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Essential noise layering

1 Back in the day, producers were desperate to remove the ever-present noise outputted by analogue equipment, but nowadays the lack of it can expose a sound as overly pristine and ‘digital’. The solution? Blend analogue hiss, hum or noise signals (or all of the above) alongside your shiniest sounds to fake an analogue aesthetic! We’ll start with this digital-sounding track.

2 This technique isn’t rocket science: drop a sample of noise onto an audio track, load the noise sample into a sampler for MIDI playback, or insert a dedicated noise-outputting plugin on a track (see to the right for three of our faves). Use the track’s volume fader to mix the noise in to taste – find the point where it’s not too overpowering in the mix, but is missed when muted.

3 A consistent stream of noise can sound jarring, so help your noise interact with drums and rhythmic material. In this example, the peaks of the main drum beat are triggering subtle sidechain compression over the noise, giving it gentle movement. For cohesion, route the channel into your drum bus, so it gets processed with the rest of the beats.

4 There’s just something about the warm, dusty sound of a sample ripped from vinyl! To make this clap sound like it’s been lifted from a record, we use the clap’s MIDI note to trigger a vinyl crackle sample layer. The rhythms within pops and clicks can add flavour to a groove, so move the sample start point around until you find the perfect snippet of skip.

5 As we’ve mentioned, different types of noise used to build up and compound due to the combined analogue signals and circuits in an all-hardware studio. So, for a truly analogue-sounding mix, pile up different types of noise signals on various channels. We’ve added a hum signal into the mix using iZotope Vinyl.

6 Here’s a riff from our Bazille CM synth, and an analogue hiss signal from AudioThing VinylStrip. A gate plugin is loaded on the hiss channel, and the riff signal is fed into the gate’s sidechain input. The gate quickly opens over riff transients, adding tiny bursts of noise at the start of each note, ‘ageing’ the modern sound.