With many of the more technical genres being known for their complexity, newcomer to Producertech Creatures is aiming to help simplify the methodology involved by sharing his concise and relatively minimal approach to production. Although the techniques covered aren’t suitable for complete beginners, and some software and production knowledge is required to follow along, his clean and straightforward workflow offers an inspirational approach to making electronic music.

The course consists of three half-hour lessons, exploring the construction of beats, bass and FX, in order to create a meaty 48-bar drop. In the first session, he outlines his template project, highlighting several time-saving features with regards to track grouping and send effects, before putting together the drums. Samples are combined and edited, as well as processed with various effects, and a number of grooving, pulsing cymbal layers are applied for additional textures and energy.

The second lesson sees Creatures getting more into sound design, showing how a cool sub patch can be made from scratch and then used to underpin the beats. He then shows how distortion and reverb can be used to create the characteristic bass sound, splitting parts into different frequency bands so that parallel effects processing can be carried out. As an alternative suggestion to purely working in MIDI, he provides another method involving resampling and audio editing, which is an even easier but just as effective way of working, offering maximum control and great results.

Finally, there is a deep dive into FX layers, looking at how additional samples or existing sounds in the track can be used to add the necessary textural layers and tension management required for this kind of arrangement.

Enrolling on the course gives you immediate access to 90 mins of tutorials, along with the project from the lessons and a bonus pack of D&B samples from Loopmasters, so you’ll have a fresh set of inspiration and some extra materials to add to your library.

Sample Module - How To Make Sub Bass In Serum

Course Breakdown

Intro

0.45

Module 1 - Creating the Drums

After an explanation of Creature’s template project, drums are constructed from samples laid out across audio tracks, which are processed with various insert effects on individual and group channels, to produce tight and driving beats. Varying sections are made using additional high frequency elements, including a resampled, processed cymbal side-chained to the main drums.

26.48

Module 2 - Approaches to Bass Design

Firstly, bass is designed from the ground up using Serum. A sub layer is created, using hand drawn wavetables with FM modulation and various LFOs. Effects are then added in series and parallel to distort and create a massive sound. Following this, an allternative workflow is shown, involving flattening synths to audio and then editing to create a varied groove with send effects, tremolo and more.

29.16

Module 3 - Managing Tension & Atmosphere

The groove is developed with numerous fills and FX layers, to manage the flow through the arrangement. Sounds are processed, resampled, reversed and edited to help add the requisite elements for building tension and anticipation, whilst filling out the mix and adding extra definition to the track. Lastly, a random vocal sample is used to provide more interest to the end of sections, whilst adding additional textures to the beginning of each drop.

25.07

Outro

0.38