How to Make Melodic Techno like ANYMA (Start to Finish)

oh peace master [Music] today I'm going to show you how to produce melodic techno in the style of Anima I'm going to show you every step of the process from a completely blank door including composition sound design beats programming processing and more now this was a request from one of my accelerated students in the live group call this week so I really wanted to dig into it because I know a lot of you guys love melodic techno and melodic house as usual you can download this project file all the samples and presets completely free because I'm nice like that and without further Ado let's hop into the door and get it done okay let's do it no breaks nothing no edits I've got my magic list and I'm suitably caffeinated so first thing we need to do is get a nice big fat Kick we put the tempo to 125 for that melodic Tempo that melodic techno kind of tempo so let's just go to my favorites now having favorites is really important because it allows you to work quickly so I'm just going to pick a nice fat Kick that one sounds pretty good program it on every beat boom boom boom I want you in my room okay let's do it there we go okay next thing I want to do that's very techno style is to use a reverse kick in there as well and that's something that I've heard in tale of Us's music and animus music too so let's find another kick drum and we are just going to reverse it so we'll go drum hits kicks and that's got some nice high end to it so we're going to use that one because it's going to sound really cool on the reverse so let's just load it in there and turn the snap off and we need to reverse this and to do that we'll have to change the simpler to a sampler because then we can press this little button here now you could do this in audio it's probably going to be quicker actually so I'll just do it in an audio so let's try that let's load the drum in like so just hit R to reverse it and then we are going to just reverse it up until our next kick like so but we don't want the base so we're going to edit out the base with an EQ and let's just put this in front of every kick like so now this is a very subtle effect and it can just add some extra Nuance to your track so let's just put the EQ on there and take up the low end but we just want this nice and quiet so it's that subtle oh we need to name this bad boy anima what should we call it anima let's call it deep cleanse baby you can work out why there we go um it's already done I can't undo it okay let's color that green keep it nice and color coordinated and next thing we need to do is work out the base now the beauty of anima's music is there are so many different synths and bases into playing and working with each other and that can be quite hard to achieve and have it still sound clean so I'm going to hopefully show you how to do that today I'm going to use serum because I know lots of you guys have got it and it's very clear to kind of explain the workflow in the GUI or the GUI and this is what we teach sound designing in the accelerator as well so it kind of makes sense as this was a request from one of our accelerator students so we'll do main base and I'm just going to program this in on the 16th so that's too loud baby turn yourself down pipe down pipe down Tucker I don't know who Tucker is so let's just program one on every 16. now that sounds like it's just one prolonged sound at the moment and that's because we need to shape this into a more Plucky sound so you can really hear the difference in between each note so let's just go into serum and tweak the adsr controls here and make it a bit more Plucky Plucky little fella so we can hear that already a lot more Plucky now we want to put a filter envelope on there I'm just going to use the same envelope put it on a low pass filter and now we're getting that melodic techno feel let's add some unison make it nice and wide excellent and maybe another octave just for some more harmonics or maybe an octave down oh yeah that's the ticket just the ticket right next I'm going to take out the low end of the base now I know that sounds counter-intuitive but to have all these bases work with each other we need to make sure there's space in the frequencies if we've got too many bases playing the same frequencies it's going to build up in the low end and we're going to end up with a really horrible muddy mix so we just want that hint of bass really because now when we program in the sub bass that's going to be taking up those low sub 100 Hertz frequencies so let's put sub bass in there whoops Taxi let's just pop that in there name it keep it nicely organized and we're gonna put another serum on there let's just use serum today you can download all the presets as well so for a sub bass I usually like to use sine wave because it's nice and clean but the other option is to just use a saw wave and then just put a filter on it low-pass filter now a lot of the sounds that you will hear in Animas music are in fact based on saw waves and square waves as well basically the basic wave table synths oscillators so that's what we're going to do today this is going to be in the key of C minor so let's just stick there [Music] and now I'm just a groove on these 16s that's going to really keep the track moving [Music] like that to me already sounds cool so let's just copy and repeat that we don't want to over complicate things and let's make this into an actual sub bass that's taking up those low frequencies so we're going to drop it [Music] we want it as low as possible where it still