Our weekly production challenges are a great way to exercise your creativity and find inspiration in the studio!
We host weekly production challenges on our Discord server to help producers break out of creative ruts and find inspiration in the studio! (Oh, and you can win production packs as well!)
For week two, we asked all of our challengers to create a buildup and drop using a Melodic Loop from our pack Virtual for Serum!
Here’s the sample that our competitors started with, though they were free to modify and transform the sample as needed as well as use other samples and presets in their entries as well.
We gave our competitors two days to create their entries, and we were very pleased with the results!
Ultimately, it would be Raz who would snag this week’s title and prize!
Following the lead from our week one winner, Raz agreed to break down his entry so that others might learn a bit about his approach!
Here’s Raz’ winning entry, continue reading below to hear how he went about creating it!
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Yo, it’s Raz!
Firstly, I’d like to thank Alan for having me. I had a lot of fun with this challenge and I learned a lot!
Now, onto the cool stuff.
My goal is to bring a bit of happiness to everyone’s day through music! I’m here to show you a couple ways I go about doing that. So with that said, let’s get into it!
Firstly, I was able to get that super colorful bass by layering a bunch of awesome sounds, one of which was the sample! The saw stack in the sample was actually resampled and reshaped into the bass’ shape! That gives it a lot of musicality, especially when vocoded to another bass!
I ended up layering it with a couple other tonal layers, and a heavier bass below that. The main layer, that holds its position, was designed to give the listener something to hold onto while everything else changes! It was made by layering a 4 octave square stack and applying a ton of roomy reverb, then recording and resampling it!
The lower melodic sound was actually a sound I made in serum by sending 2 four octave sines through a peak filter (key tracked), and then adding a bunch of effects including distortion, chorus, eq, and compression! I then recorded a few samples and pitched them in different octaves to give it a very cool feeling.
Lastly, below everything else, there is a low octave bass playing its own melody, which I think really ties everything together, it’s a simple saw with effects, but hey, nothing wrong with simplifying sound design!
Now that the main sound is out of the way, we can get to the drums! For this project, I used a very special Black Lotus Kick from Horizon Dubstep Drums! The transients on this kick are next level! I layered two snares together, a BLA snare from the same pack, and a Modestep snare used in his song Nothing with Virtual Riot! After that, I kept it simple with an off beat hat and a background shout to give it an extra bit of hype.
Tying it all together, you get a really fun way to make some melodic bass music, all inspired by the sample provided!
Once again, I’d really like Alan for hosting the contest and for everyone who voted for me! I hope to continue to share music and make the world a bit brighter!
-Raz
Meet Raz!
Raz is an American music producer and graphic designer known for his infectious energy and Fox Stevenson Serum skin! Check him out!
Wrap Up
Thank you Raz for providing this write up!
We hope that it helps you in your productions and encourages you to join in our weekly challenges!
The challenges are open to producers of all skill levels and genres and can help you generate new ideas, find inspiration in the studio, and learn right alongside other producers!
Thanks for reading!
-Team Black Lotus Audio
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