Making of Solace

Solace came from a guitar idea from over a year ago that I had shelved and wished to revisit. Conceptually, the song aims to reflect the emotions of grief and anguish at something that has been lost, perhaps as an epilogue to a relationship or moment in one’s life. While this rendition of the song does not feature lyrics, I hope that the textural/arrangement choices reflect this narrative to the listener. Crucial reference tracks for this project include ‘Closer’ by Kings of Leon, ‘I Appear Missing’ by Queens of the Stone Age, and ‘Real Love Song’ by Nothing but Thieves, alongside various tracks from the discography of Deftones.

All of the parts in this track were written by myself and recorded by either myself or Mark Darvill. The focal point of the track comes from the interplay between the brightness and warmth of the acoustic guitar, and the cold and clinical nature of the arpeggiating synth, developed from multiple automated layers. Of these layers, the most prominent was modelled after a synth that can be heard in the song ‘Aural Psynapse’ by deadmau5. During the early stages of conception, I made a short parody video on YouTube poking fun at the similarity between the two synths. While humorous and unserious in nature, I find it serves as unconventional evidence for the evolution of the track as a whole, as well as the key inspiration for the synth arpeggio:

Following this, I decided to begin recording elements in the studio with a friend of mine, Mark Darvill. Mark is a Masters graduate from last academic year, but has served as a friend, bandmate and mentor to me. His experience with guitar composition and sound design proved useful in the evolution of the track. In our first session, we recorded various layers of electric guitar, experimenting with ambient lead layers and the ‘Wall of Sound’ approach, often found in heavier genres. Not all of these recorded layers made it into the final project, but the experimentation from this session gave me clearer vision for the final sound of the track, most notably the ‘Wall of Sound’ heard in the final verse.

My second session with Mark included the recording of the main acoustic guitar layer. I decided on layering acoustic and electric together to bring a contrasting brightness and attack to the (at that stage) dull and dark sound of the electric guitar layers. Given our limited time in the studio, we managed to capture a compiled take which was later sectioned, and slightly edited to attempt to remove smaller inconsistencies in the performance or sound. Mark later sent me a take of the strummed open chords from a mono condenser mic recording at his home.

With the remaining time in this session, we recorded three layers of percussion to later be sampled: A kick sample (recorded with a D112 and a stereo pair of condenser mics for room sound) and two stereo layers of cabasa and egg shaker. The latter two of the three are featured in the submitted rendition of the track.

From this point, every other element was recorded/programmed/processed inside of Ableton Live 11 on my home pc. This is included to not limited to further electric guitar layering, MIDI processing for synth(s) and the primary drum kit (via Superior Drummer 3), and all processing.

Synthesis

As previously mentioned, my primary element of synthesis is a MIDI arpeggio I wrote played through Xfer Serum, which is a popular wavetable synthesiser VST used primarily in EDM-adjacent genres. I find this VST to be incredibly versatile, with a straightforward UI that correlates well to Ableton’s vast automation capabilities. The main sound heard throughout the track is a combination of a sine and saw wave ran through a notched low-pass filter to eliminate harsh frequencies and add resonance to a specific band. This is then ran through an automated tube distortion, followed by another low-pass filter used solely for automating cutoff without affecting the notch of resonance of the first low-pass filter.

Below, you can see the various automation lanes used for the evolving sound of this synth:

Also featured in the final verse is a sub-oscillator processed through a separate instance of Serum. This uses a square wave with 5 total layers in unison, with a slight detune to each, offering a choral sound.

The first instance of the arpeggio in the track uses a preset sound from Addictive Keys, a ‘Reverse Attack Piano’ which is then filtered and compressed.

Full Project Overview

Underneath, you will see an image of the entire project, showing the various layers and elements across the track:

Finally, below is a recorded video offering a brief project overview, alongside the required recording of the original DAW session playing.