delivers the power and that sounds pretty cool let's make it mono so we don't have the bass notes bleeding into each other shape it slightly I think I will add a sine wave sub bass as well so we'll just add this sub oscillator [Music] this makes it really Punchy and Rich and now you can hear that click so what I'm going to do is just take out the high end of this bass that's smoother cool so now our kick and our base is doing this so let's just group these together because we've got lots of work to do with the bases and I'm going to put a side chain compressor on there just so the kick has space to breathe through the mix so if we just put a normal compressor on there on the base group we can open up this little button here let's call this SC comp for sidechain comp and I'm just going to take the side chain input from my side chain trigger track which is just a short sharp tick that's yeah as I say very short which allows you to have all the control within the attack and release of the compressor so let's just so we can hear it's just ducking That Bass slightly against the kick okay cool next thing we need to do is Magic list magic list add a nice kind of tombral base over the top which it's not almost a bit it's kind of like going to be a mid bass so I'm just going to call this pipe base and we're going to have this play the exact same Rhythm as the as the sub Bass I might add a couple of extra notes in there as well actually and I'm just going to randomly search through a few presets because working with presets can be a fast way to get your idea down and then you can tweak them afterwards and speed is of the essence when it comes to music production because you you want to capture that emotion that you feel as quickly as possible let's turn this down a bit and let's look for some Plucky sounds plucks no I might like that but I'm going to turn off the Reverb because I want us to have all the control over that Reverb so that's kind of cool let's call this pipe base I've got so much cool stuff to show you today but you can see here I want to add some extra notes like so but the velocity changes aren't doing anything at the moment because we need to assign that velocity to something so I'm going to assign the velocity just to the level which means that when the velocity is lower this note is just going to be quieter so now let's have a listen so now we've got this variation in volume which is kind of cool so I like that let's just copy and paste that whoops um I have to make sure that it copies over what already exists there we go and now what we're going to do is do a little bit of work on this pipe base first we're going to take out the low end so it doesn't clash with our sub Bass but I want some more harmonics and harmonics is where you add frequencies that are multiples of the fundamental frequency or the note of that instrument so let's do that there's a few ways that you can do that but saturation is a good one we're going to try a few I'm going to try some erosion [Music] found a sweet spot there that sounds cool see here the difference it makes and now I'm going to use this really cool EQ formant preset within the eq8 and if we see what happens all it's doing is boosting up these certain harmonics so this is going to allow this C note which we're hitting it's kind of ring more listen to that difference but this is now too high this fundamental frequency is too loud so I'm just going to take that one out [Music] but we're just enhancing these upper frequencies and there's one more thing I want to add to this just to show you some effects I haven't shown before in Ableton and that would be ring so we've got this shifter here let's just add that and then dial something in until we get it sounding how we want [Music] oh [Music] that was nice wasn't it about 9 12. and then we can just dial in a little bit and is this kind of delicate Nuance that anima adds to his music to allow it to sound just so rich but kind of simple at the same time and the order in which you put these plugins will make a difference as well now I know this is going to be Advanced for some of you but this is really me not caring frankly because I just wanted to make this because I got a I got the request okay so now let's add some Reverb to that sound I've created an auxiliary Channel and just put a Reverb on there boosted the volume and taken out the low end so let's just dial in some of that pipe base to that uh taxi wrong one nice and now let's make that Reverb bounce as well by just copying and pasting the sidechain compressor something's not working is it I put this one on the wrong one too here we go that's sounding pretty cool now now for this main base I want to shape this actually a little bit more and get some more harmonics out of it so I'm gonna put on a drum bus which is just a combination of several different effects in one in Ableton I'll put it before the EQ and what this is going to do is add some more harmonics so let's just listen to the main bass on its own thank you [Music] okay so listen to how much fatter that sounds just more organic more analog and that's what we're looking for in this sound let's take out some of the iron yeah that's already sounding pretty cool now last thing I want to do with this pipe base is actually add some stereo width to it so there's a few ways you can do it but I'm going to use this shifter thing again because this isn't really something that I've used before so let's use another one and let's just bread it out stereo rise so this is going to be like a harsh effect well those adding kind of