How It Was Made: Rony Seikaly’s Ephemeral

Rony Seikaly is a Miami-based producer with some seriously prodigious musical output, pulling inspiration from a truly unique origin story.

He found his initial burst of stardom playing professional basketball in the NBA and it's this same drive that got him to succeed in that competitive industry is what allowed him to sore to new heights in the world of dance music and production.

There are a few central themes that run through much of his music; a philosophy rooted in the essence of dance, joy, free expression, inclusivity, escape, safety, and unity.

His latest album, Moonwalk, takes the listener out of their surroundings, away from the humdrum of everyday life, and transports them to a realm of pleasure and abandonment. Rony’s productions embody the core tenets of the dance floor, and they’ve been successfully road-tested by the man himself in countless sets.

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To achieve such a comprehensive and complete sound, Rony has pulled inspiration from a collection of dance music records that spans the better part of two decades. The end result is that of a detailed, diverse, and eclectically polished bunch of tracks that is as diverse as it in singular.

We had a chance to talk to Rony about what went into the making of some his the most popular records off his album in this edition of How It Was Made.

How Rony Seikaly Mades MOONWALK

What plugin or synth could you not have made this track without?

Omnisphere and Prophet.

I love Omnisphere, its very simple to use and has so many sounds to choose from! The depth of the synth is just incredible too. You basically can’t tell its not an analog Synth.

Prophet Sequential is a beast - it gave me the Polyphonies for Ephemeral that I was looking for very long!

That exact sound I had only in my head, but I couldn’t produce it with anything except with the Sequential. So when I found that preset I had to tweak it to get to the sound I really needed to complete my song.

Where did you get your drum samples for this track? Do you have a favorite sample pack company?

Sometimes I just go to Splice for samples and other times it could be sample packs from Vengeance.

In this particular track it was a mixture of my Roland Drum Machine and Samples from Vengeance.

I chose this Drums to give me the overall warmth and depth I wanted for Ephemeral to go with my melancholic melodies.

Learn More About Splice Here

Do you have a specific framework you use to process your leads? Which plugins did you put in which order to get that unique sound?

Most of the time it’s trial and error.

But for this track the lead sound was created with Prophet, I had to tweak a preset to the sound I wanted. It took me a while but I was happy I could finally find that sound I needed.

When I received the vocals I knew I needed something more deep to go with them. I love how the vocal and lead supplement each other.

What is your favorite effect or production trick you used in this record and tell me how we could recreate it.

I don’t really have any tricks. It’s all about feeling for me… not sure if this is a trick but I doubled the kick drum and pitched second sequence to really low so it has more low end.

That really works if you need some extra Frequencies down there - but watch out it can get very muddy quickly!

Learn more tricks for beefing up your kick drums here.

What is one thing that you learned about music production while producing this track?

That no matter how much I feel a track, the crowd has the last say. I had a first draft of the track and I loved the way it sounded in the studio, I was vibing very much to it.

After I tested it at a show and it didn’t work the way I imagined it would, I had to go back to the lab and edit it. What I learned is that the real test is always on the dance-floor.

Thanks to Rony Seikaly for coming on for this latest edition of How It Was Made!

Check out more of his latest updates through the links below:

Facebook – Spotify – Instagram

How It Was Made: Rony Seikaly’s Ephemeral