Making House Like Ross From Friends - Part 2
WE SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE MUSIC LIKE ROSS FROM FRIENDS
Introduction
This week we continue our 'Creating the Sounds of...' series, by diving deeper into the world of Melodic House in the style of Ross From Friends, Caribou, Fred Again and others!
Below we dive into Bass-lines, Melody writing, synth sounds and Vocals!
Syncopated Bass lines
As shown in the video, a simple way to add pace to your tracks is by using a syncopated bass line (a classic trope in house and techno). In its most basic formation, simply drop a bass note every third measure. Against a 4/4 kick, this will add a nice, ever changing pattern.
Adding Life to Subs
To help 'lift' my sub sound (written with the incredible SubLab), I've used the Fabfilter plugin 'Saturn 2'. Set to 'Clean Tube' mode, we can introduce some saturation and distortion harmonics onto our sub sound. This can help give the top end of the bass sound more life, and the low frequencies more presence.
'Saturn 2' has the option of creating multi-band style markers to the frequency spectrum, giving you much more control over your Sub sound.
Tape Mello-Fi
Moving onto synths, we added the Artruria plugin 'Tape Mello-Fi' to our synth sounds. This applies a rich tape style effect that emulates the classic 'Mellotron' synth, with all the usual tape setting (wow, flutter, drive etc). This was chosen over other tape effects due to it authentic recreation of that sound!
Sad Chords
Let's look at how we structure our chords. Within a lot of the music referenced in the pack, the chord structures have a minor feel to them that, when paired up with club level beats create a strong sense of nostalgia. Check out the examples below!
Within our demo, we achieved the sonically (and emotionally) wide chords by spreading the root note of each chords in our progression across two octaves, then adding a 'third' (the note three steps above the root note in your chosen scale) on top.
Part one of this 'Creating the Sounds Of...' series can be found HERE