Hey guys need a little help creating those nice deep house sounds. Since Ive been composing latley my sound design has gotten a little rusty.
An example would be
Comes in at 0:17
Help would be appreciated
1 Answer
Start with a good base using extended chords (7ths, 9ths, 13ths). Write a nice 2 bar phrase that resolves on the first beat of the phrase. Rhythmically the example is very strong with a number of chords falling on strong beats. Try this to start then maybe add some offsets later to taste.
Then start programming the synth. Key to good deep house pads in the low pass filter. Try a number of different filers. Some will color the sound a great deal and give you a more distorted edge which I think will help in this situation. The other key is using subtle modulation. Since the phrase is in 2 bars a nice trick would be to do a LFO on the filter cut off to modulate proportionally using whole number ratios. For example set the LFO to sync then do 3:1 or 3 bars to 1. This will create a sort of polyrhythm to the phrase so every time it repeats it will be a little different. Don't set it to be too drastic. Try and make it less perceptible than the chords arrangement itself.
This is a good start!
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Sorry for the late reply, I wasn't even expecting a response. Great, I will definitley try this out and let you know how ti works– DomCommented Feb 25, 2015 at 16:43
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hey Im getting closer to understanding these however Im not sure im getting the right sound yet. Im working out of massive and started off with some 7th and 9th chords that sound pretty cool. Started off with two bar phrase and moved it onto a 4. I have three ocsillators going, one saw, one puls and another groan. I have two going into a filter with two envelopes, one pulling back and one foward to create this cool lush sound, I wasnt really getting a good sound with the LFO's on the cutoff. Instead I put the lfo on the wt position of the 3rd osc. Put some verb and delay on it, not there yet– DomCommented Mar 3, 2015 at 1:19