Jack Emery returns to Purified Records with Halo, a three-track EP that cements his ability to fuse orchestral influences with melodic house. Following his 2023 debut Believe and the Fickle Heart EP, this release expands his sonic range with intricate synth work, immersive atmospheres, and a balance of energy and introspection. Supported by Sultan + Shepard, SiriusXM Chill, and festival stages like ULTRA Europe, Halo pushes his evolving sound forward.
A major part of that sound comes down to the tools shaping it.
Diva’s analog warmth anchors the EP’s synth layers, with automation and saturation techniques giving Halo its fluid, evolving textures. Fresh Air adds high-end clarity to the vocals, keeping them airy and expressive without overpowering the mix. We were lucky enough to catch Jack at the right time as he was generous enough to dive super deep into everything he did to work the magic in the studio that brought about this amazing EP.
Now streaming on all platforms, Halo is another step forward for Jack Emery as he continues refining his signature sound.
Diva
Diva is a great plugin for getting analog-sounding synths that work well in many EDM genres. This synth offers similar capabilities to Serum or other popular synths, but sounds a bit warmer even with the initial preset. Some settings I like to adjust or automate are the cutoff, decay, FM, and built-in effects like delay or chorus. Many of the stock presets that come with Diva are good, but it can be helpful to buy third party preset packs for specific sounds.
The main chords in Halo use a Diva patch called ‘LD – North’, which has a nice LFO and has the supporting tone I was looking for in a chord layer underneath the vocal. I automated the frequency cutoff over time to add some interest. I find it’s very important in melodic house to use automation to keep the listener engaged. I used a chorus effect in Diva and also added hall reverb to place the pluck in the right space in the mix, while also breathing some life into this layer with saturator plugins like Oxford Inflator and Black Rooster Audio’s VEQ-5. Always helps to saturate your lead synths to place them front and center.
I’d highly recommend Diva for producing melodic house/techno and deep house as it has a signature warm analog sound and many of the top artists in these genres use it in their tracks. One trick that is common in Lane 8 style tracks especially is automating the decay over time, not just automating the cutoff. By automating the decay, you lengthen the notes and they bleed more into each other rather than always being short and plucky. Spend some time experimenting with stock presets and consider buying third party preset packs for your specific genre.
Fresh Air
Everybody loves free plugins, especially when they provide unique mid and high-end crispness like Fresh Air does. This plugin is super easy to use and most of the time I only adjust one knob (either ‘Mid Air’ or ‘High Air’). This plugin allows you to link the mid and high air effects together for quick saturation, but sometimes I like to separate the two in order to focus only on mid frequency warmth or high end crispness. I really like using this plugin on vocals or synths that need to cut through the mix.
Since Halo features a strong vocal, Fresh Air was the perfect saturator to use to round out the mid and high frequencies. I wanted the vocals to have airiness and emotion, so this plugin was great for what I needed. I didn’t need to go too heavy with the effect as a little can go a long way and Joel’s vocal’s didn’t require much processing to get them sitting just right in the mix.
My typical vocal processing chain always uses some amount of fresh air as I really like the crisp effect it provides. I’d recommend dropping it on your vocal chain and turning the mid/high air knobs up about halfway to hear the full effect, and then backing off and deciding what amount sounds best in the context of the full mix. Try using it on vocals, synths, or even top drums.
Fabfilter Pro-MB
Fabfilter plugins are very popular for good reason, and I love the visual interface their plugins have. Pro-MB is a helpful plugin for multiband compression, and allows you to choose the specific frequency ranges you want to compress or expand instead of affecting all frequencies. The visual layout of this plugin makes it easy to pick out which frequencies you want to compress or expand and you can even apply sidechaining using this plugin.
I used Pro-MB on the main chord LFO synth to get it out of the way of the vocal when the vocal is playing. To do this, I set the plugin to sidechain mode and selected external mode within the plugin. I then put a high shelf filter on this chord layer so that it ducks in the highs where the vocal is cutting through the mix. This is a great trick to use in the final stages of mixing when tracks are nearing completion.
I’d recommend using Pro-MB when you want to balance certain key elements against each other, and you want certain layers to have priority over others. A common example would be a synth compressing against a vocal, or an atmosphere compressing against a lead synth. Try this out in the final stages of mixing for a clean mix.
Ozone 9
Ozone is a suite of different plugin effects that can be added within one instance of the plugin. So you can choose whether you want to focus on the stereo image, saturate some frequencies, or apply a limiter. I love the diversity of the plugin and I use it on every track for stereo imaging (width) and also for mastering.
For Halo, I used Ozone for widening the main LFO chords and widening the vocal. Be careful when widening sounds as they can sometimes become “phasey” and lose power. For this track in particular I wanted to go for an ethereal, lifted feel so making my layers wide was an important step in the process. On the main LFO chords, I set the plugin to stereoize mode and pushed the stereo width and ms settings up pretty aggressively.
I’d recommend trying Ozone out for both stereo imaging and mastering. I do all my mastering in Ozone because it gives me so much freedom in being able to saturate, cut certain frequencies, adjust dynamics, change stereo imaging, and use limiters. For stereo imaging in the mixing stage, just remember to think about how all the layers are sitting in the mix together and keep some in the center and spread others out.
The post How It Was Made: Jack Emery – Halo (Purified Records) appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.