldn't start right away with all the elements coming in therefore we will first copy this one over here this one over here let's also also copy our two variation variations of the up over here atmo it's just that one clip it stays the same um what was that here let's stop all the clips [Music] and that was the variation here let's listen to the other parts here [Music] i mean we can delete it completely it doesn't sound good with the rest okay so that's the background melody so this can be erase two that one too and we would probably start like that then next as you can see we have a couple of new elements here coming in and we will also with these new elements also introduce the background melody um but still not the arp let's delete that one so we start like that okay let's listen to the next part now we can bring in our main melody the first version not the one part with the variation cut off is way too high let's go to that lead ah there we go um and let's go to the mixer some sensor ah that's what i thought sends are still up sometimes after you have automated them they won't go back to their original state let's listen again better okay next we need an empty clip row and there we will have our break so we will edit this one insert another clip let's undo this over here okay and for that we will have no kick we take the drums from here let's use almost everything let's listen how that sounds [Music] okay now we come in with our variation over here and also with the arpeggiator so after the break we've also got the snare and the claps so basically our climax let's have a listen or maybe that's not even our climax it's yet let's have a look let's go to clip yeah it is okay so let's start with the break again after the break the main part yeah the arpeggiator is way too loud okay let's copy that whole row from here over there and let's copy the variation of the arpeggiator in there let's listen to that one okay [Music] that's strange i needed to press stop two times to make it really stop i think let's go to the sense that's what i thought sand is turned up and i bet the filter the cutoff is also too high okay that is kind of strange because at the end of this clip i basically went back with the cutoff let's change that a little more let's go a little lower like that and in the send i'm definitely going down here with the sentence so i don't know why it keeps sticking around like that okay anyways we've almost got our full song let's play through it let's see what we've got so far let's bring in the main melody our main melody could use a little bit more power that's why we're doing the following thing let's go to the ins and outs and we will route lead one to sub channel one sub one and this one two and at the sub channel we will i want dynamics over there let's use the maximizer and mastering light is always a good preset let's listen to that lead part again without the compressor or the maximizer okay now it's time for our break and the climax okay yeah this really sucks let's go to sense effect again let's turn down the cut off again okay we don't need all these parts can delete them so let's cut down the drums too we will reduce them step by step um use that part ah that's the kick drum doesn't change anyway let's use that part over here that part over there atmos stays the same um let's listen to that one we keep we keep the melody we also keep the arpeggiator until the end so okay so in order to make the change between the brake and the climax more drastic i think we will only use one of those two sounds in the brake [Music] yeah okay we will mute this part or delete it right away and now the drops should sound even stronger so okay now we've quite nicely arranged song we could just record that one into the new arranger mode but that's a different topic we won't do that today there is one last thing we need to take care of and that's the breakdown here right before the drop we need some sort of build up and in order to achieve that let's go to the macros page we already have some effects on column one so let's go to column two click learn then let's have a look at the multi and this one is the multi-drum track let's go over there and i want to automate the decay or map that decay parameter of the third drum synth of the fourth that's the hi-hat we can map decay hold two and i think even tune if it goes up that would also be nice then finally that's our eighth drum synth the decay of that one we could also increase increase stereo all right so let's go back to our macro page here you see everything we have mapped let's give it a little try [Music] nice but that's still not enough so therefore let's add our last instance of hype synth so we can only add eight plugins that's the maximum let's assume i wanted to add another one we would get a notification that the maximum is already in that project so let's open the clip and for some nice build up we could use risers if riser effects here let's go with that one we need a riser and not a drop let's listen to that one [Music] so so let's create a four bar clip so create the clip in that row four bars let's simply draw in let's use the pencil edit the end let's see if that works [Music] not too bad so i like the phaser don't need too much of the low end definitely want to have more reverb and the release should be way longer let's crank it all the way up so reverb time should be really long like that okay let's listen again [Music] yeah not the best build up it could be a little longer but for that purpose i think it'll do so there is one last thing i have for you as a little bonus if you think that lead sound is too static you could always add some lfo therefore hit shift clip then you can go to the lfo tab here select everything i've selected sign and saw down and you can also choose the destination of course let's see how this affects our lead sound we should now be able to hear the panning from left to right and now the low pass filter yeah this way it sounds way more interesting okay hope you like it

Channel: Wolfgang Grows

Views: 11,755

Keywords: akai force, akai force 3.0.6, akai force drum synth, akai force drumsynth, techno tutorial from scratch, techno tutorial from start to finish, akai force performance, akai force jam, Wolfgang Grows, wolfgang, grows, akai force update, force, drum synth tutorial, melodic techno tutorial, drumsynth, force drumsynth, force drum synth, techno tutorial

Id: QKuSfMOhmbk

Length: 102min 22sec (6142 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 24 2020