some delay which I don't like so now let's keep that off for now okay on to the next thing magic lures magic loose what do you have for me a brass base would you believe it so let's start adding some more Nuance to this and it really is this is a tutorial on getting bases to work together so let's call this brass base and again color it yellow but just be aware of how kind of deliberate all of these moves are you know thinking about what frequencies are going to work with the other things that already exist in this track you know what water is going to exist in my throat I can tell you now it's this one oh just the perfect combination of dry throat to wet water frequency meshing okay you're right brass base let's get another serum on there you know I like to think about the things I consume as sounds not many people do but it's their loss frankly okay let's take that down [Music] so again just starting from a saw wave nice and simple and now we're just going to add a few of these to just interject the Rhythm okay that's a cool thing so I'm programming in the velocity differences already even though it's not going to make any difference yet because I'm going to assign that velocity to particular parameters within serum yeah okay that's cool let's just finish the Rhythm a little variation the second time thing three whoops I needed to copy them [Music] okay let's just see what we can make that sound like the first thing we're going to do is put on the loop is add some unison to make it really wide and now I'm going to add another wave I think I'm going to add a square wave and take it down an octave okay now let's start shaping this thank you let's add a filter envelope and we're going to use a separate envelope for this so we can control it independently of the amplitude shape of the sound itself we might want it to be the same shape but this gives us some more options so let's make this close down the filter like so foreign I forgot to send oscillator B through to this filter as well let's add a bit of noise to this crunch it up and we're gonna send this through to the filter as well so the noise gets filtered down as well that pipe base is a bit loud yes now this velocity I'm going to assign to the fill to cut off as well now what this means is when the filter when the velocity is lower that filter is going to be closed down a bit more so let's listen to it on its own just that part where I've made the variations in the velocity see this first one has got fewer high frequencies so we can hear it hear the difference and that's the beauty of velocity you can just add these micro variations so we now have a pretty cool Groove but there is still more base to add so I'm going to interplay some kind of house bases with this as well two more in fact I'm going to call it house base and I'm going to call it FM Base so the house base will be similar to this but a slightly different sound because this is quite wide because we're using unison and perhaps I need to take out the low end but actually no look see so the sub bass is here and here but not here in this Gap so actually they shouldn't fight but then these bits might actually because you can see it's playing at exactly the same time as the sub bass so I might take out the low end of this as well [Music] foreign because all of it's being done by the sub bass really I want to add some more grunge to this aimbase now that's not really bringing anything to the table I'll leave it on anyway because it's not really taking anything from the table either okay pipe bases let's call this house space color them yellow let me know if you're enjoying this so far guys give me a hell yeah rather if you're feeling holy this is one of the most in-depth when it comes to bases for sure that I've ever done because if you want to get a hold on the low end you need to understand these fundamentals like having your bases into play with each other not all playing at the same time and filtering out the low end frequencies which sounds kind of counter-intuitive but in my experience you just want one base really doing the sub frequencies and that allows a lot more space for everything to breathe so let's create another base really quickly for this house base in fact let's speed things up sine wave no Square wave No Yes actually Square wave and a saw wave so let's get that in like so basic shapes win let's take it down an octave let's make it wide take down that unison bit too much high end [Music] so you can hear they're all kind of done in a similar way [Music] I really like that square wave actually that sounds really Housey and cool okay so let's just make it mono add a little bit of release a little bit of release a little bit of a filter envelope I think as well taking it nice and calmly now but let's make that a Plucky shape just a little bit the nearest hint nice okay let's speed up again take out the low end now I'm gonna just find a place where perhaps it just interplays once or twice again on the C thank you so you can hear it's starting to all into play [Music] yeah let's have that last one in there last one is an FM Base the difference with this one is that we're going to frequency modulate oscillator a by oscillator B I'm going to load in one of my own presets fml's base which is going to sound like this so let's first program that in where it's going to play with everything else and we might end up deleting some of these notes if there's too much going on okay I think that which means we might tweak this one slightly [Music] so that's a little bit yes [Music] so it's all about