Even if I don’t play it personally, I am a huge fan of Tenor and Barriton Saxophones. I just adore the grain in their sound. It must be in my blood, because my brother (
Anyway, I really wanted to to try to use this grainy sound as a main hook on a music track. And so, appeared the seed of what would soon become ‘Yellow Curtains’.
'Yellow Curtains' is one of my wildest tracks. I am quite fond of the goa-trance band Infected Mushrooms in their early days, and am also quite into the Raggamuffin way of rapping, you know, with this little melodic side that comes from the singing Jamaican accent.
So in this piece, the sax's hook gets carried away by a goa type of electronic beat onto where ragga and rap vocal licks dance around each other. And, because I am quite into standard pop-trance, I couldn’t resist composing on top of that a catchy chorus with female vocals and synths licks
Give it a listen on DSound. Hear for yourself: it's a very wild piece indeed lol!
For the goa-type of bass, I used Predator from the excellent indie soft-synth company Rob Papen. The sound is built around a very basic saw tooth wave, a wave suitable for some bass with a little glitch. And then I played like crazy on the pitch bend wheel and on the FX return button mix of the FX mixer in which I inserted a delay module (See Yellow arrows in the picture) .
I am pretty happy also with the synth lick in the chorus. Thor again! And to be honest, I did not design the sound from scratch this time, I used a gated lead preset and then worked the sound from there.
I played also a lot with the effects by inserting an echo followed by a reverb: I played live on the delay tail, the Echo feedback and the mix between the dry and wet sound (yellow Arrows). That allowed reaching these trancy ambiances that rise just before transitions.
For those curious of the connections between the different modules for this hook synth sound, check the picture below.
This music track, although starting with just some fooling around with sounds I like, became quite a project.
I hope you enjoy its groove!
Image credits:
- The right to use the image of the thumbnail (drawing of man on saxophone) has been purchased on Fotolia.
- Pictures of the modules are snapshots from the Reason file in which I built up 'Yellow Curtains'.
- All other images found on Pixabay.
I’m 
My life revolves around music production, teaching sciences, and discovery through travel.
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