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4. Adding staccato house chords to create groove

1 At this point, we’ll start adding extra elements to our loop. We can then use these to develop an exciting arrangement. Although TAL-NoiseMaker is a two oscillator synth, we’re going to take advantage of its sub oscillator to create a three-oscillator patch, with each independently tuned to create a Chicago house-style minor triad.

2 Add an instance of TAL-NoiseMaker on a new MIDI track, then turn Oscillator 1 up to -8dB and Oscillator 2 to max, leaving both as Saw waves. The Sub Oscillator, which is hardcoded as a pulse wave at -24 semitones (two octaves), will be used as the root note of the chord. Set the Oscillator 1’s Tune to -21, and Oscillator 2’s Tune to -17 to create a minor chord.

3 For a tighter amplitude envelope, we bring the ADSR’s Sustain to 0, Decay to 0.46, and Release to 0.45. For a staccato attack, we set the Filter’s Cutoff to 0.4, Resonance to 0.3 and Contour to 1 (so that the filter envelope has maximum effect). Next, we set the Filter Envelope’s Attack to 0.07, Decay to 0.13, Sustain to 0.21 and its Release to 0.17.

4 One of the charming qualities of analogue equipment are physical imperfections of real circuitry – no two notes will sound exactly the same. Let’s add subtle analogue-style imperfection using unsynced Filter Cutoff LFO modulation. Set LFO 2’s destination to the Filter, with its Rate at 0.65Hz and

Amount at 0.03. Now play notes: you can hear very subtle differences in timbre with each note.

5 To improve the playability of this patch, crank up Voices to 6, allowing notes to overlap. We then open the

Control panel and set the Volume and Cutoff (to velocity) sliders both to 0.3 – this means that the harder a note is played, the louder and brighter it will be. We record a C4 stab on the final offbeat of each bar to add excitement and groove.

6 Lastly, we’ll add effects for extra texture and width. Load a TAL-Chorus-LX and a Melda MPhaser, setting the phaser’s

Dry/Wet to 25%, and the Rate to 0.7Hz. We load a Softube Saturation Knob next, cranked to around 40% for crunch. DDMF’s IIEQ Pro CM then removes unnecessary low end from the signal. Lastly, we pipe around -10dB of the sound to the reverb send.