having them into play so this one we're only here playing once in that Loop but I want to tweak the sound slightly I want it to kind of close down so I'm going to put a filter on there like so [Music] low pass filter why is that a weird shape I don't know why that's a weird shape ah because the mix is different so we want the mix to be full there we go close this down with this frequency envelope [Music] so that's the kind of sound we want I'm going to take out the low end again and I'm going to add a lot of whole Reverb on this which means I'll take out some of the high end I think all right and then we've got the other sounds that's going into that Reverb as well this pipe base which is fine so now we've got both bass sounds okay now we're going to get onto the drums like that's pretty much the bass done although we've got so much more cool stuff to show you in terms of the anima synths like pitching all over the places big growly monstery things so it's a more Reverb actually let's add some on this brass base all about that synth and for this main base I'm going to add its very own base Reverb that's just going to be dialed in really tight so let's try dialing some of that in it's like a helicopter a helicopter of Awesomeness okay so this is off a bit dry and this is on and share some too actually sharing is caring oh man this is a banger okay next thing we're going to do is add some drums we need some drums guys we've got to get a Groove On The Go so let's go into drums I'm just going to choose a nice simple hat sound I think I will go for a classic uh we'll go closed hats classic 808 closed hat let's program it in on every beat first thing every 16th we need to set our grid 16ths make sure we're out velocity is back to about normal and then let's just program this in on every beat like so in fact now we're going to skip the first one so the kick has got more space to breathe through okay so now it's going to sound like this let's have a listen add some more high frequencies there next thing we're going to do is add a side chain compressor just to that hi-hat because that's going to allow that to bounce in time with the Rhythm oh I've already got one so we can hear the difference there this is off and then this just adds more movement nice okay now we're gonna find the open hat it doesn't actually have to be an open hat but the thing that happens halfway between every Kick Drum it's either an open hat and in this case we are going to use a Shaker to keep things a bit tight so let's just use a shaker like so just drag it in you can see I've taken out the low end because we generally don't want that with a Shaker so let's program this in in between every kick kicks one two three four Etc so let's just program one of those in between each Kick and it's going to sound a little bit like this open hat and we can tweak the pitch as well which is quite cool if we want to sound a little bit grungier and low down check in mono so I can actually hear the levels balanced it's kind of cool digging that all right next thing I'm going to do is feed a little bit of these drums in in fact no we'll do that in a second first let's choose a nice big fat snare so let's listen to some snares [Music] let's just choose this one we'll have to shape it slightly but I'm listening out for the for the frequencies more than anything else because I can tweak the shape of it like make it shorter tweak the pitch of it but first I want just some frequencies that are really going to pop through so let's just program that on every other kick like so let's take it down in volume and you know you can preview some in situ to try and find one that works really well like so that's good as well foreign I think this one's hitting most of the frequencies I want to it's a little bit long let's just take it down maybe that one or this one yeah this one okay so this is the drums on its on their own and what we're going to do is feed in a little bit of this room Reverb to each one and how I've set that up is if you press this button here this routing button and then the R button you can right click create return chain and then you can choose any of your Global auxiliary channels which we've created over here from that drop down so I've just chosen a room Reverb and that will allow me to feed a little bit of Reverb into each of these drums but you have to make sure you have this send button turned on so you can see that but now let's have a listen I actually don't like that snare sound I've changed my mind I think that's probably a bit more appropriate let's spark it up a bit just boost those high frequencies a little add some Reverb a little bit to the drums too to gel it all together all together I don't even know if this sounds anything like anima but you know what I'm enjoying myself so hey ho sometimes it's just about using inspiration and starting off with your own ideas you know now I want to get onto the really good stuff this is cracks fingers this is where we're going to go into some of that interesting synth design that they use in Animas music so let's call this one what one should we do first the percussive lead synth okay we're going to call this percussive lead color it's cyan the natural color of synths in the wild say that bad boy get that serum on there and yeah we want to create a nice analog sound but we're going to start off in the same way that we always do pretty much which is with a saw wave so how do we make this kind of an interesting percussive sound well the first thing we can add a second envelope and make it Plucky again and just