This is my Knock-out entry for the NGUAC. The goal was to make a track from scratch in just 2 weeks. It could be any genre you like and there was no duration limit. I don’t know how to properly classify the subgenre of this track but I’m going for ‘liquid future chillstep’ lmao. In the forum post for the contest, TaintedLogic asked if we could tell something about our process when making the track as well as listing the sources of any samples you might have used, and that’s what I’m going to do right now. I did most of my sound design with Serum as usual but I was forced to use Sytrus a few times because Serum just takes waaayyy too many resources for my laptop to handle. I started with a simple 4 bar chord progression that felt like it would go well with supersaws and a melodic dubstep kind of vibe. Because supersaws are not really that interesting I tried some new things like supersquares and creating chords from white noise. Normally I keep my supersaws simple but this time I added an LFO to make it stand out more. Because it still sounded a little dull I added some vocal chops which is completely new to me. That’s why the vocal chops I’ve used are from Cymatics’ free sample packs ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Odyssey’. I finished the second drop first and made the ending with the lead slowly fading out. I ran into a problem when trying to create the first drop. Nothing really worked to fit the buildup that I made together with the piano in the breakdown, so I decided to go for a ‘weak drop’. I found that it worked a lot better with the structure and it didn’t come off as a “disappointing” drop. It felt like there was still a lot of energy to break loose before the breakdown, so I decided to put a bit more power into the second half of the first drop. Because of the future garage drums I put in the first drop, I got inspired and finished the breakdown and the second buildup. To help the quiet parts out I added a warmer low supersaw that you can hear in the intro and switched up the chord progression a few times. When creating the intro I thought a foley sample would fit well with the warm chords. I often use a rain sample for those situations, but I thought I would do something else this time. So instead used a ‘City crowd’ sample from Storyblocks which I feel almost has the same energy as a rain sample but fit the tone of my track a lot better. Then transitioning from the intro I made a simple progression slowly introducing the main instruments of the track. As finishing touches, I added a wobbly sustained saw chord in the middle of the second drop. And that was kinda how I went about making this little song :). I hope you guys like it and I hope it does well in the contest :D

Any comments are greatly appreciated! If you enjoyed listening or have some feedback, consider writing one and I will try to respond asap <3

Download / Buy ‘Time’;

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/lazerwing/time

Listen to this track on Youtube;

https://youtu.be/AwQiZ_g7BaI

Background adapted from;

https://foter.com/photo3/nature-cactus-landscape/

My LazerWing pages;

Spotify; https://open.spotify.com/artist/5zHuBdtagJUWXowPLtKwRJ

Deezer; https://www.deezer.com/nl/artist/84242562

Itunes; https://music.apple.com/us/artist/lazerwing/1495594227

Napster; https://us.napster.com/artist/lazerwing

Amazon; https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Lazerwing&i=digital-music&search-type=ss&ref=ntt_srch_drd_B0847CNJ8R

Info;

Key; C# minor

Beats Per Minute; 160,000

Work Time; 17 hours