Virtual Riot making a song from Start to Finish! [Reupload]

hey guys what is going on my name is virtue right and I am at the cymatics office right now and we're gonna make a little track from scratch okay how to start though so I have a little pattern idea in my head that I I want to realize so first of all I think it's a good idea to have something in your head before you just go in I like sound design sessions where you just go out into the blue and you just start making a patch and eventually that'll trigger a song idea but I want to start with like a little bit of a plan so the plan is to have trappy bead and 160 and something like that just like that that's like super basic and then on this sustain we're gonna have a quarter note little yolk on top and that's everything so that's like the basic outline but then I guess once we're gonna make the sounds we'll see where it takes us so let's let's start with the drums let's get some samples in here so um I made some trappy cakes myself the other day so we're just going to use this trappy cake I made and for the snare since it's gonna be trapping it should probably be something soft or not like a dubstep you snare it but something more fresh like something around that area so this is but that sounds like a soft clap layer so we need oh there we go that's gonna cool oh that's a companies near sweet why not hey support your homies okay so easy trap beat we're just gonna start with that punch that in also this is a 150 we need 160 and we need a sub so for like trappy subs I've literally just been taking a sine wave and distorting that thing in serum and then distorting that even further with a saturator of your choice and there's this amazing plugin a deviant mm is a deviant machines let me see this thing called texture right here we talked about it in the podcast I think that adds noise white noise or whatever noise we want or any sample to a sound depending on the input volume so now is adding white noise to my sub and I can filter it so and we get it up here and then distort the noise and the sub together in the saturator so now we have a poop saw as the professionals call it okay I want to take out like 300 400 Hertz because that's all the mud so that's just going to be a really obnoxious annoying Trapp sub also just to make it like a little more I don't know evil or something and less perfect I like to add a little pitch wobble so it like slowly drifts up and down ever so slightly around the root note that like doesn't even have to be in sync or maybe on one bar that's that's already too much just a little bit something like that okay so we need this guy as soon as the second kick comes around so we'll have to come on from over here so from here so make this an e I'm gonna start this in E and then I'm gonna make a fresh patch for our yoki sound okay so I'm gonna just draw the mini first and then keep that on loop while I work on the patch that's usually how I do that that's a little easier so we're gonna eat some at dawn one two three four that doesn't dance and then a fill right there so now I can just keep this little MIDI clip on loop this gets annoying after a while but this is a really easy way to work on this so I'm just gonna do that and just disregard if this gets annoying after a while so actually this will work easiest with just a Solway if I feel like I just want this to have like a sweep upwards I might you sink just because but way higher and also restart gate so this is drifts apart really nicely important is here and I keep telling this but this is important I think if you use multiple voices and serum on an oscillator it'll automatically spread them in the stereo image so you want to go in the global page and maybe turn this down like the width here if you want to stay mono especially with multiple voices because now this is gonna be really anti phase like left and right and if you played a sound like this on a club system that's only playing mids you might not even hear this sound at all it'll be substantially more quiet and it can suck I have had a time where I played somewhere in France and I played a new tune I made where I didn't take care of this and half of the basis and the drop work gone like you couldn't even hear them anymore it was very strange and then I learned about face cancellation and they're my life got a lot easier from there and from there on out okay so let's put some filters on this don't want this to end up there another LFO on the volume [Music] yeah just one like a little washy sweep noise add some white noise with a noise oscillator run this through the filter and paper add ott add distortion and put this on like a lot of voices and a lot of detuning so this has zero tonality right now so we can bring some in with a positive comm filter that we link to the upward sweep LFO so we get some of the upwards movement maybe link the volume envelope to the resonance so yeah we get some of that and then for a metallic you feel add a tonal delay so actually I would do this inside serum because here you can also use the filter of the delay to make it a little more flavorful so suddenly you have this metallic tail which is very nice and hybrid trap rhythm II and we can then automate the mix of the delay so it's just in every once a while or even just fade it in yeah