Today's soundtrack is Dropout Kings: Audiodope, an awesome heavy album that sounds like a sort of millennial nu-metal: like Korn and Linkin Park meet Drake or some trap music. Really cool stuff!
One of my favourite shows of all time is Twin Peaks. An integral part of the Twin Peaks experience is the beautiful soundtrack. I decided to combine two interests of mine: one, to do a cover of the show's theme song; two, to see just how much I could get out of the Reaper's built-in synth, ReaSynth, and drum sampler, ReaSynDr. I used only Reaper's built-in filters and effects (compressors, pitch shifters, reverbs, and delays) to tweak the instruments' sounds. I only used one non-Reaper effect in the entire project: a free brick wall limiter VST called LoudMax.
I'll start by showing the recording that I ended up with, then I'll go through the steps that I took to end up with these sounds.
First, here's the end result:
Now, here's how I did it:
I started by creating a ReaSynDr track. I enabled its multi-out feature so that I would be able to edit each of the four default sounds that it comes with. I used the routing tool to send each sound to a separate track; I called them "Ride," "Snare," "Hi-Hat," and "Kick." Next, I turned off the drum track's master send so that the only audio output would be from the routed tracks.
I then put each of those tracks into a folder track called "Drums" so that I could apply effects that would impact all of the separate sounds as a whole. I added a reverb and compressor to the drum folder.
The next step was to build the drum sounds. The four default tones that come with ReaSynDr weren't quite doing what I wanted, so I applied tons of effects to them to get them to sound more like synthesized drum hits and less like metronome blips. I already knew that I would need a ride, hi-hat, snare, and bass drum; it was just a matter of deciding which default sound to allocate for each purpose. The built-in sounds of ReaSynDr are Kick, Snare, Blip, and Tick. You can see where this is going, right? I used Kick for the bass drum, Snare for the snare drum, Blip as the ride, and Tick as the hi-hat.
To convert the Blip into a ride cymbal, I raised its pitch a lot, then washed it out in reverb. It no longer sounded like a tom on a fisher-price starter drum kit; it now sounded like a cricket in the grand canyon. Progress!
The next step was to make the snare sound less musical and more like a snare. I looked at the EQ, scooped out the part that was making it sound musical, raised the pitch a bit, and added some reverb. Yes, it sounded worse than the snare drum on Metallica's St. Anger, but it sounded better than it had before. I call that a win.
After building a snare sound that would make even Lars Ulrich shake his head, I moved on to the hi-hat. I took out all the low end, boosted the high-end like crazy, then removed everything except the high mids. I'm sure there's a rule out there that you shouldn't add an EQ right after an EQ, but to my ears, it worked. After I EQQ'd it, I added a quick slapback delay to make it sound like the two hi-hat cymbals ticking together, raised the pitch, added a second slapback, and popped a bit of reverb on to blend the whole sound together.
The final step to get my dream drum sound was to set up the kick drum. As expected, it was the easiest of the lot: I tweaked the EQ a bit, boosting the low mids, and added a death metal kick drum compressor to it, because why not, right?
The first part of the project was complete. Now came the more challenging part: using Reaper's minimalist synth, ReaSynth, to create two kinds of guitars, an upright piano, an electric piano, and a French horn.
I started by building a piano sound. I only used the default sine generator; its smooth sound was perfect for what I wanted. I reduced the attack to 0 to simulate the hammer hitting the piano's strings, set a low decay and sustain so that the sound would fade out over time on sustained notes, and increased the release so that there would be a bit of natural resonance when the notes were released. I used the EQ to lower the bass, raise the mids, and take the very top off of the highs. I added a bit of compression and reverb to smooth out the sound.
After creating the acoustic piano, the electric piano was pretty straightforward. It was set up quite similarly, with a few exceptions: I gave it no sustain and a longer decay (making it sound more Rhodes-like sound), then added a little bit of square and triangle to the wave shape mix, giving the sound a bit more of a bite.
The next instrument that I wanted to simulate was the iconic guitar that plays the bassline throughout the song. In the original song, the guitar features a tremolo effect. Now, I do have tremolo effects available in my third-party VSTs, but in this project, I wanted to stick solely to Reaper's instrument and effects offerings. I stuck to just the instrument itself for the guitar; I was able to get the sound that I wanted by setting the attack to 0, simulating a pick on a guitar string. It took a bit of trial and error, but I ended up decreasing the decay just slightly and the sustain by a lot; this gave me the resonance that I wanted. I left the release at its default setting; the default worked great for this instrument. To build the sound itself, I used an even mix of a very narrow square with a sawtooth, then added a higher layer of triangle. This gave me a really grungy sound that I was happy with.
I mentioned earlier that I needed to make two guitars. The second guitar was very similar to the first, but with a longer decay and release, for the purpose of being able to cut through the horn sections. I also ended up widening the square's pulse to reduce phasing with the horn section, which brings us to...
The horn section!
I gave it a high attack, making it fade in a bit. I left its decay and sustain at the default; I didn't want it to swell or fade. I increased its release to make it sound more lush. To build the sound itself, I used full triangle and 1/3 sawtooth - this made it sound soft, yet crisp.
The final step, then, was to play it in Reaper! I used the piano roll, and transposed the majority of it by ear from this video; however, I couldn't figure out exactly what chords were being played on the piano in the intro, so I got some help from this video in nailing down what was happening. Turns out the chords I was having trouble with were supposed to be F/C/G/A/C and D/A/E/F/A; I thought they were F/C/G/C and D/A/F/A. When I made that change, it sounded a lot richer. I love those chords.
I'm happy with how it turned out; it was a really fun project, and I enjoyed dipping my toes into the ocean of synthesizers!