The arp secrets of Deadmau5

If you listen to some of Deadmau5‘s tracks, his typical arpeggiator leads quickly stand out: beautifully melodic, an evolving theme, and automations that are constantly evolving in exciting ways. We‘ll take a look at how to create these arpeggiator leads and how to make them sound really modern with a few tricks. 1 Arpeggiator pattern

We create a simple arpeggiator pattern by hand in the MIDI editor. We use a Serum instance for this and create the pattern. We spread the notes of the arpeggiator over a scale of three octaves in total. This way we use a much wider frequency spectrum for the arpeggiator than if it only plays within one octave. 1

2 Serum settings

In Serum we set osc 1 to basic shapes and turn the Wt Pos to 4 to get a square wave. We set the filter to Lowpass 12 and turn the Cutoff to 350Hz. We also assign env2 to the Cutoff. We set the Env2 amount to 25, attack to 0.5, Hold to 5, Decay to 15, Sustain to 0% and Release to 15ms. 1

3 Write automations

Now let‘s draw in some automations to give the arpeggiator an interesting progression over 16 bars. We automate the Decay of Env2 and the Resonance of the filter. We also set the warp menu of Osc 1 to PWM to modulate the rectangle width. We also draw an automation curve with it. 1

4 Add saturation

It‘s time to thicken the arpeggiator with some saturation. We load an instance of Saturn and split the frequency band into 3 bands. The crossover frequency is at 570Hz and at 10kHz. The first band gets a Warm Tape with 50% drive, the second band a Warm Tube with 50% drive and the third band a Gentle Saturation with 100% drive. 1

5 Eqing and reverb

We use an EQ to slightly shape and tame the signal. A Lowcut is set at 100Hz (12dB/ oct) and the high frequencies are boosted by 3dB with a Highshelf curve at 2.5kHz. We load the Pro-R to add some reverb. Wet/Dry is set to 30%, decay to 1.75s, the pre-delay to 25ms and Distance to 50%. 1

6 Sidechain pumping

Lastly, we want to add some sidechain pumping. This effect should only be used subtly, so that the arpeggiator gets along better with the kick. To do this, we load an instance of Saturn as the last element in the chain and select the auto sidechain compression 02bM preset. We set the Mix to 50% so that the effect is only subtle.