DJ Lace VS Creed MD - Zeroes on acid

flickr set By lacedj
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Track and details below.

via Lace DJ on
The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

DJ Lace vs Creed MD - Zeroes on acid by lacedj

"This is a classic west coast acid breaks track in the vein of old school records like Richard humpty visions’ “The feeling”, Dj Lace’s “The Future”, DJ Czech’s “I’ll bass you”, and the hot box remix of DJ prettyboy’s “Get on up”. It’s dark, moody and heavy. Perfect for a sweaty breaks jam.

It was created with Ableton Live 8, Roland TR 808, Sequential Circuits TOM, Korg DR-55, Xoxbox, Future Retro Revolution, Korg Poly six, Korg Monopoly. It was mixed on a DM4800 using the onboard TC electronics reverb, and a Fuzz factory guitar pedal set up in an effects send/return chain.

The track was originally recorded as a simple filter jam using the TR-808, the Tom, and the Xoxbox. The 808 kick drum was left at ¾ decay for most of the track and slowly closed at the end. Two more runs of the Xoxbox were recorded to create a total of 3 basslines that mix and match based on how each is modulated. There are no mixer moves on the bass lines other than mutes. The 3 volumes and effects send levels change based on filter and envelope settings of each Xoxbox. One bass line is dry, one has bright hall reverb, one has a swung tempo delay. All of them send some signal to the fuzz factory, which is mixed back in on a separate track for a bit of of top end distortion.

The Xoxbox with the TC reverb is the main lead of the track, and was set up with the effects send in pre-fader mode so the reverb setting could be set first and then bring in the dry sound to fill in after. The heavy top end noise near the end is added naturally by the resonance of the xoxbox filter feeding the reverb.

Although the TR-808 is run in sync, The sequential tom sounds are triggered via midi from Ableton. The kick, snare, hats and claps are used. The machine was recorded in mono to one track, and compressed for a bit more bite. The 808 was also recorded in mono to one track but not compressed. The two drum machines are mixed together dry. The tom track was slightly offset back from the 808 so it feels a little sloppy compared to the 808. It also lets the 808 kick drum point take precedence.

The Korg DR-55 has a modification so it can be triggered via midi. It also has a Korg style analog trigger output which was used to trigger the monopoly’s arpeggiator.

The Monopoly has four oscillators that you can trigger to play one after the other with the arpeggiator. It this case it is controlled by two devices. The Korg DR-55 is used to step the arpeggiator forward and the Future retro revolution is sending the note voltages that play the actual melody. Cross modulation is also used & you can clearly hear the resulting effect on the way the notes sound at the end of the track. The Korg Polysix was used for the string line, It was chosen because it sounds great with the monopoly as they share similar filter architectures, gelling the two synths together in the mix.

The vocal sample was recorded on location in Vancouver during a rainstorm using a zoom H2. It was shelved and compressed to bring up the ambient noise and make it sound like a sample taken from a movie. The zoom was chosen over better shotgun mics to help get a “recorded on location” feel. The filter is just the built filter in Ableton. The vocal filtering is not dramatic so the basic filter did the job fine.

The finished product has a true old school sound giving it an authentic vibe that you could imagine Donald Glaude or dj Czech dropping in a set at a classic Vancouver breaks party back in the 90s. Enjoy.

Lace"