Nate's Blog

Everyone Plays the Same Song round 24 just ended with a diverse playlist and a vibrant listening party. I've received questions on my cover, and wanted to write up the details of production.

Link to my cover the full playlist

First off, below is a screenshot of my collapsed Ableton Live set. I use Ableton 10 Suite. I'll go into each individual group in future posts, but here is a high level overview of the parts.

I tidied up a bit for the screenshot, but the basic groups are as follow.

• Bass line - 3 different tracks playing solo or at the same time to keep dynamics in the bass line
• Lead riff - The musical riff that plays in the intro and throughout the song. This is 2 tracks, one serving as the lead sound and the other service as warping bouncy delay.
• Vocals - in total I ended up with 7 vocal tracks. 3 for the lead line, 2 for the lead line an octave up and super-verbed, and 2 for the "Ohh girl / baby girl" chanting in the chorus.
• Drums - Super simple. midi track for the kick drum. Mii track for the snare. Midi track for the galloping kick.
  • I kept the Crash Cymbal out of this group, as I put a lot of saturation on the drum group, and the crash cymbal was too distorted when those effects were applied.
• pads - 3 track here - one to play that upbeat rhythmic part in the second half of the intro, and the other to sustain a chord. The chord sustain is only played in the intro and the choruses. the last track is a piano-like part that plays during the chorus.
• Bridge - includes the weird sounds that play after the first chorus, and the roads keyboard part that plays after the second chorus. The instruments that are exclusively or nearly exclusively played in the bridge sections
• Texture - This group includes the intro sound, reverse reverb, party crowd noise and a serum synth to create a shiny rhythmic stabbing sound.

Most of the instruments are created using Xfer Serum

Next, I'll go over the bass part!