Dayglow - How I Made “Close to You”

[Music] hey camera two we got two cameras this time it's high tech it's crazy it's fun it's technology what's up everyone um it is sloan here ready to break down some new tracks for you off of my second lp harmony house and i'm just stoked this is so much fun to be able to break down all my songs and talk to you guys about um engineering techniques if we even call it that anything in that world and realm because this is all i ever think about so um yeah it's really exciting to show you guys all my secrets i don't really know what i'm doing let's check this file out i'm so close to you initially i was listening to a lot of like doobie brothers paul simon patti labelle george benson you know the list goes on of these 80s um pop artists and essentially for close to you i wanted to make a song that could sit beside those in your dad's record collection and you wouldn't even think about it but i wanted it to sound as authentically 80s as possible which comes in later because a lot of the gear and synths that i used are literally from the 80s so from the source you know disclaimer though i don't want to be like the elvis impersonator of 80s pop music it still is a modern take on it but that's my rant on 80s anyways so close to you started out as this jam that i didn't really change from the day that i recorded it it started off with this drum loop that i found from this um drum sample library called that sound it's just a basic kitkat snare that's it flat and i just added this kick to add more punch we got a shaker a lindrum cowbell and tom which a lindrum is like a 80s drum machine that is all over pop records um still today and then this echo clap which fun fact actually didn't even make the freaking um final version of the song as a mistake on the final i i had someone else master the album his name was joe laporta he's just a wizard did an incredible job but the file that i sent him of the mix i had mixed this song so many times probably 50 times by time i sent it to him so i didn't realize the one that i sent didn't have the echo on the clap it just was just a straight clap for some reason the plug-in didn't work when i exported it i don't know but it just sounded like that um and that's what's on the album or the recording that you all know um there's no echo which i really missed and i was really frustrated at first but this is the original mix um with the echo clap that's so dear to my heart um yeah we got like some crashes and we have some lasers down here which are one laser from a monopoly just a korg monopoly monopoly i don't know synth nerds which one is it we don't know just like a laser tom kind of deal and then another one that is from my favorite piece of gear that i own called a super space drum electro harmonix maybe like 1970 something that they made this um but it's just a pressure sensitive like drum pad so you just hit it and then you control the start and stop frequency over here so if you start it as high as it goes and stop it as low it goes reverse there's modulation on there it's a really cool piece of gear but that's where the lasers come in [Music] so we've got a pretty good groove at this point um and throughout the song the the drum loop is pretty much the same i just have these fills from the same drum pack [Music] i think the verses is the same loop without a kick here on the pre-chorus on the drums i added like a low-cut uh with a phaser just making it more trippy and that's pretty much the drums in the song i unfortunately don't have a drum kit in the studio i'm moving pretty soon so hopefully i'll have a drum kit there and can finally record some real drums but on harmony house and um buzzy marine both had just midi drums or loops um and the guitar on the song is like really not even there but it adds like a percussive element i just played the root note which is an f sharp right here just kind of add some funk running through a phaser just a basic amps chorus kind of deal that just goes throughout the song when i needed to add a little bit more extra excitement okay so i guess we can go to the base so the base was recorded and at least the synth bass was on a mini moog remodel sort of synth that i have called a paulie d which behringer made which in the synth community it's kind of behringer's kind of a controversial topic but for me personally i just don't have the money to buy an actual model d um i wish i did but unfortunately i did not um so i recorded it analog in and layered it with an actual base [Music] on the pre-choruses it comes in kind of serves as a sub filters up [Music] whoa yeah but that's it that's the base um underneath the song i have this eurorack sample that was just playing around the root uh f-sharp on my eurorack system i have a cubic chord v2 what's it called a strymon magneto and i just looped it around and kind of created this atmospheric texture thing going on in the bottom of the track which makes it sound magical so all those together but those just kind of sit in the back of the song the whole time not even changing note doing anything [Music] now on to the synth sounds where the songs magic really sits um pretty proud of the synth soundsness so we've got mostly um a jx3 jx-3p patch which is actually um here i can show you so it's two different things layered um but i have my jx3p right here it's just a vintage roll-in synthesizer my first analog synth that i got and definitely still my favorite yeah um and so i just have it running through echo boy wolf compressor uh real adt which is a waves plug-in that does like artificial doubling you know all over beatles records um but i use the brass to preset on the jx3p which sounds like this [Music] yeah but i just played and then i doubled it with this thing i called the