Looking for a quick fix for transitions in your arrangement that saves ages trawling through sample packs? In this tutorial we take an existing pad and in a few short steps turn it into a riser that fits perfectly in our track. This is really flexible and you can create a bunch of different risers with a few simple effects tweaks.

Transcript

Okay, so I’m nearing the end of this arrangement and I wanted to share with you a really fast method for creating risers out of any existing pads, drones, atmospheres you might have in your track.

And the reason I find this useful is that often it takes ages looking through sample packs for effects to do this because they’re huge kind of mental pitch bend rise mad things. And I just want something quite subtle to fit
directly into this track. So let me play you a little section back.

And so I want to basically create a sound that leads into this big lead type stab that you heard. And the way I’m going to do it is to utilize an existing drone that I’ve got in the track.

So the first thing I’m gonna do with this is just duplicate the drone sound. And I’m gonna use this as a piece of audio in a second but before I get there, I’m gonna take this note and I’m gonna jump it up an octave because I want it to have its own frequency space in the track.

So now we’re going to go ahead and just bounce this out quickly. So it’s the second drone track here, record arm and let’s just grab a section of this.

That should be fine. And then I don’t need this existing sound at all. So if basically got an octave higher version of something that’s already sitting in the track so I know it’s going to be perfectly in key. and then I could hear it was sort of rising and falling a little bit. So let’s have a listen to what we’ve got at the moment.

Nice, so that’s working well. We can use a simple audio fade in now. So it makes this super quick to set the fade in. And then let’s go ahead and add some effects. The first thing I want is some delay because I can hear this cutting off suddenly and it’s a bit abrupt I just want something to keep flowing over to help glue these two sections together. so crank up the feedback 70 odd should do, more dry than wet and then I’m gonna select four sixteenths ie a quarter of a bar so it’s nice time that’s locked really well into the track it’s not saying that’s a bit weird I want this to be very smooth and this is something that obviously fits perfectly on the beat. So let’s have a listen now.

Cool I think I’m gonna crank the wet a touch and a bit more feedback. And then we’re gonna go and add some distortion. So I love this sound on pads I think it sounds absolutely wicked for this style of music. And also it’s gonna give it some character, it’s going to help differentiate it more from that existing drone that I’ve got in the track. First things first take a bit of output off because I’m going to be driving the gain now and let’s loop this up so we get a little bit of flavor for this. I think I’m going to go with the fuzz because it’s a little bit more subtle although I do love that overdrive sound. And let’s dial this back a touch as well. And I think would probably take a few DB off for this and we should be good to go. Let’s listen to the finished article.

Pretty much perfect. It comes in a touch too quick so I’d increase that fade a little bit and I’ve got a feeling I’d go back to the overdrive because I like the overall sound of that. But that’s how quick you can dial something like this in. It’s subtle it fits perfectly with everything else in the track harmonically you know it’s gonna fit well because it’s come from an existing sound.

So I hope you enjoyed that. I hope it helps you to move forward with your tracks fast up. let me know how you get on in the comments. Take care and happy music making.

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