Epic hooklines à la Bigroom Trance

No question - in Bigroom Trance, EDM & Co. euphoric hooks are a must. They make the festival crowd throw their arms in the air and immediately create a positive mood. The ingredients for this are a fat supersaw lead, paired with gripping harmonies and rousing rhythms. We‘ll show you how to achieve this in just a few steps.

BUILD SUPERSAW BIGROOM LEADS

1 Fat, fatter, Superwave

The freeware synth Superwave P8 provides us with the appropriate supersaw sound á la Roland JP-8000/8080. You can find it in the magazine downloads. After the installation we open the preset Final Countdown and close the attack slider for maximum attack in all filters and amp envelopes. In addition, we pull up both cutoff faders in filter 1 and 2.

2 Detune compression

Now that the highs of the oscillator sound are fully coming through, we make the sound even denser in the Superwave detune section. There we turn the wave 2 and 3 potentiometers up to half and the wave 4 knob up to 75 percent. With this we program the original hook as the basis for our own composition.

3 White noise bite

Copy the MIDI data to another instrument track with a new P8 instance, in which we set osc 1 to white noise for more treble bite. We also use the channel EQ to set a low cut at 850 Hz. Then, to emphasize the noise P8, we lower the channel fader of the other P8 instance by -10.5 dB. Finally, we route both to a group track.

COMPOSING A RHYTHMIC BIGROOM HOOK

1 Emphasis on the one

The golden rule for hooklines is to start on the upbeat if possible, or at least on the first quarter count. In bigroom trance, however, typical hooks usually start on one. The reason: often a reverse reverb riser of the lead sound leads up to the melody start and stops a quarter note before. Afterwards, the hook bangs even harder due to the previous break.

2 Groove as focus

Speaking of which, stay longer on the same note for a melody that is as immersive as possible, e.g. as in the prototype for two bars each. This shifts the creative focus to the rhythm and makes the individual notes more effective. Our tip: First invent an eight-bar harmony scheme from four chords in the MIDI editor of your DAW. Then cut this up into single notes.

3 16th note refinement

After you have found a two-bar groove progression, transfer it to the remaining three chords. Then incorporate fast note repetitions into the melodic progression for refinement. It is best to perform the last quarter of a bar as four sixteenth notes, as in the original. This brings another exciting drive to the hookline.