>Step by step

1. Rhythm and backing

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Over the next few pages, we’ll show you how easy it is to create your own gothic darkwave track using only the software and sounds included with this issue of and your DAW. We’ll use Tracktion’s Waveform Free, which can be downloaded from www.tracktion.com/ products/waveform-free. We’ll start with a new project, with a tempo of 100bpm. 2

The humble drum machine powered many a doomy ditty. Taking a cue from creepy classics of the sort made by Tones On Tail, we’ll use a preset rhythm from a lo-fi model, the Korg Mini Pops 3 – or more specifically, a re-badged version from Korg’s US distributor during the 70s, Univox, the SR-55. This old cheesebox will give us a superbly spooky atmosphere. 3

The SR-55 is a preset-only machine meant to accompany an organist or other instrumentalist. There are a few simple rock patterns, with the usual ballroom beats one finds on such machines. We’ve pushed a pair of pattern selection buttons simultaneously in order to merge two patterns. Find this in the tutorial’s folder (Univox_100BPM.WAV) 4

Name the track. You’ll need to loop your clip – in Waveform, by clicking the little L button in the clip header at the top of the clip. It will automatically loop and create a duplicate of itself. Go ahead and loop the clip across a full eight bars. Talking of looping: select these eight bars and activate your DAW’s looped playback function to cycle this section for now. 5

Normally, we’d move to the bass track now, but we want to establish a suitably moody atmosphere, so we’ll lay down a sombre pad with Dune CM. Call it up, click Show All next to Category and then select Pads. The default patch (Atomspheric RL) is exactly what we need. Played in the lower octaves, it gives a dense, dark, underpinning for our tune. 6

Ensuring our count-in click is activated, we’ll play single, sustained

F# notes in the key of minor. If you aren’t comfortable playing them by hand, copy what we’ve done, as seen in the screenshot above. Use the pencil tool to draw the notes into the piano roll. In Waveform Free, access this from within the clip, or expanded for a detailed view.

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Our pad is low enough to provide most of the bottom end for our tune, so rather than adding a typical bass riff, we’ll work with a simple sequenced bass, à la Clan of Xymox. Instantiate Alpha CM and dial up the preset called BAS-Velocity1TEG. Step-enter some rapid fire repeating 16th notes over every other bar, following the bass riff, but an octave higher. 8

Argh! Our Alpha CM patch is eating too much of the sonic space. We can start by cranking the AMP envelope’s Sustain knob all the way down, and setting its Decay knob to slightly above the 9pm position. This shortens the length of each note, letting things breathe. We’ll also crank the Filter Cutoff fully down, and the Filter envelope’s decay nearly so. 9

The sequences are a bit too static. Our sound is velocity sensitive, so we can take advantage of that to add dynamic interest. We’ll open our clip’s Velocity lane, where we can see that each note’s level is slamming the top. We’ll go in and adjust them ever so slightly for more sonic variety. Alpha CM’s filter cutoff is tied to velocity, so it will respond accordingly.