MIDI Instrument Stage

Instruments & Mixing

Below will be some of the synths I created myself, I will describe how they were created and why, there is also some of Abletons default instruments that I used, for these I will just be describing the effects I used on them.

Muted Bass Guitar Synth

 When I did some research on this track, I found out that the "ticking" heard after the clock sounds in the intro is actually bass player Roger Waters playing his muted bass strings. 

I decided to make a synth based around the idea of muted strings creating this ticking sound using the Ableton synth Collision, which is a physical modelling synth. I used two string resonators to get the plucky sound.  It allowed me to create the ticking sound heard at the beginning of my track.

Saw Tooth Synth

This is a saw tooth synth I created using Ableton's subtractive synthesiser Analog, when I was making this synth, I wanted it to not be a super abrasive sawtooth synth, but i still wanted it to stand out, that's why I applied a high cut filter to lower some of the more abrasive frequencies above around 1.5k, there is also an amplifier some tube saturation that makes helps it stand out the way I wanted it to.

Tom Drums Intro

This is the Tom drum that can be heard in the intro of my song, I wanted it to pan left and right rapidly so I made use of the auto pan effect, which saved me time as alternatively I would have had to do this manually through automation.

Kick Drum

This is the kick drum heard throughout the song, I shortened the sample and applied a basic compressor as the original sample lasted too long.

Bass Guitar Synth

This was one of the more creative synths made for this project, as it was my attempt at recreating a bass guitar using Ableton's Frequency Modulation Synthesiser, Operator.

Using Operator allowed me to manipulate the waveform of the synth, and create the synth below.

there is a high shelf EQ cutting some high frequencies that I did not want, the bass amp was used to make it sound less like a synth and more like a bass guitar.

Organ Instrument

This is the organ that is heard in the cover, it was one of the default instruments found in Ableton Live Suite.

I applied a limiter as it was a bit too loud at points in the song.