Remaking from scratch ㅣIGORㅣ02.EARFQUAKE

3:13 - Synth Choir

I’ll start with the vocal pad in the song EARFQUAKE.

The elements of this sound are vowel shape by filter, a subtle vibrato and long attack applied to both the pitch and the amplifier. You need a synthesizer with a formant filter, which shapes the sound in a similar way to how the vocal tract works, leading to vowel-esque sounds.

So I start with the basic lead sound of the sine and triangle waves. and set the FM to 0.017 to get extra frequency. Bring some unison to make it thicker.

The human voice has a short process of rising in pitch and volume. So I set both envelope times with a long attack time and full sustain. And modulated the Fine with a LFO to get a slight vibrato.

The midrange is the most important part for the vocal sound, and I just need that part here, to leave some space for other instruments. so I add a band filter at 1600 Hz, cut the frequency I don't want.

You can hear two different shapes in the original choir, like ohhh-ahhhh. So you need a square wave LFO to switch between the two amounts at the freq shift and morph of a bar time to get two different vowels. And then took a vocal waveform in Wavetable to layer and fill the sound.

9:14  808 

The 808 is the base of the track, making the song tight and punchy. So I took a triangle wave and set the filteroff to 222 Hz, reso to 0.38 and 0.5 keyboard tracking. and I used ENV 2 with a short decay time to modulate the filter's cutoff to get a punch head. Add a tape distortion to get some new high frequency, and a 14% chorus to soften it up. then sidechained the sound to the kick drum.

(SideChain FL Studio: select the external track, send it the track your workking on — Opening your VST‘s Detailed Setting — VST Wrapper Setting — Processing — select the track you want in 2 Stereo Side Chain, then select the ext mode in your VST.)

20:49 - Intro Piano

The chords of the whole song are BbM7-Am7-Gm7-Am7, which is IV iii ii iii in F major. 

This is the common chord progression in hiphop. It starts on a ii or IV chord and just kkeepslooping, and never back to or ending at I. The tonal center is deliberately obscured by this non-functional harmony. So it just oscillates between relative major and minor. which adds more flavor to the melody.

21:35 - Synth Bass

The synth bass sound has a rough fuzz quality sounding, similar to the intro synth bass from IGOR'S THEM, but more detuned. So I took some saw waves here, staggering their fines a bit. Brought the wavetable one some unsion. And set amplifier envelope times with a 1 ms attack, 450 ms decay, and 0 sustain, then add a solf clip to make it sharp and rough a bit. and don't forget to apply the velocity to the volume.

25:50 - Zip Sound

For this sound, just find some waveforms that look complicated, usually sound metallic when you mix them together. 

And make a fast pitch-up and a slide apply to both the sound attack and the wave position. Then add a bit of distortion to grain it.

27:30 - SFX

This is a simple riser sound; the key to the type of sound is the curvature and direction of the bend at Attack/Decay curve that acts on the pitch change. If you want a smooth riser like a laser, twist left. If you want an engine-like riser, twist right.

For this sound, I set envelope times with a long attack time (778), long decay (10s), 0 sustain, 0 att, and a -3.8 decay curve. And you can make completely different sounds by changing them a bit.