afterwards so now it's like just bringing in the delay every time the sound actually goes quiet so that's kind of cool so this sounds a little weak but it's doing the right movement that I want so now imma drop my little fat rack on it for saturation and enhancement ooh this is actually the wrong one I think this works too but this one's a little too intense I want the old one this one's fine yeah that's enough this is also less intense on the CPU quite quite come here can we just draw this more maybe try the comms filter instead nice okay that's enough for now and a fill before the kick comes in okay now we can actually use a cool drum fill from the pack that we're gonna release soon the drum pack I've made it with Pat from mote steps so you can actually have a little sneak peek into it we made a lot of drum fills and most of them are at one 50 so there's some really sweet ones super clean and dry sounding in here so these are 150 but the tracks of 160 if you want to speed something up Ableton has like loads of these different algorithms to do that like the the tones mode re pitch complex complex Pro but if you want if you have something like a drum fill I recommend using reap it cuz it'll keep the quality of the sample the same and you won't have any aliasing issues or something so what it does is it'll just increase the pitch a little bit because it has to make the sample faster but it keeps the quality the same so it'll stall the transients still snap the same so that's super useful for drums and I can't recommend that enough so we'll have oh wait turn off the solo why is this not on time there we go Oh cuz I didn't type in 150 I am so stupid there we go so that's our fill to the second kick time when the sub hits we could even just do three and then go from there and have another patch that just does a like a quarter note going over this since we already made a Yoink and I'm gonna improve this one a little bit this one still sucks so since this one doesn't have any sub I'm gonna cue all the sub out anyways we can use the frequency shifter in the end to like pitch this guy up or down so that's a little more interesting already I like that if so what why I'm saying that it's important that this thing doesn't have any sub for frequency shifting is because if you have a sub in here and your frequency shifted this this is gonna happen actually sounds kind of cool right now but most of the time if it was a real like full-on main base as soon as your frequency shifted your sub sign is slowly reaching 200 Hertz to your it hurts and then it's it's gonna be incredibly loud and that might ruin the sound once your frequency shifted up so I like the frequency shift either with split frequency bands or cut the sub first actually in this case is kind of cool because you can tune it to the key of the track we can EQ it afterwards a little bit to bring it down but it kind of sounds like something you would otherwise get through fm so that's actually kind of cool I like that the tail of the delays of it along that's fine this can stay this can all stay in place like this we could add some room so what I like is for putting this in a room or adding some reverb I like putting in the shortest possible reverb times so it's just like a little single reflection and then either keeping it like this so it's just that small room also great at stereo width to a mono sound or if you want kind of like a delay like an echo you can use the pre delay to just have one single reflection of the sound like so we have like this one echo and then you can time it to the speed of the track so it's like it in time or it's like a triplet or something so it can do all kinds of interesting stuff with that I like that this would actually be kind of cool because then we can do this one like super roomy and then as soon as the sub comes in we'll turn it off so it gets really dry and an intimate so this is also a really nice way to play with contrast in a track have very wet elements and then very dry elements close together so especially when you're wearing headphones that's gonna sound really cool and interesting because you're you're like constantly moving from one space to another and that sounds really nice so for the second Y we can just use the same pad from the beginning just duplicate that and delete the reverb for that and now draw some quarter notes under the that sounds cool when you play it sustained as well draw some quarter notes under the sub but I want this sound to be different now so we can go back into the serum patch and mess with it here so let's see what we can do yeah whatever I do right now as you can tell that the sound stays pretty much exactly the same because of the frequency shifted sub so that's a little bit annoying so I'm gonna cut that off before the ship okay that's better so let's make this a little longer these MIDI notes can all be a little bit longer so that's kind of nice something like that just like a constant going up there why is this clicking probably because of all of the oh wow there we go because this was resetting back to zero ah if we keep this on envelope mode it stays up there and that's actually kind of cooler like this now we can like target a certain node play with the D tuned to see how far it's supposed to spread that actually is a cool