Written by Shan Zhi Liu 23/03/2024
South Bound is proud to be call almost all of our productions purely acoustic recordings, with real sound sources, microphones, and the pure feeling of vibrations between air molecules striking electronically charged bits of metal and stuff. Sometimes however, we do indulge in the use of some electronic instruments, and enjoy cool synthesizer textures.
Pictured above is the studio control room you have come to know and love, and the beautiful Nord Stage 3. This versatile bit of hardware synthesizer goodness came with the perfect keyboard sounds to lay down electric keys on songs for swij. All credit to Amadeus Anggaraksa for his expertise with electric keys, his experience of playing vintage chords, performed on vintage keys, and heard on vintage albums, has properly paid itself off!
Whilst we would love to be able to say we have the budget and capacity to work with a full orchestra, a group of students within the confines of one music studio simply is just a little bit beyond our scope.
This is where the praises of Spitfire Audio's BBC Symphony Orchestra rears its ever legendary reputation. Arguably the best free orchestra MIDI instrument on the market, perfect for the struggling university student who wants a great big orchestral background for their little projects.
You can find this great big centrepiece of virtual instrumentation beauty, in the background of Rainbow Rings by Dallas Chua. Shan Zhi Liu's experience with electronic music production in Ableton meant Rainbow Rings was his project of expertise, with years of MIDI programming for fake orchestras and layers upon layers of synthesizers.
Speaking of, Rainbow Rings uses almost just as many layers of synthesizers as orchestral instruments! By habit, Shan Zhi's preferred synthesizers that maximise utility and reduce CPU load are those provided by Ableton, with synth instrumentation and libraries of presets. The depth and texture of our synthesizer sound comes not from any one individual instrument, but relies on several instruments all playing crucial roles and contributing something unique within the stack.
FenceJumper as our resident fusional band, combining rock alongside Hyperpop, have their mainstay bass-line created by a synth sub-bass. This bold sound brings energy and a modern rumble that is so characteristic of EDM. However its clean sine wave sub frequencies absolutely will not translate to Timmy's little Anko headphones.
As is probably burned into mix engineers' minds by now, as with any bass that requires more presence within a mix and must be able to be heard on any amount of bass-ic consumer sound gear (not sorry), we need to add harmonics. Saturation, harmonic distortion, whatever suits your fancy, the more harmonics after the fundamental frequency, the more impressions are made that the bass truly does exist. This bass in question has no less than 5 saturations on it simultaneously for ultimate bass thickness and clarity... and probably even more. (see the results on 711 Sushi by FenceJumper for yourself once it releases!! Follow to hear all the updates)
Electronic music production and mixing is a whole branch of music that this simple blog post has not the resources to cover! Nonetheless it is always fun to bring you along for the ride with us, and to show you what goes on behind the scenes and within our minds. Your support and feedback over the past few weeks for our audience testing forms has been absolutely a monumental effort thanks to you all. Please consider following us on our website and socials for all the updates regarding our upcoming songs, and we look forward to seeing you next week!
As always, inviting you down South. 🇦🇺
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