"Blonde" — 01.Nikes Project x Tutorial

Project(FLP/ALS/Stem)：

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JK9ZS7m2hVlPww-W2TfOXYM2un0XrgwP?usp=sharing

Tutorial：

(My English is not very good, most of this tutorial is translated by DeepL, so it may will be little bit weird to read)  :)

        In the first half of Nikes, there are two main synth sound, the first heard in Nikes is Bass with its characteristic vibrato effect. Normally, you don't hear much of the vibrato effect being used on bass instruments, but here it surrounds the vocals and other instruments with that wobbly feeling that greatly enhances the atmosphere of the song.

1：

        The synthesizer used to make this sound is Arturia's OB-XA, and I chose a preset Bass-Punchy Bouncer that is somewhat similar basic sound , and modified it.

        The frequency of the original bass sound is around 70~600hz, the shape is a straight line, almost no sound head, and there is a tremolo effect, so first in the Filter-freq up a little bit to release some high frequencies, while lowering some reso, and then raise the Attack a little bit to remove the head in the ENVELOPES.

        You can make the tremolo effect right in the synth, but I used PechnegTremolo here, a free external plugin to achieve the tremolo effect. I did a high and low cut, weakened the resonance with soothe 2, and RS56 to thicken the tone, and finally tweaked its soundstage a bit.

2：

        Another sound was like a relatively thin psychedelic pad, I choose the instrument here is the Native Instruments Vintage Organ, Just find a relatively smooth-sounding preset, and then add a hall reverb, then you can get a similar feeling, and then start to adjust it, This instrument theory is as follows：

“

Drawbar Theory Drawbar organs operate under the same sound generation principals as additive synthesis.  In additive synthesis complex tones are generated by combining sine waves (a waveform  with only one partial) of different frequencies and amplitudes. For the Hammond organs, the frequencies of these waves follow a pattern based on the  harmonic series. In this series a fundamental frequency acts as the first harmonic, the  second harmonic (or first overtone) is twice the frequency of the fundamental (one octave  above), the third is three times the fundamental (an octave plus a perfect 5th above), and  so on. The first eight natural harmonics of middle C are:

The terms used for describing the harmonic content of organs historically comes from pipe  organs, where the use of various lengths of pipe determines the tonal characteristics (so a  pipe of half the length of another would produce a tone at twice the frequency). Hence,  organs have come to use “pipe length” rather than harmonic number to describe sound  settings. On the tone wheel organ, the brown drawbars provide tones that are not natural harmonics  of the fundamental frequency, but belong to the harmonic series starting one octave below. That’s why they are often called sub-harmonics. The “pipe length” settings, and their relationship to the natural harmonics, are illustrated  below:

As we can see in the illustration, drawbars also have a series of numbers marked along  each bar. These numbers show the amplitude of each harmonic (the second important part  of additive synthesis). In the Hammond organs we have sampled and emulated, the drawbars have nine discreet volume settings from 0 (off) to 8. It is common practice, when  writing for drawbar organs, to notate the drawbar settings with a series of numbers representing the volume level of each drawbar, in the format 88-8888-888 (this example would  be all of the bars at full volume).

”

        First turn all off the options for both the vibrato and Percussion pieces, no additional sounds or effects are needed here. Due to there chords are all below C5, you only need to adjust the lever of the Lower manual, pull 16 to maximum, 8 to 4 to bring up a gentle tone, then 4 and 2 both to maximum to make the sound sharp and smooth. Pull all the others to the minimum, and turn the drive to the minimum in the Amp. Because this Instruments can not adjust the sound envelope, you need to use the plug-in to do that, you can use fl studio goost beat or shaperBox, manual animation of a rainbow-shaped envelope to achieve fade in and out.

        Then adjust the valhallaVintageVerb, basically decay in 1~2 seconds, small size, a little low cut. And I added an ACME XLA optical compressor here to add some sound-coloration. The 1:33 second organ sound is almost the same as this one, you can pull the drawbar 1' up to the max or just raise the chord an octave and fine tune it to make it sound more comfortable.

        There is a rather hazy guitar on the left, because my guitar's sound is rather inferior, so I didn't add too many effects, just a plate reverb, and a Decapitator to brighten up some tones.

        here is a rather hazy guitar on the left, because my guitar's sound is rather inferior, so I didn't add too many effects, just a plate reverb, and a Decapitator to brighten up some tones.

        The synth on the right has two.

1：

       The first sound is a cool-toned in-between string and organ, so we turn on the OB-XA, set both oscillators to pulse, oscillator 1freq to 8', 2 to 0, filter to about 170, reso to min. Short to medium time Attack, long sustain in ENVELOPES.

       Then do a low cut with Pro q, add a plate reverb, and Echoboy's digital chorusdelay.

In the original version of this sound, you can hear that it stops abruptly at the end, and here it could be a sample, so we recorded it with edison after finish this melody, and just chop it.

2：

        The second sound is a warmer pad or string sound, here I used the preset is BD-3, lowered the filter-freq a little, then used Pro q to make a high and low cut, then added Echoboy's digital chorusdelay and a big reverb.