tonality if we go towards that that's getting really metallic and aggressive but I like it have to reduce the harshness afterwards with an EQ I'm just gonna dip 3k I only have laptop speakers right now so I can tell that much but it'll be fine also at this point we can layer this with like something with a similar it has like a similar job from previously made samples so I have like all these all these samples I made a long time ago like on tour I'll just name them from like whatever city I made them in and I've got a few in there that are like have this kind of yummy purpose these are all like different differently long-held notes so I can just take that second one is kind of cool so we can just take that and layer it under all of these this one has sub those so we got to cut that so now that just increases the density of that Yoink we could even give one of them a reverb or let's frequency shift this one too until they're like somewhere around the same flavor this one is still a little too aggressive for my dish I think it was the comms filter that's a bit better yeah it's the routes the delayed not - let's make this EQ a little shorter so it's more snappy I do like the metallic tail that's cool we could even bring that out with a feedback knob here that's kind of cool that I don't and and now we can like change the speed of that maybe for a cool pattern or something and let's see so we've got a so for the next that I just need this to hit a couple of times turn turn turn and then spaced and then and the last two quarters are gonna be a fill again the question is should the sub stop at any moment yeah probably right there and then come back on that kick hey stay where you are and then that's where the fill is gonna be so the sub can stop again also this kind of sounds a bit like ass right now because there's zero sidechaining happening so I'm gonna add this just by copying the middie of the drums down here and then moving the snare to C so that's cool this is all very dry stills so let's add some things let's add some high hats and cymbals up here I've got some favorites we have some open cymbals in the pack to like some good clothes and open one shot so let's actually have a look at that and some top loops - hey we can just drag those and because I don't want to get hung up on creating a top loop every time so I made some top loops for people like us who don't want to waste their time making top loops that one's a bit tense there's more simple ones in here too just like just so we have something in the background to fill stuff up and then you can still layer on that just so there's something going on so I'm just gonna use I'm actually just gonna use a REIT pitch again so it'll only go up in pitch but now it's on the right BPM so also I don't want this to start until after the fill what else do we have in here we've got some got some cymbal splashes that's cool those can come in at some point what else is there okay this one's pretty dressed because there's already like some offbeat chants going on in this but maybe that's cool and also I can show you a nice technique I use a lot right here so once we have these background loops in here I don't like it when high hats have long release or open high hats are sticking around for too long so in an easy fix it's just using the auto pan to shorten these so I'm actually just going to group both of these top loops to go into this little group and then into the side chain so now I'm just gonna put an autopen on quarter or eighth notes on it so it'll change it from two like more cut off or maybe even on eighth notes so it's more more choppy I think eighth notes is the way and then have a very tikki trap hi-hat be eighth notes as well in the background so let me find one real quick that's for not like and then we can so we'll draw this one in ourselves and then we can use it for some high at Phil's so right here so let's just do some 32 no nice so that's making the drums already a little more interesting maybe cut off some low-end nice so we've got that going now I don't like this area because that's it's really tiny it's probably just gonna be a little louder I like the company snare but maybe we can get it to be a little more intense so here I want to like go into the realm of hey we're using someone else's samples but we're making them our own so this narrows got a little bit of low-end so I'm gonna get rid of that then there's this fundamental down here that I like a lot so I'm gonna accentuate that saturate the snare till it is literally on fire something like that put an EQ after the saturator again cut off the low-end that is now new in this so and now since we've saturated this a lot this is a pretty brookie snare now the transient is pretty much gone and the dynamics are missing so we can either cut the sample off before a little bit so it has a little bit of a fast fade-out and the tail doesn't get blown up that much or or even in addition to this we can use a transient shaper afterwards to get the snap back a little bit so I'm going to turn on the attack turn down the sustain this actually sounds kind of nice I like this I hope this sounds fine on real speakers but yeah this has a lot more impact now I like that it is not in tune with a song because our sub mmm this is an e and the snare is a I think an