In this video I will be teaching you how to make music like Marshmello first
we'll be recreating Happier featuring Bastille and later we'll take this one
step further and use this as inspiration to create a track of our own for me the
final result is my new single - Ecstatic which at the time of posting this video
is out now on all major platforms click the link in the description to check it
out if you'd like but ultimately what we'll learn is how to create music like
Marshmello
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thank you so much for supporting this video and channel Skillshare now let's
jump into learning how to make music like Marshmello hello there my
inspirations my name is Inspiraspir and as I mentioned in the beginning of this
video today I'll be teaching you how to make music like Marshmello so
introductions aside let's jump right into it what you see here before me is
my Ableton Live session where I recreate Happier so what you'll want to do is
create a new session in whatever DAW you'll be following along with now
Happier is set at 100 BPM and will be in a key of F major so let's go ahead and
learn how to make the drop of Happier and to start let's focus on the
percussion here is my final layer of percussion what we'll be creating
which is comprised of four main layers we have our kicks snares cymbals and
high hats let's focus on our kicks to begin with to create my layer of kicks
in Ableton I added a drum rack onto a new MIDI layer now I wanted to remain as
faithful to Marshmello as I possibly could so I went to hunting specifically
for Marshmello samples credit where credit's do I came across this really
awesome sample pack by Ultrasonic I'll leave a link in the description below if
you want to go check it out and download it for yourself but this pack contained
a bunch of samples and even serum presets that I used when recreating
Happier I added in a bunch of samples that I liked from the sample pack and I
stacked them on top of each other and laid them out in this following pattern
on top of this cake layer be sure to add in some audio effects to really boost
your kicks I added a glue compressor so these three samples mingle well together
and I added in one of Ableton's default EQ's under audio effects EQ8 drums I
added in kick EQ 3 this just boosts the low ends the punchy feel of the kick a
little bit of the high ends for some brightness and you lose a little bit
right here in the middle in these kind of unnecessary territories and these
frequencies next let's move on to our snares now this piano roll may look a
little bit complicated but let's break it down layer by layer it's not too
crazy I did the same thing as my kicks here where in Ableton I added a new MIDI
track I added a drum rack on top of it and then I found the samples that I
liked that I wanted to use for my snares now this can just be broken down into
two different segments my main snares and supplementary snares these right
here are considered to be my main snares let's go ahead and get rid of everything
else for now just so we can focus on these main snares they're laid out in
this following pattern next I went to adding in be supplementary snares which
add a little bit of rhythm to our beat these snares right here add the
marshmallow track vibe to the song I
didn't add too much audio effects onto my snares layer just an EQ again one of
Ableton's built-in stock EQ eight presets snare EQ - I probably could do
more but for the sake of demonstrating how to recreate this song from scratch
it did just fine perfectly perfectly fine next let's focus on a layer of
cymbals this is also pretty straightforward and again split into
just two segments first we have our normal cymbals our rides which hit at
every beat
and in the second segment nothing too crazy is just one larger crash a bigger
ride at the top of every four bars so essentially when our loop repeats we
just have one big impact all together so far sounding pretty good now let's move
on to our hihats this is probably the most complicated layer of our percussion
so let's break it down really dissect this so it's not as overwhelming I've
gone ahead and deactivated some notes just so we can focus on this first layer
of hihats right here these are our main closed hihats these hit fast in
short and quite frankly I think or what brings out the most Marshmello of the
track when I created these I just laid them out in one singular line like this
but you'll notice that there are some gaps in these hihats and this is
where I later added in other elements just to add some variation and I really
did just sort of randomly add in holes in our first set of hihats how did
these guys in to fill in those gaps just as variation you'll notice this layer of
hihats has a consistent pattern and this one just filled in those gaps that
I chose at random next you'll notice there's another layer of hihats which
has the same pattern as this layer right here just offsets so this also hits at
every beat similar to our cymbals it's subtle but if you really listen for it
you can tell it's there I also have this layer of hihats so you can see how I
started with one basic pattern and expanded upon it just to add in
variation where I felt like it needed it lastly I have a fairly important layer
of hihats these are the hi-hat rolls
so that'll do it for percussion next let's move on to our bass my bass
consists of two different layers I have my main heavier bass and I have a sub
bass now this is the bassline to Happier on this layer I added in a new instance
of Serum which if you're curious our bassline sounds like this
then for the sake of time I used a preset if you remember I pointed out the
the Ultrasonic Marshmello preset path which I went to using I found this
preset "Bass - Down" which sounds like this okay so that doesn't sound great so I
went to raising this by an octave or two
and while granted I know the original track isn't very bass heavy at least not
this gritty that's where you can start to see this isn't meant to be a
recreation I guess for the tutorials sake it is but rather when you're making
this for your own sake you're using this as inspiration you're making a track
that sounds like Marshmello so this is where you can take creative liberties
you know in the sound design for example on this layer of bass I added in an EQ
this is to cut off the super low ends this is where my sub bass will be taking
up space and the most important audio effect on this layered bass is a camel
crusher this is a free preset I have to believe that really compresses your
sound distorts it like crazy so this is how I get the bass to sound gritty and
powerful without camel crusher
and then with it
specifically I used the preset British crunch and tweaked with it slightly next
let's move on to our sub bass now sub bass is by default take up the low ends
the low frequencies these are the sounds that you almost can't even hear although
yes you can but rather you feel instead this is the rumble of your bass so I
