Tips: Big chord stacks

Archon
941 Feb 1, 15 Other
0:00 / 1:24
20

Follow me on soundcloud! https://soundcloud.com/archonmusic New stuff from different DAWs coming soon. I know I haven't been very active here on Audiotool, so I thought I'd give some tips that I've learned through tutorials and just messing around. One of the things I see a lot of people like to do are these large dubstep chords. A lot of them are lacking a lot of elements, causing them to feel empty. Here are my ideas on how to solve that: First of all many of you may have seen Virtual Riot's tips on this, and that's what I am basing some of this off of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGg2_WPOXTM However... some of those things may not seem directly compatible with Audiotool's limitations. In VR's tutorial, he says that he likes to do a combo of detuned chords and clean saws. If you open this project, you will see that I have tried to replicate that using the Heisenberg. It's super easy yet effective, just play around with different effects/settings on 2-3 saws until they sound really nice together. The next thing he does in his tutorial is this really distorted saw bass. This can be redone almost perfectly with the Pulv because of its noise oscillator. All you need to do is set oscillator 1 to a saw, run it through a heavy distortion, and turn on the noise oscillator to a low volume. Play a low note of this under your chords for a nice bassy aspect. You'll see in the project that i have also thrown in a sub under the chords. This bass is sub-heavy in itself, but I felt it helped. In order to make these chords seem a little more full, we need to fill out the high end. You can use anything really, I used some preset I made in another project that was trying to be a Spag Heddy lead. You can also make a lead to play a melody to go on top of these chords (which I have done), and in my opinion is one of the most important parts in this whole thing. I'm not exactly sure what i did to it, but I'm sure it's just a saw with a few voices being detuned and compressed. This won't all fit so I'll finish in comments

         
May 5, 16

This was a big influence on the way I make chords today. :) <3

Feb 24, 16

you are by far one of my favorite audiotoolers

Nov 3, 15

OMG I FORGET WHO THIS SOUNDS LIKE!!! Knife Party? That part is amazing.

Jul 7, 15

SAVE THESE AS PRESETS M8

Feb 28, 15

May I ask if you know which of VR's tutorials contained this information?

Feb 19, 15

epic

Feb 5, 15

This is dope man!!

Feb 5, 15

dope

Feb 5, 15

Thanks guys

Feb 5, 15

omg* :P

Feb 5, 15

pmg wow. the snare b4 the drop is amazing with the double flam! :D

Feb 2, 15

this is very very good btw

Feb 2, 15

could be bigger if you would switch up the waveforms a bit, just the saw is not enough sadly :)

Feb 1, 15

If you ever make anything using this, I'd like to hear it so link it to my wall or something!

Feb 1, 15

Np m808 ExPe

Feb 1, 15

Woah. Thank you.

Feb 1, 15

I've always wanted to make one of these, let me know if it helped!

Feb 1, 15

Last tip: every time the chords are being played, you will hear the hi-hats playing along with them. This is a really nice way to help fill in the high end. Also make sure that you have some elements that are more mono and some stereo, you don't want it to be too stereo or too mono.

Feb 1, 15

Another important aspect is equal sidechaining on all of the elements. It requires a pretty heavy sidechaining, just play around with the settings. PS: excuse any typos throughout this whole thing ;-;