F I'd say to see but it needs to be a B so I want to tune the snare to either be on the fundamental like on the root note of the track or the fifth right now it's playing mm-hmm when it should be playing mmm so it's a fifth on top oven I can't go that low so I'm gonna just pitch the thing down one semitone that's how I'm trying to say that fits way more got to move my EQ point though don't forget try to nail it there it is oh we could even keep it like this for like maximum point okay one more cool technique to make this snare really interesting once you have this and you have like a mad snare with some cool resonance stri actually this thing there's a too sharp let me put in pro and beyond this and then attenuate the highs a bit just a bit just a tiny bit cuz yeah this is a lot of a lot of a lot of meat but so a cool thing you can do once you have a snare like this we're gonna duplicate this thing like the entire group in here so this is gonna play twice duplicate the whole shebang with the effects train and then run it through a hundred percent reverb without really short kind of like that and now you can either pitch the sample or frequency shifted before it goes into the reverb so now it's like hmm so now you have a tuned reverb tail that is in key with the track so now it's playing a major third so that's kind of cool you can even delay it with a pre delay if you want to oh that's actually kind of cool it's it's getting into the Jacke we kind of vibe with the wizard too late bit that's kind of interesting thing that's kind of cool I've never done that happy accidents that's cool this is a little too long but that's cool I'll keep it like that this is nice maybe I have this clap in here this is just to like add some more detail to the top and again because we distorted it so much the whole top and it's just white noise at this point I feel like so that can make it a little more interesting maybe cut the lows on that okay I really don't like this intro sound yet though so that was just supposed to be like a white noise kind of ice there all this low-end where's that coming from that's better we could even layer some let's take some horns the cymatics horns because we're cuz we're here cuz tis the occasion where I usually take them from this savage rooms for trap yeah the brass brass one shots so we're in E so let's take some evens and then since we have these three hits we can just make him go down tanta like e fe or something in the beginning here so that would be cool let me just tie that yeah kind of like that let me add some fades that's a little fast yeah kind of like that now this needs to be eq'd though because this is very Bumi something like that yeah that works maybe even give them all individual fates just a little bit so it's a tiny bit tighter if you want to yeah like that and also I like to layer it at least like two or three horn stabs just to make him a little denser so this one is very dirty sounding and I like the release but I need one more that has a crunchy attack like that this one's even a little more aggressive like that but there's a little bit of a fade in so i'ma cut it until it's like somewhere right a little earlier yeah there we go okay and you in here as well nice apply fades mm-hmm I feel like this sub is drifting a little much still let's have a look yeah it's fine maybe give it a little bit of this low-end over here back that's kind of fun we can even give this some modulation like thinking of the self-checkout tune we could add the white noise in serum in here and then give this a faster LFO kind of modulation in there on top of the quarter notes so again it's like different patterns of different speeds running at the same time that's kind of cool keeps this interesting and also I wanted to have one cool layer for this whoops that is too much noise where did that come from there we go I wanted to have one cool layer for this base where I take a let's take like a vocal sample that just sings one single note technically that works but I want something with a little more fidelity [Music] let's do the ooh so I want to tune this with a frequency shifter to be a layer on the sub so first of all tuna - an e ice an e ad o TT but now frequency-shift this thing so it starts to sound all weird but still kind of inky so you got a target it's fundamental to be somewhere in the scale so that would be a minor 7 or up here would be an octave that's kind of cool so I'm just gonna loop this little bit here of it whenever the sub is playing and to give it a bit of a rhythm put an auto pan on it and have it wobble at like 8th notes or something so it'll sound like maybe oh that's cool I like that more like a cool way to give this a layer that's kind of could be sustained as well or could just want to try out a few different pitches here or try out some different modulation shapes like instead of a sign have a try I have a saw down so it's more plucky or kind of like that but yeah I just I just like flaring buzzy bases with something melodic on top but not too melodic use the frequency shifter to make it kind of weird it's almost like a more like a background ambience kind of thing I like it this can definitely stay there during turn ticka okay some bass fill like a little glitchy thing for under this drum fill this is nice from earlier