Recording and processing FakeID in Ableton Live

Henry uses some classic hardware and a few unusual techniques to get his old school-inspired sound

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The synth lines were created with a Pearl Syncussion SY-1 drum synth – problematic in terms of tuning, as Henry recalls: “Something like one note in four was a quarter-note out of tune, so I had to tune each note by hand. It’s a long process but I like the sound of the analogue stuff!”

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Henry uses outboard processing to give his monosynth lines a bigger sound. “I’ll track send effects to another channel so I can blend them at my leisure. Quite often, if I have a dry signal of a synth I’ll add some stereo stuff to it like a micropitchshifting thing or a chorus. Then I’ll put some space on it, maybe like a small reverb or a plate, depending on what I’m going for.”

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To give his percussion loops a classic, crusty feel Henry resamples them through his E-MU SP-12. “It only has 2.5 second of sampling time, so you record them into the sampler a bit too fast, say five semitones up. Coming back from the SP-12 I’ll pitch it back down. It gives a nice crunchy sound.”

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Preserving the punch of his parts is paramount to Henry, and as such he pays special attention to how he slices sounds in Live: “If I do use warping I’ll use Beat mode set to Transients and set the Transient Loop Mode to Off. Then you can turn down the Transient Envelope and use it as a gate almost. You can use it to shorten the sound, and it’s sick.”

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“When Kah-Lo raps, I like her voice to sound bright and bouncy, so I’ll take the audio of the beat and warp it in Re-pitch mode and take the track down 4bpm or so. Then she raps to that, and I pitch her vocal back up to the original track tempo. That gives her a chipmunk, formant type of deal.”