Here's we learn how to make in this video:
Hello there my inspirations my name is InspirAspir and in this video I wanted
to walk you through how you can make a Tropical House inspired track like you
heard in the beginning of this video now quick disclaimer I'd like to throw out
there this is just my personal take on the genre the point of this video is
just to be used as a resource for you as I go through and dissect this track
layer by layer and really just see the breakdown of what makes this song sound
the way it does real quick I'd like to give a shout out to Skillshare for
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later at the end of this video but for now let's get into making this Tropical
House style track first things first in order to make this Tropical House
style drop I set my BPM to 115 now I'd like to cover my layer of percussion
this is what really drives the beat of this drop fairly straightforward but
let's break this down to make this I simply laid out a few samples that I
found you can find kick samples pretty much anywhere I stacked my samples on
top of each other and I arranged them so they hit every quarter bar and then on
top of that in terms of audio effects again I'm going simple here I'm really
just aiming for high level stuff I added a glue compressor to bind these two
samples together and then one of Ableton's default kick EQ's just to give
a little boost in the low ends and also some flavor in the higher frequencies
next we have our layer of claps so I went and I found these samples and then
arranged them in the following pattern and then yes as you can see here at the
end I also checked on one more sample for a little bit of variety in terms of
audio effects I put on a stereo finalizer just to add a little bit of
stereo width and EQ to boost some high frequencies and the tiniest bit of
compression so then here's what this layer sounds like when combined with our
previous layer of kicks next I threw a layer of high hats into the mix in my
case I used three different samples one right here which is playing at the same
time as a layer of kicks and then on our offbeat I threw on two more samples of
hi-hat which all together by themselves sound like this so then now all together
our layer of percussion sounds like what we heard at the beginning which as a
reminder one more piece I forgot to mention that you may have caught when I
played that back we do have one more layer on top of everything which is a
reversed kick sample if I remember correctly I think this is actually the
same exact kick sample as our layer of kicks and then just reversed just to add
a little bit of flow to our beat but only every now and then I use it
sparingly so that's sounding pretty good now let's move on to our layer of chords
in this case here's what my layer of chords sound like in this tropical house
style drop
to make this I started by writing my chord progression then I went to
focusing on the rhythm of the chords and I arranged them in the following pattern
which I really liked when played side by side with my layer of percussion from
here I went to stacking multiple layers on top of each other this layer as you
can already tell is a layer of piano which has some significant processing on
top of it another layer I tacked on using this same exact chord progression
was this layer of staccato strings
finally I also tacked on one more layer I then grouped these layers together put
on some glue compression EQ in what have you in addition to some side chaining to
our layer of kicks this allows our percussion to shine through the mix a
little bit better now altogether our layer of chords and percussion sound
like this
for reference if you were to remove the side-chaining on the cords all together
now that's sounding pretty good but it can use a little bit more so let's go
ahead and move into our layer of base our layer of base provides the punchy
powerful feeling of this track in this case I have three layers of base which
all together sound like this which is the same exact MIDI arrangement as our
layer of chords just - the notes on top in this case we're just grabbing the
root note the tonic this does a few things one it keeps the music theory
that I want so everything's still in key and to our base is now actually
triggering at the same rhythm as our layer of chords meaning everything will
play well together so now let's go through our layer of bass first I have
my layer of sub bass this is pretty subtle you might not be able to hear
this if you're not listening with headphones but this is the rumble of my
layer of bass now that's pretty simple you won't go too far with just a sub
bass so let's throw one more layer on top of that in this case I have this
layer of bass what I called the mids now this is the driving force of the bass I
think this is the sound you mostly hear when listening to the base layers
isolated but we can make everything just a little bit nicer by adding even a
third layer of bass on top of everything
this just adds a little bit of color on top of our whole bass group now in terms
of audio effects I'd recommend on your sub bass you put on an EQ to isolate
only the low low low frequencies maybe say anything below a hundred Hertz
similarly you're gonna want to make your sub bass in mono sound and easy way to
do this in Ableton is drag on a utility audio effect and click this button to
toggle mono and altogether my layer of bass chords
and percussions sound like this together
but now let's go one step further and throw on our layer of leads altogether
here's what my layer of leads sound like
now I won't go through every layer that I have here there's a good bit to go
through however I will try to go through high level and call out the layers I
think are most important to point out for example here I have a group that I
called synths I suppose these are my plucky vocally xylophone sounds cool I
also have a category here called flutes these are virtual synthetic flutes that
are meant to emulate someone playing the instrument and there you go for the
leads again I know it was very fast rapid-fire but hopefully that gives you
a general picture on something you're shooting for here so now my layer of
leads bass chords and percussion
which is sounding good I'm liking this so far but it does feel like there's
something missing there's a little bit we can throw in to fill this out a
little bit more so two more layers I'd like to call out one of them being a
layer of Arps this is an arpeggiator that's sifting through our chord
progression which granted is a little too much I think it needs to be toned
down ever so slightly so to make this a little bit more subtle I tacked on this
big processing rack which essentially muffles the sound adding a good bit of
reverb and echo so now this is one of those layers that when everything is
playing in the whole mix you can't quite pick it out unless you know it's there
then once it's taken out something doesn't quite feel right now one more
piece that I went to throwing into this drop was a layer of miscellaneous sound
effects these are audio samples that really fill out the missing frequencies
in this drop this includes a layer of crowd cheering some static white noise
and some big big fills now these are super important because I think this
gives the tropical house feel that we're also looking for including this really
big snap a layer of chimes and some other fills such as this snap wall and
this fill right here so altogether we have this big group of sound effects
that's sidechain to our layer of percussion that collectively sounds like
this
so let's play our track without this group of sound effects and then turn it
on and see what it contributes and adds to this drop so let's turn it on
and off
and then on again
and there you have it that's how you make a tropical house ich inspired drop
in Ableton Live again my goal is simply to lay it out there for you to use as a
resource maybe to inspire you to make something of the sort now if you want to
keep the ball rolling and continue to learn more about music production
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for watching and as always I'll see you in the next video bye