1996 style project studio music production:
A ‘track in a day’ that was not meant to be :
A new track here and this was meant to be made in a day. Every now and then I plan to produce a track in about 12 hours, getting up early and doing a full day of production in one go. Unfortunately, despite best laid plans it was not meant to be. I have been rather busy and never managed to find a free full day for it. The next best thing was to make the track below in about 25 hours, in multiple sessions.
Here is the track : “Dance of the motor protein” production style aimed at roughly year 1996 with retro vintage project studio style production. Motor proteins are in many cells of your body and they transport various molecules like hormones. Look them up they are truly fascinating, working hard with their little molecular legs to keep you going. Evolved biological DNA intelligence, working on your behalf. Onto the music……………..
Classic analogue synthesis and digital boxes
The second best thing was to use the bundle of synths that I had lined up in a template session and make a track when I had free time. The result is a very dirty and gritty sounding Goa Trance track that is probably sitting in the mid 90’s, sonically speaking. I have been getting into Oberheim synth emulations of late. A synth manufacturer that I have never really used very much. I have been using Sonic Projects OP-X Pro II and also OB-Xf which is a free synth. I really loved the sound of the demo of Sonic Projects and the almost photo realistic GUI. It was on sale price so I purchased it some time ago. It is being used for the a few different sounds in this track including a very wide lush analogue atmospheric effect and a few analogue blips. It has a very good overall sound.
The best Oberheim synth emulation ? Sonic Projects OP- X Pro-II has a lot going for it.
And absolute stability should not be expected either as we are looking at classic analogue synthesis. A lot of Goa trance used a combination of fat and chunky Analogue synths and some digital synths which is a very nice combination of sonic layers. The best of both worlds. I suppose Oberheim were not really highlighted as a synth that was aimed specifically at dance music. Whereas Roland, Emu, Yamaha, Novation, Korg, Nord Lead and Access were more likely in the project studios of the time. The Oberheim interfaces have a “Space 1999” control panel look and it was fun to use something different looking and sounding for this tracks.
All the usual 90’s techniques and signal path emulation
A brief word on this for anyone who has not read my 90s track blogs before. I used Slate virtual console collection, this time with strong drive settings as desk emulation, typically my favourite SSL-E. I enjoy using a United plug ins plug in called FrontDAW (You can find it super cheap on sale at times £11.00.)This broadly emulates a project console of the time (Mackie/Soundcraft/Allen and Heath and so on) The VCC stereo bus plug in emulates crosstalk but not the channel ones. I often use the ‘Trident console’ as it is a little brighter and thinner but these days like the glue of the SSL-E saturation. I also used the SSL Bus+ analogue compressor on the stereo bus.
A superb analogue VCA Mastering compressor for all music
You can read much more about console emulation in my other blog articles should you wish :
Accidental signal conditioning
This time I had a Purple Audio MC77 on the drum bus which was not compressing. I had an alternative kick drum option routed to it originally and forgot to remove it from the session once rejected. I found very late stage it had drums routed to it and so it remain in the session as it was seemingly adding some saturation and grit (brightness also) to the drums. When it was removed all the drums lost their balance and dirt. A kind of happy accident as such this plug in remained in the mix but not compressing the drums at all. Merely used as a signal conditioner.
1176 compressor emulation Purple MC77 vs UAD 1176 (3)I have licences for both but do not have UAD installed on this old PC.
A very dirty sound
This track is one of the dirtiest trance tracks I have made in terms of its sound. And I really enjoyed it, this is much more in the direction of authentic 90s Goa trance with all the gritty, gnarly imperfections in the saturated sound. How I arrrived at this was in part plan and part fortuitous use of sound sources and saturation plug ins.
Front DAW was on around 4 sources so by all means not all of the track. I had a Sontec 432 on the master bus without any EQ just for extremely light harmonic distortion across the mix, mainly a touch of second order harmonics. I used Slate VCC and used a fair amount of drive so the VU meters were pinned but not red lighting.
Analogue mixing console emulation, my preference here is Slate VCC. Needles pinned for some ‘pillow-y’ swallowing of transients.
On the bass line which is the amazing XILS Labs Poly KB III synth I used Tone Projects Kelvin a very good saturator for some second order harmonics. This gives some gritty dirt and presence to the bass sound further up the spectrum to help it cut through the mix. This synth is amazing at emulating analogue bass. A great looking synth. No phase retrigger on this and the envelopes are a little loose which is expected. It is not modern psy trance bass synth that is for sure. However, for Goa it fits right in with all its wobbly acidic looseness. I “stereofied” the upper bass by adding an H-Delay in ping pong mode with just a mix of 11pct using a high pass filter at about 160Hz to just add some width and movement to the bass.
What are the best saturator plug ins for mixing ? Both KELVIN and FRONTDAW do a lovely job.
This stereo effect on the upper bass harmonics causes interactions with the kick giving it a psychoacoustically widened affect (also a distorted sound at times as phase and L/R and Mid/Side relationships are all non stop shifting over the place. Static – the kick and bassline are not !) On one hand you lose a degree of hipnotic effect but you gain a sense of life.
Trance bass lines back then were not shy of being pseudo stereo. Bass lines did not have the super sharp leading transient attacks and were much more rounded and less defined, as such I followed suit. For a psy trance bass tweaker this goes against the grain but the modern bass definition was simply not there in 96 and as that was the target time period it needs to fit in and make sonic sense.
The kick drum is being generated by Kick 3 from Sonic Academy and it a fairly typcal sounding Goa trance style kick that you may have heard in the mid 90s.
Sonic Academy Kick 3 drum synth, I find this the best Kick drum synth.
Quality, bread and butter EQ from Pro-Q4 and DMG Equilibrium, my 2 favourite mix equalizers.
