(Hm, started my answer while this post was still in the Music-community ...)
I understand that you look for a kind of recipe or guideline to reproduce songs like this. When you go through the themes I mention down below iteratively, you can come closer and closer. Reaching “99 %” then basically is a matter of persistence. Enjoy your ride.
1. Tempo
The easiest to answer: determine the tempo. Is there only one? Does it vary? If so, when and how? Take notes.
2. Composition
In classical music we know about motives, melodies, harmonies, forms and variation of all these. In contrast, this song sounds more like an endless variation of the same basic riff or pattern, and variations in sound, not in motives, melodies, harmonies or form.
For analysis it’s a good idea to (over-) simplify first, and introduce more and more refinement during synthesis, step by step (see 5.4).
3. Parts
So let’s neglect the beginning (intro) and the end, where there may be an outro. You can master these parts later, after mastering the main part. For this section your major tools will be taking notes and listening.
So, take notes of the times, when changes happen you’d consider “a new part”. (From knowing the tempo you can calculate the number of measures per part, which is also a kind of crosscheck for the overall composition. E.g is it a multiple of 8 measures, which is a common approach?)
3.1 Instruments
On quick listening I spot at least 3 major instruments:
- a drum set
- an organ-like instrument (synthesizer, synth-1; see 4.2)
- a different synthesizer (synth-2)
There are sometimes sounds staying more or less on one note, called pads. So soundwise you probably will identify more synths (synth-3 … synt-n). Take notes, where they are introduced, how similar od different they sound compared to each other and so on.
3.2 Melodies
The drum set seems to follow a simple and constant (?) pattern.
Both synths (synth-1, synth-2) seem to have similar simple melodies. Identify them. Ignore shift in pitches for now (introduce them via Glide or actions on the pitch wheel in your synthesizer, later, see 4.2).
3.3 Repetitions
Now, pay more attention to the endless repetitions of sound variations:
- take again notes when major changes happen (time, i.e. measures)
- verify, whether or not the 3 melodies (drum, synth-1, synth-2) remain constant or not.
4. Sound
Because most of the variations in this song are varied sound, you need to build up experience here: how do certain effects sound like? From this background you can approach sound variations one by one. Some will come easy, some will take more time to figure out, some may be generated differently in hindsight. That’s all ok, and part of the learning process.
Now it’s time to transfer all your notes and observations into at least one DAW-version, step by step:
- instruments
- melodies
- repeating parts
- insert the following manipulations
4.1 Audio effects
It will be a good idea to create an extra DAW-version, where you take instruments you like and apply all kind of audio-effects to it. Instruments can or should be
- sine (not always spectacular, but if you know Fourier analysis, you know why)
- square (a hollow sound, from its spectrum = series of sine waves)
- saw (a fuller more organ-like sound = different series of sine waves))
- guitar (just another series of sine waves)
Try effects like reverb, echo, drive/distortion, EQ, delay, chorus, vibe, phaser, flanger, wah-wah, tremelo, envelope and what have you. Having tried these you know the characteristic sounds of each effect, which makes identification in the song easier. Also try some combinations of these, which the song probably did here and there. (If in doubt, try to determine the main effect by ear, first, and try that during synthsies (5.4).)
Finally, transfer your finding to your (current) main version of the song.
4.2 Synthesizer
You should have a basic idea about how synthesizers work and how they sound. The range is huge, so be prepared to spend time here.
Synthesizers do manipulate the sounds spectrum. So you have two key ingrediences:
- a noise source (saw, triangle, rectangle; noise)
- a good filter (this mainly tells the bad synths from the excellent ones)
So you vary sound by changing the sources noise AND adjusting filter type, center frequency, bandwidth and flanks. Take a very simple synth from your DAW’s instrument list and play with these 2 ingredients, i.e. explore their effects on sound.
The range you’ll hear can vary from a deep bass-guitar to flute-like ones, including all kind of scifi- or techno-sounds. (It will almost always NOT sound like a classical instrument.)
4.3 Parameter-Automation
Now, while exploring your analog effects and the simple synth, you can vary sound by manually detuning knobs, like reverb, center frequncy, bandwidth and hear all kind of sound variations. E.g. filter variations do a lot here.
Synthesizers and DAWs can automate these kind of manual operations, see below, e.g. to create a bubbling-like sound/noise.
4.3.1 Synthesizer
The major ways of parameter control in synthesizers, which impact the scetrum generated, hence sound, are:
- varying the oscillator (sine, saw, square …) by a second oscillator
- using Low Frequency Oscillators (LFOs) to vary parameters (”knobs”) like center frequency very slowly
- envelope-units for some or all LFOs.
Of course, the sky is the limit, which usually requires more complex and more expensive synthesizers. E.g. as far as I recognized in your example you will do fine without FM or sample reconstruction.
From mastering these you can cover many if not all synthesizer sounds in your example.
4.3.2 DAW
DAWs many times provide extra tracks for automation. At least you can vary volume of an instrument track this way, or LR-panning etc., if it’s needed. Depending on your DAW you can perhaps manipulate aduio effects this way, i.e. letting the DAW “turn the knobs” for you in certain parts.
5. Left to say
5.1 MIDI
MIDI comes in several flavors.
As a control signal you can chain many external instruments on stage together, e.g. to remote control internal states of various external devices.
If you do all inside your DAW, there will be hardly any need for such outside control: it will probably provide more instruments than you could ever buy as hardware.
So the major use remains: MIDI representing notes (pitches, melodies) and actions on the instrument (like key-press, glide etc.). However, please keep in mind:
- MIDI-notes are like the printed notation of a song: it can’t sound
- you need an orchestra assigned to the various MIDI tracks (that’s why MIDI-music can sound very ugly on a different computer … it has a different orchestra inside)
So finally you may want to convert your DAWs final results into audio (.mp3 etc.),
5.2 Ear training
To stress again, the knowledge of how different electronic effects do sound basically will pave your way to re-create the song above, step by step.
Listen to the sound character of one of the instruments in some part, try separating synthesizer from audio effect, try approaching what you hear in a separate DAW-track or file.
5.3 Experience
You won’t do without. Be prepared to spend quite some time on exploring and mimicking electronic effects, both from synthesizer and audio.
Even, if you should stop for this song at some point in time, it will broaden your musical horizon considerable.
And you will start to recognize what you worked out in various songs you’ll hear streamed, on TV or radio etc.
5.4 Putting it all together
Following the route of stepwise refinement you could e.g.:
- start with 3 instruments for the repetitive part, like any drum set, organ and piano (focus on melodies first)
- add or replace any of these in parts where you identified the parameter settings (synth & audio)
- in a DAW you can have, and usually will have, a huge amount of instrument tracks, which sometimes play just a very little part, once and for all.