sound design sessions maybe let's try this anything because that looks interesting that's cool so maybe because this all of these are like super random sounding they're just like all over the place not soon to a specific tempo or anything so I'll just drop him in move him around until they somewhat fit and then after I found like a place where they sound cruel go in and move them around like or stretch them and warp them so that they actually like are on the on the grid do you do that so that's actually kind of cool in the end there so let's micro manage this real quick do so we can see there's another hit back here so I'm gonna move this forward so now we've chopped sweet fade it in because there's a little bit of a click sweet some offbeat aJE's cuz why not where are they these are fun something i like to do is just if you pitch them up they become faster too so they automatically sound a little bit tighter so sometimes I don't even use the warp or in this case I would even use it to make it faster so let's put these on the offs just because oops there we go mm-hmm I like this guy but it still sounds a little boring I think we can make this more interesting I want to see where I can take this let's try something out distort this a little more make it a little softer on the top and how can we get this guy maybe even and duplicate this thing so because I think it was just it needed more saturation we could even give us some delay like a left and right to life for room so now it's like actually more like a background ARP kind of thing I think this can still be pitched higher too whoo there we go now it's almost like a little melodic element again and we can automate this little fine tune here so it has a bit of a line so now even higher sounds like some like Arabian and a vocal a little too high at the end there that's cool I like that that's kind of now it has not has a lot more of a vibe I like that a lot so weird okay those horns are too loud let's do some quick mixing and can I get these to be a little lower this could also these are enough they don't need the layer sometimes it's about reducing I'm starting to like this okay total delay sounds nice it's just at the wrong page that's kind of cool let's keep that now you stay right there we can even use the built-in modulation on the frequency shifter unlike what is the eighth notes no we're doing quarter notes to like accentuate the upwards movement that's kind of nice or do the telephone thing where it's like a square wave modulation and it's like going up and down like that but yeah that's a lot more like self-checkout that's fine and now we need one last fill at the end of this denden didn't something that goes but is also a heavy bass noise [Music] that crap does something like that but maybe just with a pitch but not like to nota mission on this so let's link lfo1 master tune [Music] data that a very benny benassi satisfaction style one two three four that's almost enough it's like a very oski thing keeping it dry and minimalistic for some fills let's add a fat rack and a vocoder just to the saw wave yeah that's enough somehow reminds me of the old snails intros of like tunes like stomp or something that will just go like yeah this is like this basically sounds like the patch from the intro to stomp when it just goes [Music] and now we needed a different fill so I wouldn't just loop this so that we'd have kind of like a like that's a and then this is B and then you need like see as the next fill and then go back to B or like a cool call-and-response thing so that's nice yeah this is pretty sick I like where this is going we can add some additional snares real quick some like small snares for fills [Music] are there no small snares in this world something like that just for in-between them yeah or maybe like that nice alright let's make a quick bill up to this because I've been getting too lost in little details already this wasn't very efficient so I have this little loop I made a while ago already on the right tempo just not the right pitch this is nice this is giving this a lot more vibe now I wonder if we can have this playing in the back like if we have this in the intro / build-up that's really cool for giving it a vibe so we'll have like eight bars of this maybe with constant horn stabs every once in a while just because so it's just like oh those are too far they'd have to stretch them out a bit oh we can just pitch them down [Music] again can we layer them with the other ones if those are also done an octave is that going to sound okay let's see yeah these works but they need some Saini some reverb to be bigger long reverb [Music] and then automate this to definitely not be on during the job we could tease the Nana Nana Nana Nana Nana in the intro already but of course filtered it's not giving everything away even more [Music] and then start a build up from here or something this is just gonna be like quick and easy build up making maybe this snare and then start pitching it up so this nest is going to start here to 16th notes and then room for 32 notes and then room for a fill or a pre drop sample right there automate the snare to go up in pitch nice can I have this have this go up in pitch and [Music] yeah like that have this things start looping and get faster and faster then consolidate