EQ for dance music – eqing dance music eq DMG Audio and Fabfilter – Nothing more than a Mackie 8 bus could achieve
I had about 25-30 tracks running with minimal effects, Lexicon PCM Hall reverb and Waves H-delay and that was it. Drums provided by NI Battery and some carefully selected samples that sounded like the 90’s that kind of industrial snare sound and some whistle-y (equalized to be so) industrial 808/909/707 open hats. I used Predator 2 and Blue III for some sound effects.
Arranging Goa Trance
Using these slightly more – off the beaten track – obscure synths was immense fun, few people were using those in Goa Trance I suspect and they added some great wiry, resonant textures. Along with the truly amazing and non stop useful Sylenth1. I don’t think I have made a track without Sylenth-1 in it. It can do totally classic analogue and also modern VA style analogue. That synth always surprises me with its versatility.
As mentioned I also used Poly KB III and Sonic Projects OP-X PRO-II
Analogue synth emulation Poly KB III analogue bass synth
A great free Oberheim ob-x synth emulation OB-Xf
A nice side effect of using lots of analogue synth type sounds into delays, along with a classic style octave jumping trance bass is you get some interesting interactions that help create a pulsating, vibrant sound, often sections adding up to a sum greater than their parts. I had a great time using somewhat unusual synths for this track.
No more automation than might be possible doing an analogue desk mix. Well, maybe that is not quite true towards the end of the mix but certainly not copious automation streams. Generally filter cut offs and faders.
Absolute disregard for kick and bass phase interaction
This track has zero phase alignment for the kick and bass. In fact, it is even worse that that, the third bass line note envelope release very clearly overlaps the start of next kick drum. (saw wave-ish) As can be seen in these Psyscope images.
Goa psy trance kick and bass oscilloscope. Psyscope. Synthesized kick drum at the start of a bar
Goa trance bass line overlap with kick start. Long ADSR volume release on note 3 plays over the start of the kick drum. The 2 other preceding notes were removed for clarity. This bass line is “all over the place”
There is no phase retrigger parameter available on the synth oscillator so the saw wave phase is being produced randomly as each note is triggered and as such is quite literally jumping around on the oscilloscope. And yet in the track I believe I have created what I call “The Thing” at around the 3mins mark, which is my terminology for a special feeling that this trance music can give the listener. It often happens when the arrangement is much more sparse in terms of instrumentation and melody and the hypnotic effect of the track beyond melody is allowed to take precedence.
Here is the audio (mp3) of a rather wonky kick and bass solo’d, bad phase (in fact, shifting phase), overlapping release of note 2 with kick, no oscillator phase (note on) retrig. 160Hz and above are pseudo stereo, what a mess, modern psy trance sacriledge !
I am not pushing any kick and bass philosophical views here but as long as your track is decent you can pretty much do what you want if it sounds like it has the right spirit for Goa trance. This is one reason why it is refreshing to make some retro 90s dance music with Goa sounds. Focus on the track and melody as opposed to hours spent on the kick and bass. (if you do not just use samples)
The bass line police in me had no choice but to duplicate the track and try a new bass line without the last note overlapping the kick (much shorter ADSR volume release), of course this made for a sharper more defined bass notes. However, the track overall sounded much more distorted and it had lost its forward movement energy and vibe. This track has to be about the energy and movement and so I stayed with the wobbly “disaster” bass with its drone like quality. (overlapping note volume release).
Sonic Projects website for OP-X Pro-II
https://www.sonicprojects.ch/opxpro2/description.html
Mix bus compression
No plug in bus compression on the mix as I had already planned to run this mix through my Solid State Logic Bus+ analogue compression unit.
Software synths and reverb. Lexicon PCM, Blue III, Predator 3, Sylenth1, TAL Sampler
This would be somewhat like the kind of VCA compressors in a project studio of the 90s, though rather more fully featured and high end. I did not use any HPF in the side chain as most project studio level compressors did not have this facility then. (Think dbx/Drawmer/Alesis 3630/Behringer/ L.A. Audio) I certainly recall my original and actually pretty good sounding MDX-2100 (the first ones were very well built) across my mix bus insert points doing 1-2dB of gain reduction back in the 90s. It was budget project studio glue and added a little something to the mix. (may have rolled the top end off slightly.)
Very light bus compression is used from the SSL bus comp as not to trigger too much bass pumping. VCA compressors in project studios would not have had an HPF is the side chain, typically speaking. I added a smidge of air EQ from the Bus plus (14kHz), which has quite a nice top end. I set the Bus+ to “Low THD” mode, this really changes the sound of the compressor, it almost sounds like a different compressor and really suits low end heavy music, the sound becomes much more “hi-fi” in a good way.
Incidentally the original SSL Quad Bus compressor found on the Solid State Logic console’s of the 80s did not have a high pass filter in the side chain either. This should be considered if wanting to achieve a classic SSL bus compressor sound.
SSL Bus compressor settings attack 15ms, release 100ms, Ratio 4:1 and side chain settings – no HPF – Low THD mode sounds amazing.
Mastering was just a little EQ to brighten and bring bite and presence to what was a slightly dull mix and a limiter to merely protect -1dBFS. I did blow the bottom end up a little and widened the track and kept it just about within the realms of good taste, given it was the 90s a bit of extra width suits the time.
All transients left in tact as this music would be mixed live via an analogue project desk like a Mackie 8 bus to something like a Panasonic, Sony, Fostex or Tascam DAT (Digital Audio Tape) machine (16 bit) With a TDK, Maxell or Sony DAT Tape.
This track did not go as planned but you must adapt and follow what a piece of music is asking for and go with it. It was a “track-in-a-day” that was not meant to be, so I rolled with that. I suppose it took 12 x 1.5 hour sessions to produce over spare evenings and weekends.
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