There is a time and place for everything, and that’s especially true for dance music. I don’t often listen to genres like future rave and big room, those high-octane genres, because I’m a dad now and find myself more inclined to stay in the studio rather than being out on the big stages at massive festivals where this music is normally played.
But when I have the chance to chat with the masters of their craft, the best of the best in this genre, the longest-running OGs in the game, I’m not going to say no.
That’s why, when I heard that Dada Life teamed up with Dexter King to release a collab track that checks all the boxes I mentioned above, I wanted to see how they did it. So we invited Dada Life and Dexter King on to see how they made their latest track, which is out now on Monstercat. As always, listen to the track below a few times to acclimate your ears to the unique sounds these artists will share before diving into the latest iteration of “How It Was Made” Dada Life and Dexter King, see what I see.
Diva
U-he Diva is totally amazing! It’s one of the few “analog sounding synths in a plugin format. The sound is so authentically analog, it’s crazy. I often want total control over a sound so I usually end up bouncing the track. It’s worth it though, because the sound is just that good!
I was going for a really bold, full sound, that really is in your face. So a sawtooth waveform with a two voice detune, spread full left and right. I didn’t want it to be spikey but rather rounded so it’s a small amount of attack, short decay and sustain. The reverb was super important to get right. I ended up using the M7 – Open spaces preset in Reverberate. It took a bit of experimenting, but when I found it, I heard straight away it’s the one!
I love Serum, but I feel producers need to take a step back and understand there’s a whole world of other synths out there. I tend to flip between Serum and Diva. Diva is amazing for basses also. Don’t forget that the reverb can really make a sound pop or poop, make sure you find the right one!
-Dada Life
Space In-Your-Face
Space In-Your-Face is the go-to plugin for big reverbs and build-up reverb. Also for impacts and large transition reverbs. It’s not like a normal reverb, since it’s changing character depending on wetness. Truly fantastic plugin. I’m not just saying that because we sell it, we make plugins that we use.
It’s all over the track, basically all the large reverb buildups (snares, synth etc) are Space In-Your-Face. The importance of the character changing of the reverb depending on Wetness, is that you don’t clog up the sound when you got tons of reverb, snare roll for example. No messing around with settings or presets – you get great results right away!
Endless Smile is the OG of buildup plugins. I can hear it so many tracks now days. Even billboard pop tunes. Space In-Your-Face is actually the reverb from Endless Smile, but with some tweaks, so it holds up as a plugin by itself. I don’t like speaking of genres, our goal is to create something that really connects with people and makes them feel something special.
-Dada Life
Soothe2
Soothe2 is a dynamic resonance suppressor! It automatically finds those annoying squeaky or muddy parts in your music and smooths them out.
In this track I used Sooth2 on many places. One of them on the demon vocoder that is layered with a synth sound. The synth sound is wide and the vocal is almost mono. I put Sooth2 on the synth sound and put it on sidechain towards the vocoder. Put it in mide/side mode and used link:0. So on the stereo synth he mid gets pushed down spectrally by the vocoder.
I use Soothe2 for a lot of different stuff, one cool thing is to use it as a spectral sidechain. Add Sooth2 on the bass and sidechain it towards the kick, then you don’t have to sidechain it as much as you would normally do.
-Dada Life
Serum
I use Serum for most of my sounds, I feel like you can do anything with it, you can make drums with it if you want, and it might sound better than loops from KSHMR sample pack. It takes producers to a whole new level of creative, because I do believe you can do anything with it, you can probably finish a full track with nothing but Serum, might not be a good idea but you can.
-Dexter King
Ableton Vocoder
I was very happy when they added a Vocoder to Ableton. It’s such a unique tool and can be used in so many ways. I remember the quote from Robert Henke from Ableton saying in the beginning of Ableton- “No one needs a vocoder”. Two years later they added the vocoder!
I use it like a normal vocoder. The demon voice in See What I See are three vocoders stacked on top of eachother. One of them just use noise as carrier, the other two use different synths as carrier. I also use it to modulate stuff in to noise for build-ups, together with Space In-Your-Face.
The best thing is to experiment with it. If your track is lacking stuff, try doing arps, pads etc with a sampled drumloop. It can really give your tack extra space and width if done right.
-Dada Life
[embed]https://youtube.com/watch?v=KOTZk0fD6Qs&si=qVhspbZ0rg5EvUEs[/embed]Arrangement
Arrangement 1 is how it looked in the beginning, without the vocal, before Stefan added this gigantic lead on top that changed everything.Arrangement 2 is after I get the stems back from Stefan, while he was working on the lead sound,I was writing the lyrics and recording takes with my humble voice, thinking about which singer Ishould call for this. But I ended up calling no one, I used AI.
What inspired us to create this song is the growth of AI technology ,I’m sure it won’t surprise you that the vocal of this song is actually transformed by AI ,from my voice to the female voice I “trained”, actually I just described what kind of voice I wanted my voice to transform into, then it became this lovely female voice, not sure why they call it “training the AI”, humans… but of course I did many many takes to get the right ones, for the lead vocal and doubles, the AI did exactly what I did, on all the takes, it made my mistakes, carried my feelings, did the same breaths, copied my vibratos, but in this new voice, I found it insanely amazing, it blew my mind entirely so I wrote these lyrics:
“I can hear in the silence
She whispers to me
In a world without violence you could see what I see
Hear what I hear
Feel how I feel
See what I see
Wish you could know what I know
Move how I move
See what I see.”
I know it’s deep. I felt intense when the vocal part was finished and sounded amazing, actually the whole process was intense, because I was super used to working with another human on these things, that was my first step into this world I’m seeing and hearing now. It was a moment of awakening.
-Dexter King
Quick Fire Tips For Making Future Rave
Tip #1: If your computer crashes and you lose unsaved work, consider it a chance to rebuild and improve. – Dada Life
Tip #2: Don’t be afraid of adding random presets to your synths, happy accidents can drastically shift the vibe of your track – Dada Life
Tip #3: Push your sound into a Sausage Fattener and shape it with EQ. Drastic EQ boosts will make the Sausage go wild! – Dada Life
Tip #4 Trust yourself, if you wanna rage to your track, that’s enough. – Dada Life
Tip #5 Make music for yourself. NOT an algorithm or somebody else! – Dada Life
Tip #6: If it sounds good it sounds good, don’t over do anything, trust me they don’t know what you did in your project files, if they love it they love it. – Dexter King
Tip #7: Music is a game of chance so make as many songs as you can, for yourself and for others. – Dexter King
Tip #8: Don’t try to make money off of music, give your music away to the people, in a right way, they’ll love you and you’ll grow. – Dexter King
Tip #9: I make so much music for other artists, nobody knows I made them, but it wont make a difference if they did, if I tell you I write songs for one of the biggest Chinese artist, you won’t respect me more, but if you like See What I See, we could be friends, that’s how humans connect I guess. – Dexter King
Tip #10: They love who you are not who you work with so be you and make as much music as you can, then give them away, let people hear you, anyway you can. – Dexter King
The post How It Was Made: Dada Life & DEXTER KING – See What I See (Monstercat) appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.