Okay, guys, today we are going to make future rave
in the style of David Guetta and Morton. Why are we doing it? It's so we can learn different techniques
by picking apart big artists tunes, so we can apply those techniques into our own tune. As usual, you
can download the project file, all the samples completely free below this and without further
ado, let's hop into the DAW and get it done! So, I'm using this magic Arturia Keylab 61 that the
guys at Arturia sent me, so thanks for that fellas. First thing we're gonna do on this track is 126
bpm for that future rave sound and then we want to create that really aggressive sounding kind of
riff synth. Now, i know that the original track of "Kill Me Slow", I think it's called, is in F Sharp Minor but I'm going to do this in A minor. As you know, it's really easy to work in
because it's just the white note, so you don't need to worry about any of the black notes. It's very
easy to kind of know where you are. I'm going to show you how you can do that and then transpose
it to a different key at the end. So, if you're using Ableton 11 like I am, you could just press
this scale button over here, choose whichever scale you want (so we could choose, you know, F Sharp Minor),
press fold and boom - it just shows those notes but I'm assuming that you don't have this version
or even if you do you can do you can do this as well, anyway. So, you can just draw in all the
notes from a up to a all the white notes, sorry,, just like that, if you don't have Ableton 11
because these techniques can be applied at any DAW. You can just drag them down an octave and then
you can drag them up from A to A an octave as well, and then when you press fold boom - you've got three
octaves of A Minor Natural. So, let's just select all those, press it across once and then they are
in... When we press fold, all those notes showing are just in the key of A Minor. Right, let's get this
synth going. I'm just using the stop plugins in Ableton so you can follow along. I'm going to
use the analog for this and the original track would have had yeah a riff like this Something like that but we're going to do it in
A Minor but it is just based on a simple source saw wave. All we need to do is just make it
a bit pluckier by taking down the sustain, and we're going to write our own riff because
we don't want to copy the tune completely. I'm going to take the tempo back
down so it's easier to write in, put the metronome on and I'm just gonna record
and play in a riff just using the right notes. Okay, let's try that again. I
like to do these no no edits. Okay, so we've got like a rough
idea of the notes we want to hit, and they're going to really work well when
the bass notes change as well. So, when it goes and that's what... that's the
beauty of doing everything in the in the scale. It's just it's going
to work. So, let's just quantize these. I'm going to double up those low notes. Cool,
so that is our riff. We're just going to pretty much repeat that, so let's consolidate it, and then
let's get this tuned sounding really aggressive in the same way that Guetta and Morton tune
does. So, I've just sped it back up to 126 bpm... Let's name this bad boy! Yes, I forgot. How could
I forget to name it?! Let's call this David Morton. Let's call it Ricky and Morton. I don't
know why... I've got a beer with my name on it. I haven't had it yet, so my creativity
ain't at the top. Don't drink and drive, kids. Okay, what I'm gonna do is make sure
they're all hitting the same velocity because at the moment the velocity is
assigned to the volume, so it's kind of dipping slightly if I hit the note slightly
less hard, .and now it's all the same So, now let's get this aggressive sound. We go to
saturation, we'll add some overdrive distortion, just to add a little bit of bars.
And now this is the trick: we are ... Usually, I like to put reverb on the auxiliary
channels and if you watch this channel, you know know that, but I'm actually going to add it to
the channel itself and that's because we want to compress that sound and get that really pumpy
compressed sound, that's in this particular genre. And now we want to add a compressor and just
get that all glued together. So, let's just see what's going on here. We want
pretty fast attack, so we get that bite. Cool, so, that sounds pretty good. I'm just
going to add an eq at the end of that, take out the low end, booster high end. Cool! So, that's that kind of Morton lead sound. Now
we're gonna work on ... Let's see what I've got on my magic thing. Oh, the reverse synth that leads
into that. Now, I know this isn't the exact same riff as in that morton track but, you know, deal
with it, brah! So, let's create that reverse like one to lead into that synth. Now, the way we're
going to do this is just duplicate that synth, delete, well.... Just quieten that
first one up, quite up, lad, and then let's just have the first
note play. So it's this, basically. Fail! Okay ,what we're going to do is we'll drop
that down an octave. I'm just going to hold shift , press down, so it's like that. I might take... allow
a bit of the low end back in, actually, on this one. Yeah, that sounds cool! I might increase
the decay time a little bit on the reverb. Cool! Now, I want to record that and then reverse
it, so don't worry if that sounds a bit complex. I've just created an audio track, and, again,
it doesn't matter which DAW you're using, you can still do this reverse reverb technique.
