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3. Embellishments

1

Goths have always harboured lofty aspirations, exemplified by the use of (pseudo) symphonic flourishes and (faux) orchestral embellishments. String pads are a staple. We can add the same sort of thing to our own arrangement by bringing up an instance of the edition of PolyKB II from Xils Lab. 2

We can find a suitable string sound by opening the menu in the upper-left (where it says -Init-) and using the resulting menu to open the Strings submenu, then All, where we find the patch called STR Sustenuto Pad CD. We’ll keep it simple, following the root notes already established by our other pad. 3

Fancy some spooky guitar sounds? The best goth guitarists used the instrument as a source of sound effects as much as anything else. We’ll loop our existing clips to extend them and record two tracks of pick slides and noises to use as accents. If you have no guitar, you can import our clips. 4

Let’s mute our Guitar FX tracks for now. We’ll nudge all of our tracks forward a couple of bars to make room for the intro. We’ve hauled out one of Bauhaus guitarist Daniel Ash’s favourite tools, the E-bow for some texture. We’ve tracked through a distorted amp and delay pedal.