Canadian-born producer and visual artist FISE has built his reputation on combining heavy, experimental club tracks with cutting-edge 3D visuals. His latest single, NEED 2 KNOW, pushes that vision further, channeling darker atmospheres, distorted basslines, and relentless percussion into one of his most intense releases yet.
Out now on Rezz’s HypnoVizion label, the track embodies the label’s ethos of pushing forward-thinking club music that hits as hard live as it does in headphones.
In this edition of How It Was Made, FISE takes us inside the process behind NEED 2 KNOW. From his go-to synths and favorite distortions to how he flips Serum into a full track-building toolkit, he breaks down the techniques that shaped the single.
Serum
Serum is my go to for pretty much everything. Literally my Swiss Army knife for anything from basses, to synths, to subs to kicks, and snares. I think most people are probably pretty familiar with Serum, but if you aren’t, it’s a powerhouse synth plugin but also comes with a FX only plugin which makes the whole tool even more powerful. It’s one of those if you’re stuck on a deserted island type plugins that you can basically make an entire track with if you really wanted to.
My approach for basses is usually rendering the audio out of Serum pretty quick into the process and then playing with it with post processing and the Ableton warp modes. The actual sound straight out of the synth usually sounds pretty weak and thin without any processing. I’ve found that simple wave shapes with warp mode animations and misc filters will give the best results. Simplicity is key in this stage.
I recommend trying to use Serum in stages. Meaning one Serum for the base sound, and then render that out of the synth and then using a Serum FX to alter it, rendering again, and then stretching using Ableton’s warp modes and then doing more Serum FX or another plugin. But really trying to get many different sounds from the same sound can allow you to create a mini sample pack for your current track that work well together.
FabFilter Pro L2
If I had to pick another plugin I just cannot live without, I’d say it would need to be Pro L2 by FabFilter. It’s just a limiter but I really like the way it will glue things together. It’s very clean and I’ve gotten too used to it that if I didn’t have it at an easy reach it would bug me.
I don’t use it as most probably mainly use it which is on the master. I’ll use it on buses like the drum group or bass group to glue elements together and hit high loudness. Sometimes I’ll even use it on single channels for some dynamic control. Although, obviously you don’t want to do this for everything in your track but when using it on specific groups just for that extra glue between a group of elements makes a massive difference.
I’ll use it with pretty short lookahead times between 0 and 2ms and not so fast attacks to keep those snaps prominent. For release you have to play it with, I’ll have it compress for whatever is the longest in that group. For example if it’s on the drum bus I’ll have it compress for the length of the kick or the snare depending on the song.
LePhonk
Another plugin I’ve been using a lot which was recommended by a good friend, X1-Y2 is LePhonk. It’s a free distortion plugin that can completely transform whatever sound you’re working on. I’ll use it for basses, subs, kicks, claps, anything that needs distortion really. It’s not really a non-replaceable tool but it does combine multiple tools together.
It uses a combination of different distortion algorithms and layered OTTs. Making it a super easy to get crazy sounding basses with just a few clicks. I usually use it in combination with the simple Serum trick I was talking about before to get thick sounding basses.
One thing I have noticed though is sometimes you might be better off EQing out the sub afterwards and layering a cleaner sub on top because it can mess it up. So I’d recommend doing your sound in Serum, or whatever synth of choice and then adding this right after and playing with the different distortion modes and I like to sometimes play with the amount of layered OTTs (you can go up to 5). It really is a beastie little plugin, big bonus that it’s free.
Quick Fire Tips
This might sound weird but I see bass music production almost like a lego set without instructions. Where I’ll make a bunch of sounds and then the key is figuring out where the best place for all the pieces to go are.
Get that first 4-8 bar loop going and then create a bunch of variations of it. Sometimes you’ll find a better main idea or other times you might just create enough variation for the second part of a drop.
When I’m stuck on ideas and things feel stagnant, I’ll do a lot of rapid fire rounds of not spending more than an hour on one idea. And just break out of that creative block by essentially flushing out the bad and at one point it just clicks and you feel back on track.
The post How It Was Made: FISE – NEED 2 KNOW (HypnoVizion + Bass Music) appeared first on Magnetic Magazine.