Choose the input from that synth, this second one, record into that channel...
Let's just record it. Stop, boom! Okay, let's reverse that, delete that one
there, and now, when we kind of lead into this synth, we can use this reverse reverb, which is
going to give it a really cool effect. So, probably sounding something a bit like this... And we can... You know, if it's a bit quiet, just
boost it up in the gain, tweaking the fade. Boom! Epic! Now, before we do all the chords and the
beats and stuff, I just want to work out these background chords that are
going to work really well with this, and i'm going to do that with some strings. So, i'll
just call this reverse synth, and we're going to color color those the natural color of the synth,
which is, of course, as you know, cyan, and then we are going to create some strings to work out those
chords. And I'm going to remember at the end to transpose this to a different track because I've
never shown you actually how to do that. So, let's get some synth strings. Let's go strings. I'm just
going to go into packs, orchestral strings, sounds. That sounds quite nice, we're going to use
that. Now, if you use Ableton 10, you can use the template technique that I just showed you
or, if you're using 11, you can just... it's already got scale A minor chosen, so you can see these
blue notes are the ones that are in that scale. If you press scale, it's now going to do
exactly what I did on the synth but you don't have to draw the notes in. That's
a bit... one of the beauties of Ableton 11. And now, if we start off on
the root note, which is A, we can start off by drawing in
the base notes of this tune . So, this is going to be quite a long progression.
I think that's the case in this in the actual original tune. So, let's just now.... We can tweak these
notes where we want and it's going to sound good. Yes! I'm gonna have to tweak the
levels because it's clipping. Look. Bad boy! Bad boy, naughty boy! So, what
we're gonna do is just simply take the volume down. Let's just see if this
is clipping anywhere in the signal path. Yeah, it's a bit hot here and here, so i'm just
going to take it down there to stop it clipping, and now we can just take down
the volume of the strings. And if it's too quiet, just turn up your monitoring. Now, we can work out some chords for
these. So, if we copy all these bass notes, put them up an octave. Now, we can just skip a note
each time and we can create these lovely chords. I'll just sustain it on that one, actually.
It's gonna sound epic! And, again. Whoops, taxi! So, they are our chords. Now let's get...
Before we do the big building up and stuff, let's get some vocals on this straight away
because, you know, we want that vibe, we want to be getting that epic feeling, and the vocals are
an integral part to attract like this because ... Yes, it's future rave and really it kind of sounds
like old-school trance but slowed down a bit but the vocals are a key part to this track. We've got
the synth, which is the hook, and we need the vocals. So, what I'm going to do... I'm going to use Loop
Cloud. They've got Loop Cloud 6 this has just come out, so I'm actually going to sync it to Ableton,
which works really well, actually, because then everything's in the right tempo, as well. So...
Let me know if you're enjoying this, by the way, guys, as usual, hit me up with a "hell yeah" or
an "amen brother" if you're feeling holy because I love it! I love to hear from you, fact! So, let's get
cracking. We need to choose the Loop Cloud as the the plugin, that's going to make sure it's
synced up to Ableton. Now I can launch that bad boy. Then I'm going to loop this chord progression
and this is something really cool that i just found, playing with this. I want a female vocal
so, obviously, I'll just go into instruments, go along to female vocal, and you can download... I
think you can get a free trial of this, so you can click my link below. If you do decide to sign up,
I will get an affiliate payment, you know. It's a little bit but it helps me keep the channel going,
or if you're not comfortable with that, obviously, you can just google it. So, this is the thing that
I found. First, obviously... Well, not obviously, you haven't used it. You can choose A minor as your
scale but this is the thing i really like: I can choose the length of the sample. So, I only want
pretty full acapellas, so, if i put it say like seven or, you know, four and a half seconds as my
minimum, I'm only going to get vocals that are that long, and I can key lock them to the track
as well. Although they're... I'm selecting A Minor vocals Okay, this is a bit loud in my headphones, so I'm
just gonna turn it down on the channel in Ableton. And now let's listen to some of them, whilst we
loop this, and wait till we get the feels, y'all. Instant feels! It's all like.... You have to get the right vocal. That's not the right vocal. I might
clip this, I might, like, cut this bit, whilst I just find a vocal, so i'm not like boring you. Oh, I like that! Yeah, okay. We're having that. So, it
took me a while to find it so i'm glad I kind of edited that bit out. So, we'll just drag that
in. Again, I can buy it just using the credits, drag it in. Come on, come on! Okay,
let's just drag the original in there that looks about right. So,
now let's press warp 123. Warp mode: complex progress because it's
best for vocals. Now, let's listen. I 've just added some room reverb on
the auxiliary channel so I can take it ... So we can have more control. And now what I'm going to do is I'm
going to compress that reverb by the dry vocal, just to duck it slightly, and allow that
vocal to breathe through a bit. So, here we go. This is epic! I should just finish this track. Right, we're going to get the rest of this on the going, on the go. Build Wow, that just works. Okay, so with this synth
to lead up into the drop, we are going to do some automation, and what we're going
to do is we're going to automate the release on the amplitude, and this is something
that Morton and Guetta do in their track, so let's just make sure that we know where it's going to
go back on the drop, and then increase the release. Let's check out what happens. You know, it just kind
of washes it out like that, and we can also do that with the reverb.
