Achieving Garys’ tension-building Shepard tones

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The seemingly ever-rising tones in Ploy’s track Garys provide masses of energy, which works great on the dancefloor. Although effective, it’s a fairly simple technique. “It’s quite easy really,” he tells us.

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“I use the Phased Mistress plugin which is part of the Soundtoys pack,” he explains. “But you can do this with anything that lets you play with resonance and the frequency of that resonance, which is what’s being automated to make the pitch shift.”

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Sam turns the resonance up to full, to create a self-oscillating feedback tone, and removes any modulation. “You can trigger the sound with anything,” he explains, “but I tend to use a kick drum.”

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This creates a constant static tone. Sam uses a little EQ to tame this, and a compressor side-chained to a kick to add movement. “If you want some of the original trigger sound you can adjust the wet/dry but for me I just wanted the tone completely by itself.”

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The sound comes to life when Sam starts automating the pitch of the resonance. He draws in upward modulation curves which creates the propulsive effect used in Garys.

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He finishes the sound off with a touch of chorus and some more EQ tweaks. “It’s quite an effective way of increasing tension,” Sam explains. “You can use it in small amounts, although my idea was to have it rising through the entire tune.”