Modern music production has become so accessible that countless producers are creating standout tracks across all genres. When I started in studios over a decade ago, most of what people were making were EDM bootlegs and basic hip-hop beats. Today, the range of sounds and styles is incredible, with producers infusing their tracks with genuine emotion and storytelling.

What impresses me most these days is when producers incorporate an indie texture and laid-back soul into their work, focusing on songwriting rather than just beat production. Ark Patrol excels in this area. His indie-inspired, swagger-filled beats have a vibe reminiscent of major artists like Tame Impala but with a more nuanced, underground edge.

I brought Ark Patrol on to share some of his studio secrets—favorite plugins, tools, and tips that help him create at such a high level. His album is a masterclass in music production, showcasing the immense potential of computer-based music creation today. I highly recommend listening to the entire album before diving into the insights behind how it was made. Ark Patrol’s latest album is truly something special.

OP-1 Field Synth

The OP-1 Field is a portable analog synth, a drum machine, a microphone, sampler, and 4 tracks to edit on. It’s a powerful device by its ability to bring the coveted physical sound conveniently to your laptop. Both its synth and drum samples (and its effects like spring reverb and exponential phaser) feel convincing and weighty enough to give a subliminally different effect when used. It also exposes 4 parameters in nearly every device which are linked to its 4 colored knobs, making it supremely fast to discovery interesting evolutions of simple sounds. It even captures Radio signals which you can record and resample, an amazing source of noise and color!

For Estudio I used the Grams Organ preset in the main chord progression. I would also tweak the Pure or Celeste presets into sounds which you’ll find in the melody, the counter-melody, and the high melody in the chorus. Mix-wise, you essentially have one performing 4 different roles which is a lot for one device. I’d describe the vibe as sort of a “Digital garden” striking an uncanny valley balance of being warm but synthetic – and a little unsettling as well. Given that my routing which was mainly USB-C or 1/8” audio jack, there was very little room for natural noise to enter the signal (something I felt I resonated with, so I left it).

Bring the OP-1 to the beach or to the park. I made FOLN4U while at the Honda dealership getting my car serviced. Try these things: Extensive radio sampling, fully programmed drum patterns, vocal re-sampling, deep diving into it’s “tape sound” or “cd sound” modes (which as far as I could tell are master bus effects), or simply sending it’s normal signal through some physical pedal effects to let the signal mature more. If you just want to use it for body chords, it’s key strength is in live adjusting it’s parameters. For that, I’d recommend sending midi to it so both your hands (if you have them) are free to manipulate the knobs. Be sure not to let the knobs manipulate you!

Splice

Most producers will have heard of Splice, the massive sample library with every sort of sample you could want. I used it so much throughout the making of Gem that it deserves some discussion even if I didn’t use it much in Estudio. Though Splice is a library, it also features an actual plugin which will play your samples back at your project’s BPM. It can also tune the samples you’re previewing to the key of your song, saving you a lot of time in finding sounds which work together (both major and minor). 

I use Splice to find different categories of sounds: Vocals, Ambient Chords, Drums and FX. My process has been to start by searching for an ambient sample containing a mix of noise and chord to get a nice interesting gradient of texture and emotion. In Estudio I mostly used it for drum accoutrements; sweeteners like clicks, percussion, knocks, snaps, some hats. FX used will usually be risers or comedowns of some sort though recently I’ve enjoyed taking straight up field recordings and boosting / twisting the hell out of them to get a similar effect. In general I’d say about 40% of the splice samples I pick in one project will survive to the end. A lot of Splice’s use has been to help me figure out which sounds I don’t want, which it does perhaps faster than any other app I can think of.

I’d recommend always sorting by random. You could have a lot of fun just going through the Songstarters tags. Lots of ideas there just to get the creative juices flowing or find a shortcut to new progression. You could also make some realistic scene ambience with just 2 or 3 foley layers, something which can bring the experience to an entirely different level. I also recommend diving into the breakbeats tab – there’s so much you can do with a properly chopped break that doesn’t have to do with DnB!

Hybrid Reverb

I love Hybrid Reverb specifically for its spring setting, but it’s a great sounding reverb no matter which way you slice it. It has built in parallel reverb, which you can use to create an extremely realistic space around your percussion. The sheer amount of impulse responses available to experiment with is satisfying. The options range from Arenas to Cathedral, Studio, Farms, Plates, Halls, and you can even upload your own IR files. The parallel reverb I mentioned earlier is closer to ableton’s stock reverb, but still sports 5 different algorithms to choose from in creating the 2nd layer of hybrid reverb’s sonic bed.

I’d mainly put Hybrid Reverb on my snare, and a little on my hats and kick. Normally I’d eq out the low end to help it breathe better but it also makes it easier to hear exactly how much weight the reverb adds to the snare. The spring reverb I personally love (old school spring) is actually one of the few mono impulse responses included. For that reason, I’d often auto pan it for movement, and on rare occasions throw a chorus on for an even wider image.

Definitely play with the different sizes of space. The Arena presets sound absolutely massive. I think you could trick listeners into hearing an illusion you might normally tune out. Similarly, I think it’s possible to create a physically ‘real’ sonic space in tandem with bus compression and proper multi-band limiting – I think the only real limit would be how much time you have to fine tune it. You could also just use it for some freaky vintage vocal slapback effect.

PhaseMistress

PhaseMistress is great for accentuating the frequencies in your samples. Most of its presets lend towards a spacey, futuristic and organic sound which you’ll hear a lot in 2024’s idm / industrial scene. While technically a phaser, this plugin can produce a ton of sounds that sound simply alien, warped, and/or wobbly with little effort. On top of around 400 presets, it has an additional 80 ‘style presets’ available which are based off specific phaser models. Factoring those together gives around 32,000 different combinations to experiment with!

Mostly I used PhaseMistress for 2 things: Stereo widening and “inflating” sounds. Inflating, to me, means taking a sustained sample of some sort and blowing it up to fill a sonic space larger than it normally occupies. The key thing is that inflating means getting larger without becoming heavier, and so the frequencies disperse from mono to stereo and from peak to trough as the phaser sweeps through it. In my head, it looks a bit like lasers at a rave sweeping through fog and clouds. Once you bounce frequencies off of those resonators you start to get a bubbly cloud of sound. The application of these clouds in my work is mostly benign but it’s most aggressive use is in buildups ad you turn up the sweep rate to absurd levels.

I’ve already heard some producers putting their drums through PhaseMistress which sounds super dope, but I feel like that’s just the beginning. In tandem with some sort of distorter, I see a lot of potential for application in ambient music in a very slow setting. For whatever genre being made, I’d simply advise trying it on literally everything especially lower sounds like guitar chords, or synths. Also try turning it to super low percents of wet/dry. 5% wet can give an extremely subtle movement which does a lot in any open sound.

Quick Fire Tips For Making Music

Tip 1: You have enough material to make a full song. You just need to combine different projects together. Many songs on Gem combine the best idea from one file, and the best drums from another file, and the best vocals from a different one altogether.

Tip 2: You only need a drum loop, a bassline, and a sample. The rest is in arrangement and making that arrangement feel like home.

Tip 3: Techniques for a fresh perspective: Hiking and listening, driving and listening, forgetting about it and checking back a week later, playing it for someone else.

Tip 4: The cool innovative genres that don’t exist yet are just combinations of your most unexpected influences. Know your influences!

Tip 5: ““I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it.” – Brian Eno” – Ark Patrol

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