Overdrive over Distortion

“I tend to avoid using heavy distortion on my mids, like with Reese basses etc. I try more to use overdrive and soft clipping (purposely running things red) to get that edge on sounds than straight-up distortion plugins. Although it is a form of distortion, not all distortion is soft clipping. And in my experience that gets a more gnarly and tearing sound with nicer harmonics and it gives better control over what is happening. But it is quite subjective!”

Slap modulators on everything!

“If possible when programming a synth patch, and the synth allows it, try to slap modulators (LFOs, envelopes, macros) on some things that you normally wouldn’t and just see what happens. It has created some really happy accidents for me when I accidentally dragged something on the wrong parameter and all of a sudden the whole patch changed to something and that sounded sick! Break the rules about what you think are bad or useless things to do. Make your own.”

Crisp up your cymbals

“Sometimes your drums need that extra bit of pressure or crispiness. And a good way to do that is to put some rides through a bitcrusher or ringmod; you can really get some nice and crispy-sounding rides that will slide right into your mix and add some extra harmonics that wouldn’t have been there before but fill everything up nicely. Tweak them a bit to find the sweet spot. It works like a charm.”