The team at Slate sent me their All Access Pass to try out. Slate plugins
are very highly regarded for their superior quality. The All Access Pass has
a bunch of mixing plugins, reverbs, and effects - mostly mixing stuff. But they
just added new plugins to their bundle including ANA 2 and Kilohearts. ANA 2
is a powerful plug-in which has quite a few unique features. So today I'm gonna
take you on a quick tour and show you how I use it
in the beat that you're hearing right now. ANA 2 may be familiar to some
of you but Slate has added some new presets and chord progressions which
make my song creation easier and faster. I'll show you what I mean.
I'm going to start by loading up a new preset from the Slate Digital presets. This one I
really like here. it's called Oberheim Waves.
all right so let's talk about the interface a little bit you've got three
oscillators here - wavetable oscillators. and it's easy to just choose some from
some of the presets here. for each one of them you can cycle through the different
oscillators here or up top here as well and just select something you can just
browse from what's already included. you can change the phase here, the pulse
width, some typical controls for the oscillators. change your oscillator mix
down at the bottom. you can just solo the first oscillator. let's hear that third
one. now you'll notice that you've got three more oscillator faders here. what
are those for? Well over on the right side up here you've got oscillator four
five and six. and these are sample oscillators and you can do the same
thing here you can choose from the samples included with ANA 2 let's just
try Juno noise so now we've added another oscillator to this sound.
pretty cool right? I love these warm sounds. but a really cool thing is you
can also just drag in your own samples from your sample library. so I've got a
bunch of samples here. I've got some nice vocal chops. I'm gonna drag in one of
those. so we can just drag this .alright so now I've got that sample loaded up
and here's what that sounds like. you can adjust the loop or you can just drag
this over. I'll choose that as a loop and that's the start. we'll add an X-Fade in
there as well let's choose that. let's see what that sounds like. all right that
sounds pretty cool. but I'm gonna lower the octave so we can play the whole
thing a little higher.
really cool right? I've just added one sample but you can add two more in
addition to this. In the next row you've got your typical filters
so you've got cut-off, resonance, your envelope and drive over here. you've got
two filters to choose from and then you've got your filter envelope
adjustments here. your amp envelope and your mod. now the one on the right here
is called G-Envelop. This is kind of cool because you can actually open this
up and you can start creating your own unique envelope here. all right I'm going
to just load a basic shape - haha frown I love the name of that. and now let's see
the mod destination I'm actually gonna choose sampler 4 pan and let's see
what this does.
Wow we're already creating this width and movement in here. it's pretty cool.
Of course you can just modify this however you feel like. check it out!
so at the bottom you've got macro controls and EQ and then you've got your
LFOs on the right side. Pretty standard stuff but things get really interesting
over here in the middle. you've got EQ, you've got your mod matrix, insert
effects. there's reverb and delays, distortion,
modulation, dynamics - tons of effects included too. Alright let's just try
a few other presets that are new. House Grand. Lo-fi piano.
Rainy Days.
this is a really cool preset because it actually makes use of the sampler and
the ambiance noise rain. so you'll see that you have different ambiance that
you can add. we can change this to water. I like the bamboo chime. so cool!
now with this Geetar preset that we've chosen now I'm going to show you a
really cool feature. I'm gonna turn strum on and now I'm going to show you how you
can strum this same chord with the mod wheel on your keyboard! very cool !you
know if there's one thing negative I can say about ANA 2 its that some of the
coolest unique features are hidden in that middle section. in fact some of the
controls that I've been using quite often even like the oscillator mixer, you
got to take a couple clicks to actually get to it. I mean I guess you can't put
everything on the front interface and anyway...
one of my favorite features is CMD which stands for Chord memory device, you can
use this feature to program your own chords to single notes but Slate has
added their own chord progressions to get you started. you've got a bunch of
different sets for different genres but I chose for this song the Future Bass
progression that's included with the Slate bundle. alright so I'm gonna click
on CMD and I'm just gonna choose a preset now. you can build in your own
chords in here but I'm just gonna choose one of the really cool presets that are
included with Slate. all right here's Future Bass. now when I
press one finger here it's actually playing these chord progressions.
Wow doesn't that sound cool? check out these chords!
I love chord sets like these that get you started on a song really fast. I
really based this beat on this chord progression alone and then added a few
other ANA 2 presets. check it out! so for the bass line
I chose Moogey. so that's what the preset sounds like but I actually added the
arpeggiator for this one. I actually chose one of the presets that shows a
standard bass. I just got rid of a few notes that I didn't want in my bass line.
you can add some modulation in here and here I'm gonna just draw it in. I'm gonna
route this over to the filter 1 frequency. let's do this instead. so now
with the chords and the bass line.
the next thing I added were these guitar plucks.
and here again all I did is just add this arpeggiator. alright so check it out
with the chords and the bassline. so for the next track I chose - it's not a lead -
sound. I labeled it lead here but it's really
more like a keys sound. so here's what that sounds like, there's a chorus
ping-pong delay and a plate on it. you see here's what it sounds like with the
chords bass guitar plucks and this piano sound.
now bringing in the drums.
so lastly I threw in some cool Slate mixing plugins into the mix. reverb on
the piano and muted guitars and a tape machine on the master. I'll put a link to
Slate in the description of this video. if you liked this video hit the like
button and the subscribe button below. if you have any questions leave them in the
comments. keep making the music that you love and I will see you guys later!