Century Classic djlace original house mix

via Lace Dj on The MATRIXSYNTH Lounge

"Classic bigroom house track using a Roland TR-909, Roland TR-808, Roland TR-707, Sequential Circuits TOM, Kawai K3, Korg M3r, Moog Micromoog and a Sequential Circuits Pro one. Mixed at Canmarc on a Tascam DM4800, TC electronics reverb, Intersound Spring.

The track started out as a test of the recently arrived Kawai K3. We've been looking for this synth for a while and it did not disappoint.
The K3 is a hybrid analog/digital synth. It has digital wavetable oscillators, yet the whole back end of the synth's sound making architecture, filters envelopes & LFOs, is analog. This gives it a less perfect tonal shaping with more noise and random harmonics. This is nice. In this track there is a big "u2" style tempo delay on the Kawai chord line, which gives it the old school techno feel and nice tones in the delay that create complementing melodies.

The tr909 was used for kick, clap and open hat. The kick was recorded 3 times and squished with an ssl bus compressor to bring the tone out. A bit of notch at around 200hz took the knock out and gave it room for the bass line to come through in the middle of the mix.. The hat was gated to close with a bit of swing. The crunchy sound of the open hat is inherent to the 909. When the instruments are detuned from their original pitches, The original 909 has nowhere near the top end clarity that you hear in most 909 samples libraries.

The XOXbox bassline had a mono delay added and was lightly sidechaned to the kick, so it would not compete too much with the note embedded in the kick on the first beat. It tended to still pop out a bit, even with some notching so the side chain helped. Also The XOXbox is a roland sounding box so it's missing a bit in the mids. It was pushed a bit at 600hz to give it a bit of honk that would trigger it's delay a bit more, carrying the bass note to the next beat. Most Roland gear is like that. It's seems they like the "happy face" eq curve sound.

The 808 was run for it's kick, closed hats, Rim shot, And snare. The Kick drum was compressed at infinity to 1 to get it's tail to last a bit longer. It was reversed in post. The snare is pretty much stock. The rim has a tight room off the TC reverb. The hats are detuned 300 cents down. 808 hats are much brighter than the 909s, And they have a great crunch that doesn't lose too much brightness if you pitch down the recording. Always a nice thing to do if you want your hats to get a little sloppy and get that "sha sha" sound. They are also sidechained to the kick. Only a bit, just enough to create small volume variations that ride above and below the mix masking point.

The Sequential TOM was used for the metal drums that play as a background rythm in the main beat loop, and the metal drums and bongos that swing out the first break. They were played & recorded live by jamming & banging on the drum pads with the track in loop mode until a couple rythm ideas stuck out. The TOM latin percussion card is great for adding percussion lines that sound like old samples. It's all 8bit samples that gain all sorts of VInyl like artifacts when tuned away from the basic sample pitch. They also have a lot of lo-fi ring. So with a bit a of plate like reverb added, you can get that "sampled off a record" sound.

The m3r (Korg m1 in a rack form) was used for the uber classic Korg M1 piano sound heard in the break. It starts out stock and gets filtered out of existence by the time the song drops back in full. After trying a few other machines, It seemed the only thing that could do the classic house piano & sampled string held high note effect so prevalent in 90s techno & house was the original machine itself. Go figure. :)

As usual the intersound spring reverb was used. The eq on it really makes it sound old school cool. It this track it used mildly the accentuate the explosion kicks in the break. Coupled with a gate, it's tail can break up like a digital effect, yet retain a lot of mud. This puts it in the desirable, "not sure what kind of verb that was..." category. Great for adding details to a mix.

Enjoy!
Lace"