Intro
Skrillex dropped a whole bunch of unreleased ableton session IDs on his Instagram not too long ago, and apart from the obvious fact they all sound amazing there’s a lot to be learned from them. One of the little production things that stood out to me in one of the clips was the way he just builds up the energy and tension into a one of the snare hits.
I just found this particularly cool, it’s innovative, it plays on the fast high hats from hip hop, but also there’s a reversed kind of sine wave perc thrown in there as well which we get from EDM trap and dubstep, so Skrillex manages to capture the best of both worlds once again. Listen to this snare build up below!
(You can watch the full video tutorial at the top of the post)
Check out my recreation of this Skrillex ableton trick below!
For the first bar of the drop, assuming a kick on the first beat and snare on the 3rd, we’ll start by adding in hi-hats on the 2nd beat leading into a snare hit. These hi-hats will play quite quickly playing 32nds
Next, we’ll consolidate the new hi-hats we added into a single audio clip by selecting all those hi-hats and using the shortcut “Cmd + J” or “Ctrl + J”
By doubling clicking the track we’ll open up the clip view at the bottom of ableton’s workspace. Head on over into envelopes, clip and gain to create a ramp up automation. This way we’re creating a mini fade in inside of the clip.
While we’re in Envelopes, open up transposition modulation (which is a fancy name for ‘pitch’) and also create a ramp up shape in automation, like in the image above
And lastly for these Hi-hats change the warp mode settings to Complex Pro with the following formants and envelope settings…
And that’s the hi-hats done!
For the 2nd part we’re creating a simple blip sound. To do this, we’ll be using Operator (but you can use any other synth, you just need a sine wave and pitch envelope) To start, create a short midi note that’s the same pitch as your song and utilise the pitch envelope inside of Operator with the settings above
We’ll also add a bit more release to our sine wave (found in the first operators envelope tab), between 50ms and 60ms should be great!
Proceed to freeze and flatten that channel (right click on the channel track in the timeline view) to render operator into an audio clip
With our Operator track now flattened into an audio file, we can drag the audio slightly to the right (offset from the snare drum) and add a little fade to the start. The purpose is to have this blip sound come in instantly after the snare drum hits…
Now it’s time for some audio effects! load up some subtle Overdrive, OTT, Chorus and a small amount of Reverb!
Next duplicate the channel and increase the decay time to close to 2 seconds. This clip will be our ‘reversed’ sound. Once we’ve increased this reverb, we’ll freeze and flatten the channel like we did before
And on to the last few steps! Reverse the freeze, flattened clip and align in to end to the start or the snare hit. Also add a fade in.
Lastly add some transposition modulation through the clip warping (set to complex) and make the pitch rise to 0 semitones. And we’re done!!
Skrillex is the master of these little ear candy bits he adds to his songs, although this one is super subtle its super effective!
Ready for the video?
Want to see these steps through video? check out the tutorial at the top of this post or click here! Or check out this full start to finish Skrillex ableton series by clicking here!