or yeah the whole thing and use complex Pro to pitch it up over time now use the washout rack of your choosing to wash this out over time make sure it stops at the end and doesn't reverb into the job and I have this little collection of my favorite risers and fall downs we can also use some from my own sample pack but I just have like a few favorites from all kinds of packs that I collected in this little folder here just for occasions like this where I just want to like drag something in real quick this one is really nice too because it's so long and sustained [Music] we can even make that one more interesting by adding an auto pan so there's a little bit of rhythm to this [Music] okay automate the autopen to go faster and in time with the snare oh wow that was still the riser that was kind of cool the filter needs to go off of this ultimate that no automate you did it today this could be even more aggressive and distorted for the job so I'm just gonna duplicate this this is going to be the intro track and then this is going to be the drop track so now I can mess with the effects on this without destroying the whole thing for the intro so on the saturator we could use the depth and color to maybe accentuate that bit a little more can this go down an octave whoa that's kind of cool nice that is very haunting I like this it's almost too wet so maybe we can cut down on the delay in the end amen that's kind of cool this guy is still a little a little simple maybe we can we can make that patch something cooler so let's do like a little square fight wavetable old trusty something going through the wave table but so if there's one LFO doing the volume like what won't I want a different LFO at different speeds maybe sweeping through the wave table so every wob is a little different so it'll go or something so that's kind of nice to give it a little more motion [Music] that's okay and add some hyper detune this is also really good for width without compromising your mid signal too much there's a little stop in the wave table that actually adds one more accident like a little dirt to Perdita that's cool can we FM from B should we FM from B we should always FM from elastin AB that was cool out but kind of a nice out [Music] very very classic noise okay out of filter nice reminds me of old times get this a little more interesting sounding with a where are you with a dispersor [Music] very nice and laser II and now a good way against like just the standard AFM II sound is to again frequency shift but now this pace this patch has a sub so I want to wait I must save this in case this crashes because some of these racks just do that sometimes so I might load a frequency shifter that leaves the sub alone so it's only shifting everything above 200 Hertz so so I can move all the other stuff and like change the flavor of the sound a little bit without messing everything else up so I can make it lower than it actually is it's almost like a foreman shift sort of but for a base noise that's why that's why I like it a lot that's nice that is very vocally sounding now we could even use a little phaser to increase the vowel sound that's nice this is probably really harsh sounding it sounds like there's some wrong frequencies in here let's look at the spectrum it just sounds a little messy overall so I'm gonna take this bit out and some 3k just for cleanliness I still don't know if I like the main the main whiny sound but it's a it's a start of an idea you could also you could also have a synth patch maybe try to play that with a high saw or something and then put some reverb on it so it has this kind of atmospheric feel very ghosty I don't know if I would even want this to be stereo maybe make this more mono or something but yeah that's that's a start actually actually yeah that sounds nice this one's better I'm really happy with the snare that sounds really cool I like that so yeah this is something like yeah this could be a start of a really of a really cold track find a cool fana cool pre drop sample here and then extrapolate from here so I hope you learned something from like all the different techniques I was trying to show you here and little tricks and tips for like interesting sound design like how to make a funny funny snare with a cool layer or how to like add a trapeze up to these or how to layer your yoinks and stuff so yeah I hope you learned something from this this was fun see you next time

Channel: ncross10

Views: 305,331

Rating: 4.9446869 out of 5

Keywords: Virtual Riot, Dubtspe, Production, Music, 2020, Riddim

Id: ed-2NLGQA8U

Length: 50min 32sec (3032 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/editedthis]

I'm a newbie, can anyone shed some light on why his studio monitors are there? Does it not matter that they are behind him?

[u/FruitKingJay]

I know it's basically a circlejerk at this point, but holy shit VR is so amazing at sound design

[u/TannerMZingsheim]

Thanks for the sweet video.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/bordain_de_putel]

Started watching the vid and found it interesting to understand a bit about workflow but since it's on a DAW I know absolutely nothing about I'm not sure how much I can take away from this. Are there in-depth videos like this for FL?

[u/airrbearr93]

So many frequency shifters!!