F*ck School (Q&A)

Hi guys,
haven't been watching my youtube comments lately and I've noticed there are a lot of questions from all of you guys. The most asked one is if I can upload the file. The only problem is I don't know any good sites to upload this kind of file for sharing. If you could suggest one, I'll put it up.

Now to answer some questions

theaffairchris: any way to upload the presets for the leads?

It's the same situation as the Ableton project file. I don't know of any sites I could upload a set of small files to for public download. If you have any suggestions (that are simple and won't take too long) then shoot me a comment.

FreshMacOfficial: how do u make that woobly sound in the lead?
The wobble is made using Massive's LFO envelopes and assigning it to both the pitch bend and the amp on each of the 3 oscillators.

LFO5 (sine wave) is attached to all 3 oscillators' pitch controls with a value of 1. This means that as it reaches the peak and trough of the sine wave, the note will transpose 1 semitone. Make sure that the LFO ratio is set to 1:16, this means it will oscillate once every 1/16th note.
LFO6 (sine wave) is attached to all 3 oscillators' amp controls. This was pushed up to maximum effect (by click and dragging the '6' under the amp). Some remakes I've seen have only an amplitude wobble on their lead, which doesn't sound right. This is also set at 1:16 ratio.
Now we have to set the LFO amps to only come on during that sustained note. In the screenshot, I've got both LFO amp dials controlled via Ableton's session envelopes. You can bring these up by dragging the amp dial in the LFO you want to map and it will pop up under the 'Lead' tab as an envelopable variable (making up words now!). I had a tweak around and found these settings to be the most accurate.
NB: This is only one way to recreate this sound, but it is the way I went about it.

 

RMattWindsor: what pads did you use ?

I used a preset in Sylenth1 from a pack I bought off soundstosample.com - It was called Samplestar Progressive House Presets. I don't remember if I tweaked it at all, but it was PAD09 from the list. It also has an Amp, LPF and Saturator on it.

ironyouth78: this is dope man, how long you been using ableton?
About a year on and off (mainly off due to frustration)

SondreAlv: Really nice remake man! Just wondering if u can give me any tips on arpeggio? Yours sounds really good! How do you do it?

If you mean how I recreated from ear: I seperate the arpeggio I hear into seperate partsThere's a repeated note every 2 notes (A2 in this case); so that's easy enough to locate and write. After that, block out the sound of those notes in your mind and try to identify the rest of the pattern. The rest are a sequence which travels down the scale: E3, C#3, B2 for the first 2 iterations, then C#3, G#2 for the last 2. Combine the 2 patterns together and you get your arpeggio.
It should come out as: [E3, A2, C#3, A2, B2, A2, E3, A2, C#3, A2, B2, A2, C#3, A2, G#2, A2]

If that wasn't what you meant by your question... you'll have to ask Avicii or Nicky Romero :P

Feel free to ask any other questions, just know it'll most likely take a while to respond.

F*ck School (Recreation)

It's been a while!

I haven't worked on any original material for a while now, but I'd prefer to hone my technical skills rather than create nice melodies which get let down by sub-par synth sounds and drum patterns.

So I've recreated 'Avicii & Nicky Romero - Fuck School' as accurately as I could over 3 nights. And here are the results:

Avicii & Nicky Romero - Fuck School (Khaiyin Recreation) by Khaiyin

It was a really good learning experience! Just to name a few of the things I've learnt while doing this project:
- Melody pattern placement
- Drum pattern variations
- Synth creation and replication
- Use of white noise
- Proper use of Reverb and Delays

The original song doesn't have an actual release at the current time, so the source information was all from a ripped set. It was a bit hard trying to get the mix as accurate as possible using only a medium quality recording (with background noise) as reference. It also had mixes happening during the intro and outro... so I had to guess what was actually part of the song in those sections lol. Stereo information, sub-bass and treble were the most difficult things to judge. Hopefully this is accurate!

Thanks and enjoy :)

Baby Foxes and Wolves

So I thought I'd do something a bit of a simpler project this time - a mashup. After hearing 'Jay Ronko & Josh Newson - Foxes and Wolves' on Morgan Page's podcast, I immediately got reminded of 'Pnau - Baby'. And so here is the result:


Pnau vs. Jay Ronko & Josh Newson - Baby Foxes and Wolves (Khaiyin Mashup) by Khaiyin

*I do not own the rights to either of these songs* 

Khaiyin - Quartz

So here's my 2nd completed song... and I gotta say - this one is a lot more complete. It's definitely a 'trouse' (trance+house) track, for lack of a better word. It took me 3 nights to write with minor tweaks on the third night. This song was an attempt at replicating the Avicii sound, but it turned out a lot 'happier' than I intended. Maybe it lacks some electro-ey elements. I tried to add them in, but it just wouldn't meld. Still learning, I guess. Anyways, here's the Soundcloud player for higher quality audio & the youtube for an Ableton Live view of the project:

Khaiyin - Quartz

Khaiyin - Quartz (Original Mix) by Khaiyin
 

I'm quite happy with the chorus, but the the intro sounds very plain to me. I didn't know what else to do with it. Or maybe I'm just being picky - an intro is meant to be basic, after all. The synths are very generic of course. I haven't had enough time or experience in patch making to come up with anything overly creative in this regard. This project was more to learn synth layering, arrangement, automation and effects.

As always feedback is always appreciated.

Thanks for listening!

First 'Track'

So, after what seems like forever in my endeavours to get into music production, I've finally got something down which could be considered a song. I've always tinkered in music making since I got into DJing, but I'd get stuck at certain times and give up for a few months. After watching Avicii's production masterclass from Future Music Magazine 245, I picked up some workflow tips which got me out of those pot-holes. The song is fairly minimal, but proggy and driving. Feedback would be much appreciated (nothing too technical since I'm still a noob).

Khaiyin - Projector (Original Mix)

 

It's very basic: 1 edited drum loop (4 patterns), 2 sweeps, 2 plucks (Sylenth), 1 pad (Sylenth) & 2 bass-lines (Sylenth)

Hope you enjoyed it and I'll hopefully have more to show in the near future.