The Bass That Was Hiding in a Preset Slot: Why Lately Bass Defined Classic House
Lately Bass was a factory preset on a cheap FM synth, and it ended up on countless house records. Here is why that FM bass cuts through a mix like nothing else.
You Do Not Need to Know Theory. You Need the Chords That Already Sound Like House.
Most house chords come from a small, familiar set of voicings. Here is why a MIDI and chord pack gets you there faster than learning theory from scratch.
The Juno-106 Was Never the Best Synth in the Room. That Is Exactly Why It Defined House.
The Juno-106 was cheap, a bit noisy, and everywhere. That ubiquity is why its pads and bass carry so much emotional weight in house music, and why the sound still lands today.
The Records You Love Were Built on a Handful of Machines. Here They All Are.
Classic house was built on a small set of affordable machines, used everywhere until they became the genre. Here is the whole palette, multi-sampled for Serum 2.
A Preset Should Be a Finished Sound, Not a Starting Point
A preset's real value is the sound design baked into it: the macro mappings, the effect chains, and the Flex macro. Here is what went into Tech House Essentials.
VCA Groups in Ableton Live: Why They Don't Exist and What We Built Instead
Pull a group fader in Ableton and the balance shifts. On Pro Tools, Cubase, and Reaper it doesn't, because those DAWs have something Live is still missing. Here's what we found when we tried to bui...