Make 90s Smooth Jazz with one synth

smooth jazz was really popular especially in the 9s and somebody who exemplifies the style that I'm going after would be a Paul Hard Castle and you would have also heard a lot of this in video game soundtracks from the time when modules like the JV 1080 or the 01 RW basically gave you a band in a box so you didn't need to have a basis a keyboard player a vocalist and all these different folks to compose a full tune you could just use one synth to make an entire song and so that's the vibe we're going for here we are using the cord Triton which came out in the late '90s but that Essence is still the same that ROM sound is still there now let's start with the beat here and what some folks may not know is a lot of these romersa has a lot of great drum kits and basically what you get are a bunch of drum samples mapped across your [Music] keyboard and this is the Jazz brush kits here that we have for the core beat and if we just look at the core beat here there's really four main elements we have our kick nice Reverb on it we have this little hat and this other little Shaker sound and so you'll see with the Shaker sound we're just playing a nice steady and then we also have this hat here that's kind of playing a similar type of steady sound layered up with the kick and if we play just this portion here this is what we get heavy usage of velocity down here right so some of these kicks some of the ghost kicks we're dropping the velocity a little just to try to humanize things and then what I did was I stacked this up with a snare and the reason I put this snare on a different layer here is if I open up the Triton we're using the same drum kit but I wanted to send this snare to a Reverb over here so you'll see this snare is being sent to ascend and it's a Reverb over there just to get that nice that nice 80s cheesy snare sound and so if we come back here and we look at the snare pattern here we have two core patterns here and same thing here you'll see we're playing with the velocities the length of the notes and then we're offsetting some of these hits Off the Grid to play off of that kick kind of make things sound a little sloppy again give it that little bit of humanization to it and then we bring in some percussive hits so if we go into the Triton same kit here Jazz brush kit and what we're doing is we have this little delay sound here if I could here we go and we have these conas bongas whatever we want to call them and you'll see we're dropping the velocity kind of artificially create this delay sound but we're also sending these to a delay and Reverb on the sind here and then we have that little Shaker sound too kind of doing the same thing so we start at pretty high velocity and then with each note hit we drop it down and so this gives it that nice atmospheric effect you would have heard this a lot in ambient jungle Tunes from the time just thought it was very appropriate for this [Music] song and those are the drums now the base here we're using a corg Triton this is the dark R&B [Music] bass really nice sound there and we're just playing a little bit of a diddy here uh if I can pull up my midi you'll see we're not going crazy here we're just kind of playing at our root key here C and we're just playing off of that kick and with it and we're not changing notes it's just a very steady Baseline almost reminds me of like a trance song uh in some ways so right very simple nice groovy base I didn't want the base to be the star of the show I just wanted it to be there providing that backbone little bit of stank face on top of everything driving the song along all right now we got to get into sents here and of course we are in with the cork TR Triton and this first sound we have here this is the wave table electric piano which is in the stock uh program content of the cork Triton one of my favorite EPS within the Triton Triton has a ton of great sounding EPS in this one we're playing a minor 9 here if I come into the midi our root is a c and then you'll see we're playing that [Music] c and then we go up to a d and we're using that chord device in bitwig which kind of gives us that old school sound within here and then what we did was stack that up with the cord Triton as well and if we come in here another wave table EP but what we're doing here is we're playing single notes so we're not playing chords here we're following that same progression just transposed up to a c 5 to a dsh [Music] 5 if we stack him [Music] up and that gives you a little more atmosphere right we're bringing in some higher frequency sounds on top of that EP makes things a little more interesting and then you know the other thing I'd call out here is pay close attention to your velocity especially in like a smooth jazz type tune if you actually know how to play a piano perfect you could just play very lightly I don't I'm an idiot so I'm using this velocity curb here just to keep the velocity down cuz with something like an electric piano you're going to get a much softer Ginger sound all right next thing we have up here is a high string you got to have a high string helps create that emotion and this is the slow string patch from the corg Triton the higher up you play the more earpiercing and uh emotional that sound so what we're doing with the string here is just playing a single note progression again C sharp to D [Music] SHP and you'll see that string is following along with the [Music] Eeps that's what we have with the string little bit of automation to fade it out as we transition into a new section here CU we don't just want to cut it off automatically so a slow Fade Out on the string moving into the next phase all right couple other things we have here from the corg Triton this little bell lead sound here the Tropico Bells [Music] really great these types of bell patches are in so many different romersa sounds and so we have this section here we're playing a little bit of a lick here and that's kind of it and so if we solo this [Music] part then with [Music] everything you hear that EP chugging along with that progression on top that Bell lead oh it's just a a staple of that 90s sound then you need some type of like instrumentation what better than a saxophone especially a saxophone from a Romer this is the soft tener sax oh man you can hear the spit on that read uh from whenever this was sampled very nice very cheesy uh love the sound of that and so we have this little sax slick here check the velocity very [Music] low [Music] and you don't need a studio musician you can do that yourself on the corg Triton and there you go and then to stack up with that you got to get a good guitar sound in there so of course the corg Triton has the jazz guitar patch amongst many other guitar sounds really nice sound there and so we're kind of playing a lick with that as well down here at the [Music] end [Music] next thing we have up a little bit of atmosphere so from the corg Triton Frozen glaciers patch here just a single note during this break down sounds like [Music] this stacked [Music] up all right very subtle but it helps bed up that atmosphere to make the tune a little more atmospheric now other common sounds you would have heard in smooth jazz R&B from the 9s I've done videos on this before the mark tree and that Mark tree I'm using on transition element so you know we finish our eight bars here we move into the sax lick and when we drop that first beat in that phrase we drop the mark tree with it so stereotypical you got to use [Music] it inin vocals so you may think here I need to go get a sample no the corg Triton actually has some vocal samples within it this is the gospel voice [Music] set a lot of vocals in there you going to have some cheesy vocals and so we layered up [Music] these and that's it for vocals and then I'm not GNA lie I cheated and I used a reverse symbol sample down here thinned it out with a high pass EQ into a big delay into a big Reverb so it carries out into that atmospheric section the Triton does have reverse symbols in it I'm fairly certain but I think I just got uh ansy and just wanted to finish the tune and so that is how we composed this little diddy here you making music in this fashion you know with just one sent in all the sounds within it I think really helps give you this cohesive sound that takes all the Sonic characteristics from the synth that you're using now the Triton or really any rompler for this time period if you want to set out to make a song similar to this challenge yourself to use just that syn from the drums to the bass to all the various sounds within it so just really fun way to go about things and again I think it helps with one a cohesive sound but two is giving you that throwback 90 sound as as well hope you guys found this video useful if you want this project file along with many other project files for other videos I've done go check me out on patreon where you can get this one and many more going forward until then have a good [Music] one [Music] o [Music] yeah [Music] o

Channel: Thought-Forms

Views: 75,968

Keywords: make 90s smooth jazz, how to make 90s smooth jazz, make music like paul hardcastle, korg triton, how to make smooth jazz in bitwig, bitwig studio

Id: NpIA6gaCXFs

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024