Increase the dry, sorry, increase the wet, and then back to that kind of tight release. Cool, and what we want to do is make this drop
really huge. So, first let's get the kick on there. I'm going to use a kick from the EDM Tips
Creative Toolkit, which you can grab below as well, if you want something quite toppy that sounds
quite cool. So, let's just drop that on there, and now let's work on this future
rave drop, baby! So, let's get this going... I was supposed to do a Prodigy one this week.
I actually did do it, so we're having the prodigy next week but it's currently being
edited. I am trying out a new video editor to try and save myself some time because it takes
a long time to make these. Might choose it Might choose two, I think,
will work a little bit better. Cool, let's get that bass line on the go.
Now, we have got... Wow, I spent ages over those vocals but it's worth spending
the time finding the right vocals. For the bass I'm going to do this
again in an analog and I'm going to make a really kind of analog sounding bass. And the way I'm going to do
that is have a square wave, I think, and a sine wave, add some Unison, and what I'm going to do is
I'm going to send each oscillator to its own amp amplifier, so i can pan one left and one right, and then take the frequency filter down. Maybe take the sustain down
to make them a bit pluckier, and a bit tighter like that. Now, let's program this baseline
in. We're just going to have it hitting that root note on
the drop, so that's just an A, and just those three simple notes repeated, which will give it that old-school feel. Maybe I can drop that... I know what i'm going
to do. Because this is stereo, and you want to watch out for stereo bass because you
could get phase issues, I'm going to ... I'm going to keep that bass to the mids and
the highs, I'll duplicate it, then I will keep this other base the opposite of that, so just
the lows, and I'm going to take off Unison, just take off the second oscillator and
make sure that first one is in mono, then choose a sine wave, so this is just
the sub bass now. Let's call that sub bass. And now the upper bass will
give it that stereo width. Now, we need to add some side chain
compression to get that pumping. And the way we're going to do that is... I've got a
side chain channel here. If i open it up... Oops, nothing in it at the moment. Let's grab it and
let's just duplicate that. So, I've got a little tick sample in there, and I use a tick rather than
the kick, so the all the control for the release is controlled by the compressor
rather than the length of the kick. So, i'll just group those together, so
they can be processed together as a base, and then put a normal compressor, in whichever
DAW you're using, boom, and then open up this and choose your sidechain input, which in this
instance is a click, which is set to sends only, so you're never going to hear it, you're just
going to use it. I can... I don't like that view. So, this is off, and it just squashes it together
because that future rave sound is really quite squashed. I might even drop this sub bass
an octave. That's a bit lower actually. Yeah, okay I won't. Cool, okay, right. Now, what
do we need to do? We need a bass for the break, which we are also going
to use in the drop as well to make it even bigger and more epic, and also we are going to add
a pumping synth on the side chain channel for this, just to make it even bigger. So, let's create an
auxiliary channel. Let's call that synth reverb, and i'm just going to copy
the settings here in terms of... Yeah, I'll copy the settings there and it's
already got a sidechain compressor but this time we're going to run the sidechain compression
from the bouncing side chain signal like this. So, you can hear... So, you can hear that that
reverb is now ducking as well. Cool! Okay, let's get this other base that I was
talking about. So, this is going to be our break base. Really simple. Again, I'm going to throw on
an analog. i'm doing everything with analog today. Let's make it Unison again. So, it's got
that kind of 80s feel, take the filter down. I don't like that filter envelope, so we'll
just put the sustain right up for that. And, in fact, we might use two oscillators
and pan then left and right to make this wide and, again, you could do the
same thing to avoid stereo phasing. Detune and then it's really wide. So, in the
break it would be something along these lines, but we don't want this reverb playing
in the break. That's just for on the drop, so we can just stick it in here on
the drop, strings come in, and base, and we don't want this bouncing happening in the
break, so we'll take the side chain sugar out there. Breakbass. Oh, no, we don't want those gubbings coming in. What have I done? I did it wrong. That blimming build is supposed
to be there. Okay, I know why I did it wrong because I moved the chords back to come in slightly after. All right. Come on, boy, sort your
head out! We're going to build a riser, actually, and I don't know if the original track's
going to build up here but I imagine it. So, that... Let's turn that
reverb down on the synth a bit. Let's put that second bass in on the drop.