disco layer um which is just essentially the same patch just going through a crazy phaser [Music] put octave higher but yeah those are the synth leads that pretty much go through the song and in some parts of the song i play just open chords for the verses but the chords really don't change i mean variants of the chords change but essentially the same four and then i layered it with this patch called west coast on a rack mount synth that i have called a jv 2080 which is also roland um tame impala used a 1080 a lot on currents which i thought was you know one of the greatest synth sound albums that i had ever heard but i'm also a big fan of the show twin peaks and there's a lot of just crazy synth sounds and there and i think it's from a 2080 as well but anyways on the main jam i did the exact same thing so i went a little bit pinned to the left just the f sharp variant using the west coast piano patch and did the same thing with the chord changes so layered together and those are the synths occasionally throughout the song i have this patch called fantasia which also comes from the uh 2080 which is probably my favorite sound ever but it's just like a super magical reminds me of like reading rainbow or something and i have a sweep which is just all the black keys but that's all the synth sounds so that's every instrumental thing going on in close to you let's go to the vocals now yeah essentially the same technique approached a little differently than what i was doing on fuzzy brain where it's a lead center vocal you have two pin left and right where the left and right are really sitting low in the mix and have almost no low end this is the doubling it just adds more depth to the vocals [Music] but those just you don't even hear them really and here's the lead i saw you looking for the side door yeah so for vocals i'm going through melodyne a waves preamp i'm neutron eq cla compressor rx8 isotope de-esser j37 which you know i'm always shouting out i just love running things through tape just to give it warmth and a little plate for reverb mouth click d click i just hate those kind of sounds when you're recording so um i avoid that as much as possible eq taking out a lot of the low end on the vocals and then same thing essentially for the harmony and all of that is being glued together by this mastering chain from waves that's like an abbey rhodes emulation running through tape again um soothe 2 is a really great plug-in for getting rid of like harsh frequencies primal tap which is kind of like a h3000 harmonizer sort of thing um where it kind of adds a delay or at least in the way that i use it and just widens the vocal a lot so i have all of it running through an eq where i brought the mid-range back up why would i do that take it down and then add it up but it's one of those things you look back you don't realize oh wow that was low-key dumb but anyways and then echo boy which is kind of a day glow staple and then mouth click one more time to be sure that there's none of those weird macaroni sounds so on the echo boy i automated it depending on the tracks like the pre-chorus make it more spacey you crank it up [Music] the chorus is it comes back down tightens it up just adds much more of a like pop you know feeling to the chorus and so for the vocals as well we've got a falsetto group of three kind of making it like a supremes type feel or like calling response where essentially i actually started off the song dreaming it up as a duet there's this song very different than this vibe but i was listening to it all the time it's michael mcdonald and patti labelle on my own oh my own um and it's so freaking good and i just loved like how much of a duet it was and you just don't see that too much in uh pop music today like there's collabs you know but there's not really like duets i don't know i just loved that song and i wanted to make a duet but i'm an introverted person so i just ended up doing it duet with myself but yeah we've got the falsetto vocals it was really i really had a hard time mixing these vocals but that's pretty much the whole song kind of just a fun fact on like every single harmony house song um i love i know there's like people who are doing like the slowed and reverb versions of dayglow songs which i just love that kind of stuff especially with just synth driven music so close to you specifically i was thinking like that could be like a tick tock trend if someone like slowed down close to you [Music] but anyways tick-tock kids if you want to make that a trend you have my uh stamp of approval it could be one of those things where it's like you know um like five places i want to travel this summer cancun uh somewhere else the mountains anywhere because we can't do anything you know then a little dance it could be a great trend just saying am i desperately asking you to make it a tick tock trend maybe yeah anyways um this is close to you um first single off of harmony house so stoked to finally be putting all this out i've been working on it for a long time just super super proud of it it's the most encouraging thing ever seeing you guys just like give it all this love and support because that's what it's all about that's why i go through all of this is so i make a song that you enjoy anyways hope you enjoyed watching and yeah thank you for watching the video you guys are the best i gotta stop doing that it's just addicting okay bye

Channel: Dayglow

Views: 115,351

Rating: 4.9897246 out of 5

Keywords: dayglow, day glow, dayglow band, day glow band, day glow music, dayglow music, fuzzybrain, indie pop, alternative, indie music, sloan struble, fuzzy brain, how i made, tutorial, making music, how to make music, close to you

Id: MQ5xsqpk6ZA

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021