Vince Watson is without doubt a revered veteran of the house music community. In a career spanning three decades, the Glasgow-born and Amsterdam-based producer has released records on some of the most respected labels around: Carl Craig s Planet E, Josh Wink s Ovum and Sven Vath s Cocoon, to name just three. In this exclusive collaboration with Sample Magic, Watson puts his virtuoso musicianship and production skills to work as he takes a journey into house music...
KIT LIST Akai MPC Korg Triton Access Virus Ti2 Polar Novation Supernova 2 Roland System-1 Roland TR-8 Roland DR880 Roland JP8000 Spectrasonics Omnisphere 1.5 Synthogy Ivory 2 U-he Diva Roland SH2 Native Instruments Monark Native Instruments Massive E-Instruments Session Keys Electric R E-Instruments Session Strings Fabfilter Suite 2 Tal U-No-Lx D16 LuSH 101 Lounge Lizard 4 Arturia Jupiter 8V East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orcherstra
PRODUCER TIPS Beats Basslines Synths Keys To program my drums I use an Akai MPC into Ableton Live. It gives me that natural groove when hitting in the patterns that you just can t get from keyboards or generic pads with no velocity sensitivity it helps stop your beats ending up too straight and sterile. I also try and keep the 50Hz region in the kicks free as this is often where the bassline subs are hoovering and you don t want them fighting for the same mix space. Make sure your frequencies are sorted before you start boosting levels or mixing down. With most bass sounds there is a horrid lo-mid range drone that when solo d you can pinpoint where to cut it. It s normally around the 110 150hz region and gives your other melodic sounds like synths and strings so much more space in the mix. Make sure you also removed anything under 25 30Hz and that you ve taken a hi-pass filter to the top end of the bass to give your high-end sounds more room to breath. I tend to use a lot of different synth sounds in my tracks. It could be in the form of layers or also some octave work to spread the dynamic range. Things can easily get sonically cramped so I pay a lot of attention to making sure all the sounds are exactly the way I want them before I move onto the next one. This way I don t end up with a wall of noise and nowhere to start. I also use the delay compensation on individual plugin tracks to give synths a less rigid feel. For an interesting arpeggiotype effect try layering two MIDI parts on top of each other with one of the parts a semitone behind or in front and using a different sound for each part. Piano and Rhodes have, and always will, be an integral part of house music. But getting them to work in your tracks isn t always easy. EQing piano and Rhodes is extremely delicate and difficult in dance music since they spread across the entire dynamic range and the natural hammers can sound really bad if they are not attended to. Don t make the mistake of putting a piano in your music without checking every notes velocity and hammer effect in your mix it can turn a piano track from being muffled and bassy to clear, bright and precise.
CREDITS Collection created by Vince Watson Demos by Vince Watson Audio formatting Henry Brown Executive production Barry McManus SAMPLE MAGIC ONLINE Free sounds, special offers, newsletter, downloads and our online store at: samplemagic.com Other Sample Magic releases you might like > Radio Slave House Nation Vinyl & Tape Drum Hits Analogue Underground Vinyl & Tape Melodic Shots Retro Analogue House SAMPLE MAGIC NETWORK > twitter.com/samplemagic > facebook.com/samplemagic > youtube.com/user/samplemagic Artwork by IWANT Design Limited