I'm just kind of going off on one, guys, this is pretty ad-lib here but I hope you're
enjoying it. Let me know in the comments if you are. And we've got the Prodigy coming next week, one
of my favourite producers of all time Liam Howlett. Okay, I think that's pretty much there. Let's now
see what else is going on. Yeah, we got the drums, of course, we've got the drums. So, you've
got a couple of big drop bits like that, have a pumping white noise there like by all means,
fill your boots, lad, get that white noise in there. I'm gonna use Will's white noise. Will's white
noise, here we go. This is just one I made earlier and I'm just gonna stick that on there. It doesn't matter which note you
hit because white noise is atonal, and then we should be able to make that pump
as well, and we will do that just by grabbing that another side chain
compressor that's already been set up. So, we're just adding that to the drop. So, if we got the beats coming in here... Let's
get some beats on the go. Again, I'm going to use the drums from the EDM Tips midi pack... Sorry,
EDM Tips Creative Toolkit, so let's just get some... and they're very simple beats in this. You
know, these tracks are really pumped quite loud, so the less stuff you got going
on, the louder you can get the mix. So, let's get the hi-hat in there, just
every other kick... Sorry, in between each kick, like that. Boom, boom, boom, house
music. Lovely, take it down a bit. It's all about choosing the right sound though. i think those two layered up will give it enough
aggression. Again, I need to listen to the track again, really, to work out the tonality but you
know layering claps is always a good thing to see. So, see it, but we need to make sure
they're kind of quite low in the mix. So, the way I've done that is I've opened
up.... If you open up this little button here, and these two here s&r, you can create return
chain and you can assign a chain to your auxiliary channels. Now, if that is a bit kind of
beyond where you are now, don't worry about it, you can check out my Ultimate EDM Mixing Course
(nice little plug there), and you'll learn all about this kind of stuff but i know a lot of you
guys that watch this regularly see me do this, so i'm just going to add a little bit of reverb
to that clap and then feed in the other one. Okay, and, again, you can play with
that synth on the automation, as it comes up to a, you know, part of the track, adding the release to increase tension, and then we're gonna go into the full groove here.
So, all I'm gonna do to carry on with this track right now before we head off for
the day is copy that, duplicate it. I'm going to do copy it with the automation,
so i'll turn off the automation lock there, and let's just get a groove going really
quickly. This is going to bring the shuffle. So, what I'm going to do is get another... And
don't worry, guys, I'm going to actually do a bit more of this before I give it to you to
download, just so it sounds a bit better. That closed hat from the EDM Tips Creative Toolkit is
fine. Let's just put that on every 16th, like so, and to make this kind of move a bit more,
we're going to add a side chain compressor just to that hat. Whoa, I know your mind
has been blown. I know it, I understand it, and i'm not going to apologise for it.