add a bit of noise on there but let's get something that's a bit more percussive just naturally so I would think that would be let's try this one [Music] so now we can hear we've got that Plucky sound on there let's add some unison maybe add a little bit of Square wave again so many of these sounds are made in a very similar way we can add some filter as well but send the uh we just wanted to play through once actually [Music] so we've got a nice sound now let's add a little bit of distortion oh too much too much thicker [Music] just adding that crunch to it and then we could add We'll add some delay [Music] I think 1 8. like so ping pong yeah like that and then the next thing we want to do is add some Reverb we have got the low end taken out under about 150 we might actually use our own Reverb for this a specific one so let's just do it within the synth itself plate foreign [Music] [Music] and by having that very short and sharp tick at the beginning that allows us to make this into that percussive lead now I don't know what the anima lead is but I'm going to just program one in and show you using triplets as well to make it a bit more interesting [Music] oh [Music] next thing I'm going to do is switch the grid to triplets like so and that will allow us to give that kind of rolling sound [Music] Ed like that let's do it manually actually off grid [Music] let's give that a bit more Reverb this needs work [Music] okay next thing we want to do is add some let's add some multiband compressor there and try and make it a bit crispier [Music] that's sounding pretty cool okay let's add some Reverb on there sorry samiki take up the low end crunch it up again just to add some more harmonics to it [Music] I'm just doing that with a bit Crusher foreign excellent okay so that's the percussive lead but we've got this what I'm going to call son of a pitch and this is going to be a pitchy lead uh let's call this son of a pitch of a pitch I'm gonna have to listen to the animatrack after this so I can make any tweaks to make it a bit more like it but kind of sounding cool so we'll turn the percussive lead off and this is what when we're going to do one of those lead synths so let's call this son of a pitch grab it paste it keep things organized you know it you love it know it love it win it make it okay so once again we're going to keep things simple we're going to keep things based on that we're going to make it mono and then we're going to add some of this poor tomato [Music] so you'll already start to recognize that sound and we're just using again a simple [Music] a simple wave but what we want to do is assign the filter to open up at different levels when we are using the velocity so that's going to give us more control and the other thing I'm going to do is add an LFO to that same filter cutoff so it's constantly going to be ebb and flowing let's take that off BPM like that and that's going to add that really nice kind of interesting movement that you get in animus tracks we could even add that a little bit to the pan [Music] foreign I think that's kind of pretty much it for that sound actually [Music] maybe not so much on the panning [Music] already already I'm not even gonna bother now I will bother I'll program something in but like see how simple that was to create just a few moves using a normal saw wave and then just tweaking the filter a little bit to get that really cool sound and it is cool before we go back to that I want to do the really nice big drop since they do I'm going to call this Beast Master zero Beast Master zero when actually it's Beast Master one million that's how beastly this is right and again it's going to be based on a saw wave I'm going to have to program this one in in fact so let's call this The Beastmaster 1 million if I was to release a synth product I call it the Beastmaster one million definitely would do that so let's get the serum on there much like the other sounds we're gonna base it on a saw wave but it's just going to be much lower [Music] whoops too loud and we want to get that kind of jittery transform effect and the way we're going to do that is we could actually do it with the portamento and then just detune foreign [Music] on there but an octave below that's pretty much it and then you can actually do it with the pitch Bend but just imagine you've got your big build up coming big buildup in fact let's let's do a little bit of arrangement so we've got this then we can ham our cake and eat it and The Beastmaster 1 million is going to come in and just Beast us up it'll be beef Me Up Buttercup so why do I say these things right so let's program this in if we program it in on every 16th like this we're gonna have to allow a little space in between each one we'll do that in a sec [Music] because you can hear they're all kind of blurred together so the way to do that if we don't want to make it Plucky we can just make each note slightly shorter which is going to give us that transform effect nice something like that but of course we want to add some Reverb on there as well I'm really liking this kind of plate Reverb I think it sounds really cool for these kind of sounds too big except we want that last one to be short as well let's continue this actually [Music] oh maybe we should take that down an octave so they're kind of jumping octave [Music] so it's all about just using these basic sounds in really creative ways so that's that's pretty cool Okay so we've got our build up which we are going to have by taking out the low end so I'm going to leave all of those bases in there I'm just