just created a new MIDI track and copied my MIDI clip from before then again I
used an instance of Serum to create my sub bass let's go ahead and lower this
by a few octaves and then create a sub bass in this case for the sake of time I
used an 808 preset if it doesn't sound right again tweak with the octave levels
as far as audio effects go I used a utility to make my sub bass mono we
don't really want our sub bass to take a stereo space so just turn it into mono
and finally an EQ this is almost the polar opposite of the EQ on our main
bass where the layers that we cut out we're now focusing on so now our sub
bass so that means altogether both of these layers sound like this
which is good but a little bit overwhelming so I grouped these two
tracks together to try and make them mesh nicely so on our group's track of
these two layers I added in an EQ a glue compressor to mix these two layers
together and maybe most importantly two instances of sidechaining one tied to
our kick layer and one tied to our snares so all together here's what we
have so far
which is sounding really good so now let's go ahead and add in our layer of
leads our layer leads will sound like this
which is more or less just the same layer duplicated and then slightly
altered so let's go ahead and break that down first we have what I consider to be
the main lead let's remove all the audio effects and break this down from the
beginning this is an instance of Serum emulating what is a staccato violin
pluck if you're curious I replicated this by finding a preset pack called
echo sound works they have this large pack of Serum presets where many of them
are meant to emulate real instruments so in this case I found a very nice string
sound that I was looking for on this layer I added in a plethora of audio
effects but the most notable being some reverb some compression EQ a slight bit
of camel crusher all laid out in succession to create a sound like this
so while I know I kind of glossed over that essentially all you're doing is
really just compressing this sound to brighten it up a little bit bring it out
a slight bit of reverb to give the sound some space and some EQ to isolate the
frequencies that you want now the rest of the layers in this are just the same
thing almost duplicated maybe just audio effects slightly altered
which you saw as I jumped back and forth there is almost identical just eq'd so
there's less low-end it's just the higher end and it's a slight bit more
wet it has more reverb so this is to make the lead sound more airy and
spacious I also have this layer of leads
again for the same exact concept and finally I do have this layer of leads
which is slightly different this is almost an emulated brass sound same
thing is with my bass I grouped all my leads together and add it in some audio
effects to make them play well together I have a glue compressor for the same
reasons as before I have an EQ to cut off the low ends this is where my bass
will shine through and again the same two instances of side-chaining one to my
kick and one to my snares and they're slightly tinkered with so that they work
differently on my lair leaves rather than on my face but the same concept is
there so again one more time all of my leads sound like this and lastly I do
have one more notable layer which is just a layer of white noise this is just
made in Ableton by adding in an analog instrument drag it on top and turning
the shape of my oscillators into this Wiggly Snakey Boy this just leaves me
with static white noise
I added an EQ on top of this to isolate the very very very high ends I don't
want anything below to get muddled in with the rest of my song so what this
does is fill in a range of frequencies in your track that you don't actively
pick up on but you'll notice if it's taken away if it's not there something
doesn't quite feel right so let's play what we have together without the white
noise and then halfway through let's turn it on and see if we can tell a
difference
and there you have it for the most part that is how you recreate Happier now
what I went ahead and did is use this as inspiration and turned this into my own
track something about going through layer by layer creating everything
trying to mirror the sound design really sparked something in my mind that I then
went ahead and went off on a tangent and created so you can tell here in the same
exact Ableton session I have this layer here which is happier and then I have
what is a seemingly identical layer over here but in fact this is the basis the
foundation of my new track Ecstatic but the point is here's what I used as
inspiration to turn into a full-length track of my own
first things first I kept my bpm secondly I changed keys I changed my
scale to I believe a sharp minor you can tell from my bassline I have a similar
layout but I rewrote the melody one in my new key and two I think I changed
some of the pattern yes slightly you can tell the highlighted notes for example
are Happier and what's not highlighted is my version for Ecstatic so you can
tell there's similarities obviously there's inspiration of course however
it's different enough of its own and I think a later went on to add in some
glide for example that's not quite shown here but you get the point
delete melody so this then is the project for ecstatic one of the first
things you may notice is I actually have Marshmello and Bastille Happier right
here as a reference track as again I was using this as inspiration I was basing
the feel of the song off of this track so then in this project here's my
expanded version of the Happier drop
the main differences here being there's actually more significant effects in
this case risers and downfalls to add in the transitions
and one of the most important layers is this group of backup vocals now if you
listen to happier very closely you can tell there's background vocals going on
in the track and I didn't emulate that in my recreation
however for Ecstatic I tried to make something similar so I do have this
layer of backup vocals going on which is just heavily modified and processed
versions of me going "ooooOOoOooh" and if you listen to the track again you can definitely
hear this in the mix
and from there when I had a chorus that I liked and I could work with I just
expanded and turned this into a track of my own
again using Happier as a reference for song structure at first it was just
meant to be a replica a copy of an already existing song but then at some
point it evolved into a form of its own and again one last shameless
self-promotion if you'd like you can click the links in the description below
to go check out the full version for yourself and maybe get a feel for how
this entire process evolved over time starting from Happier and turning into
Ecstatic - so that'll do it I hope you guys learned something maybe this could
be some inspiration your own I appreciate you watching and I will see
you in the next one (and go check out Ecstatic okay bye)