So, at the moment this is how it goes. It's too, you know, too robotic, so
what we're going to do is throw the sidechain compressor on that pump...
sorry, on that closed hat so now it goes. Off. Straight. We might even
take the top end off that. So this is very subtle. So, right, if you've got the vocal, as we have, this
is how you do the intro to a track like this and I know these guys do it. You know, any good producer
will do this anyway. So, to introduce the the tune, you want to kind of introduce
little elements of it earlier on, so it gets people primed to know that there's stuff
going to be coming in later. For instance, we might take this first chord of the strings
and just repeat it but it's going to be quiet for this part of the track. In fact, we
could wash it out with reverb even like this,, add the side chain compressor on there,
like so, and we can take this reverb off. We can take this reverb off when it gets to the break but let's just kind of start off
the track a little bit anyway. Let's bring in these drums but just the open hats, and
we're going to introduce the vocals as well. Now, we could do this by having this awesome
one that I just randomly found, which I love. So, you know, and have that really quiet in the
mix that's quite a nice way to start a tune because there's a lot of interest going on but quite subtle, quite low down, and that's
one of the big differences between a pro sounding track and a amateur sounding track.
Just because it sounds like there's not much going on, listen a bit more carefully
and you'll hear that there usually is. And we're going to take the other vocal as well. Just one part of it. Yeah, okay, we're just
going to take this bit here. Just one tiny tiny vocal chop of it. And I should really
take off the big reverb as well for this bit, you know, I'm just gonna have a little bit. Yeah, that's all we're gonna have for the beginning, and through automation and clever...
Yeah, automation mainly, then you would bring that in slowly and then when the vocals
come in, it's not like a massive surprise because people have already been primed to
expect something in that frequency range but, obviously, it's going to be much
quieter at the beginning. Something like this, Something as simple as that. Really,
really low volume, and then we could do a reverse reverb for the way that we did
on the synth as well to introduce this vocal in the drop... sorry, in the break
but this will do for now. We'll also automate this low frequency. So, imagine this going on
for like 16 bars, adding new elements, then we get to the And then this would be the first break but
then the second break the vocals will be on here. Okay, right, this is so almost done
but i I'm just... This is epic! Okay, i'm gonna get these bass notes
done just to follow the chords. Ah, yes! And then, there we go. These just
follow the bass notes of those piano cores to bring everything up Let's just find a build, like
whatever. That's taking too long I'll just sing it Okay, like that's why having some kind of
self-control is important but it's also why having a lot of tension control in the build-up
is good because when that drop came in, it was weak and that's largely because
everything's so loud and powerful now, you know, and you've got the build
up you need to take the bass out. So, yeah, there's work that needs to be
done on that. I'm gonna do it a bit more and then you can download it but I hope you've
enjoyed this random impromptu session anyways, guys. Thanks for watching and if you dig it, please,
consider subscribing to the channel because it really helps me out, and share it with your friends
if you think it's worthwhile Hang on a second, I told you i was going to show you how to transpose this. I just remembered. Okay, let me transpose it for you. So, if you want to have it in a different key, what you do is go into whichever... I mean, you could probably do it another way but
this is how i do it. If you want it in the key of F Sharp Minor, like the original track, the
Morton and Guetta one, that is... Let's see... From A... That's a rubbish instrument, come on! We
got the synth here... From A, which is here, what's the quickest way to get to the F Sharp?
It's by dropping it one, two, three semitones. So, let's just collect all, press down three times, and now do that with all of your melodic
elements. Three times. Bass three semitones down, sub bass and normal bass three semitones down, and
now... You'd need, obviously, your vocals are now going to be out of tune. So, what we can do in Ableton
is we could... You could either choose a different vocal in the key that you want it to be in or, if
you found an absolute dope ass vocal like this, then you can just make sure that you've
got Complex Pro and then just drop it three semitones. If you drop it much more than
that, it might sound a bit weird. Now, let's listen to the tune. I think
that's everything that's been dropped. And this was the original temp... the original key it was in. That's how you do it, anyway.
It's just easier to write things in A minor if you're not that skilled
at playing the piano and whatnot. That's why I like to show it in A Minor because
it's easier for beginners and people who are not great at playing piano. I literally just said that. Anyway,
until next time.Thanks again, cheers and happy producing!
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Hey, everyone. I just finished this new tutorial using (pretty much) only the stock plugins in Ableton Live 11, but you can use the techniques in any DAW.
You can also download the Ableton project file, presets and samples for free here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HhxyDAp4uRwMCvv-MBdzA21Fd5ZNLKER/view
In this tutorial we go in-depth into:
1. Synth Design
2. Beat Making
3. EPIC CHORDS!!!
4. Mixing
5. Reverb
6. Arrangement
7. Vocals
8. Changing the key of your track
9. Much, much more!
Hope you enjoy, and if you have any technical questions, just drop them below and I’ll see if I can help :)
https://youtu.be/4JK9eJTEP\_I