SHR4C004M-003 Song Prod. & Write Up Template

Task 1: Three Minute Song Production (70%)

Task 2: 1000 Word Write-Up (30%)

For this song production, I decided to make a deep house song with strong lead vocals, which are catchy and repetitive. This was my first time producing something within the dance genre that has vocals, so when thinking of ideas of how to make it, I created a bank of songs to use as reference for things like vocal sound, lyric structure and how the overall mix would sound. Using songs by Josh Baker, Obskür and Armand Van Helden as reference, I was able to get a clear idea of what I would need to do to create a similar sound with stripped back minimal synths leaving space for the vocals.

I knew from the off that I would want this song to be played on large sound systems in clubs, festivals and other venues where dance music is played. So, I needed a song with a strong sub-bass that would glue the bassline to the rest of the track really making the low end hit hard in a club setting. And that is why the song was written in F minor, because the notes between F0-A0 “are a good balance between good subwoofer reproduction and audibility”. (Russell A, 2023). Pairing this with a catchy vocal allows the song to be played at the peak of nights during headline sets.

The idea for the lyrical structure came from realising a pattern in a lot of the songs in this genre, where there only happens to be two or three verses and the rest is just the hook repeating, so it was important for me and the singer to write easy to understand lyrics that are catchy. The arrangement of the song follows the order verse, pre chorus, chorus, then the chorus repeats multiple times and then the arrangement repeats once more, this structure allowed to keep the repetitive nature of dance music while also not keeping it boring for the listener, because the melodic elements were varying in the background keeping a constant development of the track.

The vocals were recording using a Sontronics Orpheus, which has a boosted high frequency response, which helps give the female voice more colour. For the verses, I only recorded the lead vocal, whereas for the pre chorus’ and chorus’ I recorded a double track and a second double track an octave down. This helped make the vocal thicker and added more body and energy making the drops hit harder.

I mixed the vocals in logic, as i prefer the plug ins available. I put a not too fast pitch correction on the vocals to match the style of similar songs in this genre. A DeEsser was used to get rid of any harsh sibilance, which was there was quite a bit of due to the nature of the lyrics. Two EQ’s and two compressors were used to just make sure it fit perfectly in the mix. I also made the decision to use a lot of chorus and give the vocals a sort of synthetic effect. I then sent it to a reverb bus and a delay bus that had a compressor being side chained back to the vocal so that only the end of phrases were effected.

In terms of drums, I used mainly 909 samples to keep the song as true to its genre as possible. I applied a groove pool to all elements of the kit so that they were all more swung and didn’t feel too repetitive throughout. Another way I gave the drums more life was by randomising the velocity of the hi-hats and other percussive elements. All the drums were made by using external samples from packs, which I changed by adding effects of transposing etc.

These are the effects I used on a shaker sample to give the sample more life and not take up too much space in the mix.

Another thing I did for sampling was re-sampling a recording I had made. I recorded the noise of a busy street, then reversed it and put it through a bandpass filter to create a warpy soundscape to add ambience to the background of the track. This added an extra texture that filled any gaps in the less busy moments of the song, like at the beginning when there is just vocals and one synth.

I sound designed all the synth aspects aswell using mainly Ableton’s Wavetable and Serum 2. The bass was made using just a sawtooth and sine wave with an opening low pass filter. This is a staple of the modern deep house scene, used regularly by artists like Obskür, Chris Stussy and Max Dean. The main lead synth that plays over the chorus’ was made using two sawtooth-like waveforms, one being a 5th up, with an opening low pass filter and a boosted resonance.
The other lead synth that plays over the verses and ending was made using just a detuned sawtooth wave and an opening low pass filter. This is a pattern in this genre music, a lot of the sound design is very similar just there are slight differences such as detunings, how much the filter opens or how much resonance there is etc.

These sounds have proven time and time again that they work in multiple commercially successful songs, such as in ‘All Night Long’ (Stussy, C 2023) and I’ve Arrived (Obskur & Tomike, 2024). These songs have garnered millions of streams over multiple platforms and have been played BBC Radio One, the UK’s most popular radio station. This is evidence that a song produced to a professional level in this genre can do very well commercially.

Bibliography:

Obskur and Tomike (2024). I’ve Arrived. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-aYAd2gBtw&ab_channel=Obskur-Topic [Accessed 7 May 2025].

‌Russell, A (2023), Sub-Bass: How to get thick low-end in your music. Available Online: https://www.edmprod.com/sub-bass/

Stussy, C. (2023). All Night Long. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W48lREzsXaI&ab_channel=chrisstussy [Accessed 7 May 2025].