going to take out the low end so it's going to be like this we can take out the high end as well so it's like a filter and if we do the same for the kick except leave the high end of the kick in there just to take out the low end then you've got this kind of effect for your build up except those drums we don't want to have those playing and now let's just take that off so we're going to take off the EQ at that point and we're going to take off the EQ of the bass at that point too so everything can come back full fat frequency fat full loveliness we need some more I'm going to create its own Reverb for that I know we've already got a bit on the sound itself but I'm going to create a special extra special one I'm going to call this perk synth Reverb just because I think we need extra control for it to get it sounding just how we want just so so let's pop that on and then I'm just going to jam out you know I've shown you the main broad Strokes about what I wanted to show you today but let's get this all together working in a bit of an arrangement and use automation to create that interest so we've still got quite a bit to go quite a bit to go but it's going to be worth it in the end guys it's going to be worth it in the end in fact you let me know if this is worth it if this is a complete waste of time let me know so we want that to be nice and bright oh then we can yeah that's like the um yeah that's like that track eternity so we go and then we can go up [Music] [Music] I don't know if they're the right nose let's keep in mind and then the next progression will be done oh yeah let's let's take that back then so we've got some space and then we'll do the last one so all of this can be the break okay so what I'm gonna do is just make sure that we've got the automation coming on there I think so foreign so at that point so let's play it all together in fact we could I want the drums still there actually but with the filter on them too so I'm going to get the same filter copy and paste it let's see what we've got at the moment [Music] no that's the wrong note that's change that [Music] yes that's where we've got the progression Okay so we've got this kind of effect going let's add a Reverb wash out [Music] oh that's almost big almost but not quite what did I just do turn everything off that was silly wasn't it that needs that needs some serious Reverb [Music] okay something along those lines what I want to do is just add some of these son of a pitch oh I have to play that don't I [Music] [Music] so they're into playing with each other there like that oh that sounds fat right what I'm gonna do is just arrange this really quickly but I'm going to still play along with this son of a pitch because I want there to be quite a lot of variation now you could actually yeah that sounds that sounds cool you could kind of record this in with midi up there you could just hit record and then Jam along but let's see what we can do with this track so we're going to start off I think with just the top kick so let's bring this automation over there whoops let's just copy and paste the automation I think we need one more repetition of this so let's jam it there copy and paste all this and then let's put that kick filter on so we'll start off like this and we just want a few of the elements and that's going to allow us to create something rather nice so drums let's take out hats now we can leave the hats in but we won't have the snares or the open hats yet [Music] so it's going to be something more like this I'm going to take out this well bring in the filter there same place as the kit usually if the kicks filtered out the base is going to be filtered out as well [Music] let's take out some of these bases give us something to work into foreign with this master washout too [Music] [Music] something like this yes [Applause] [Music] drop [Music] I'm going to do a little bit more work on this I'm going to compare it to the original track that I was basing us on I'm going to give you the entire Arrangement I'm going to let you pick it apart and hopefully you've learned a lot today I really enjoyed this one I went more in depth on base design than I think I have on any other video and hopefully it's shown you how you can get so much out of a simple saw wave just used in the right way so thank you so much for watching don't forget you can download this project file all the samples and presets completely free if you want one-on-one tuition with me if you want to get your music to a professional level as quickly as possible you can check out the accelerator and apply we are full at the moment but we will be opening up more spots when we've got space so if you are interested in working with me check it out and in the meantime this video here is going to show you more in-depth melodic techno production techniques so check it out after this thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you next time cheers and happy producing

Channel: EDM Tips

Views: 84,238

Keywords: anyma, melodic techno, melodic techno tutorial, ableton live tutorial, anyma tutorial, how to make melodic techno synth, how to make music like anyma, melodic techno sound design, how to make music anyma, how to make anyma song, how to make track like anyma, how to make melody anyma, how to make anyma pad, how to make anyma bassline, how to make anyma ableton, how to make anyma fl studio, how to make anyma bass, synth like anyma, afterlife enetrnity synth tutorial, EDM Tips

Id: ZSTxLz9g55g

Length: 51min 3sec (3063 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023