SourJovis' Music Thread

[SourJovis]

Hello, my name is SourJovis (Bart van Zon).

For over 10 years I've been active on Newgrounds and have been creating music for even longer. I've decided to create a musician's thread to share with you the process of how I make music. Hopefully we can discuss the more general production side rather that individual songs here. Maybe I'll give you some ideas for your workflow, setup and such and you can give me some of your ideas.

I've been making music for a long time now. Maybe most of my life. I will likely continue for the rest of my life. I think I've been steadily improving. By the time I'm 90 years old, I may be making actual acceptable music. I don't see myself as a music performer. I've had keyboard lessons for about 15 years, before I quit about 6 months ago. I still suck at it. I prefer to write music rather than play. Mostly on a computer with software, but I've been collecting more hardware as well over the last 3 years. This is my current studio setup:

The DAW I use is Reason Studios (formerly known as Proppellerhead) Reason 12. I've been using it since version 1, and I don't feel like learning a new DAW. It does everything I want and I like how it lets you craft your own sound in a very old skool and creative way, like how the 19" hardware racks (used to) work. Some people get lost in how unnecessarily complex it works, but I find it helpful how you can see exactly what's going on with all of the audio and cv cable in and outs. Most of my sound nowadays comes from other software vst's and hardware. I've got a lot of large software bundles such as:

>Native Instruments Komplete Collector's Edition 13

>iZotope Everything Bundle

>Arturia V Collection 9, FX Collection 3, and Pigments

>Softube Volume 5 and a few more of their vst's

>KORG Collection

>Soundtoys everything

Some separate plugins such as Liquid Sonics Cinematic Rooms for reverb, Neural DSP Soldano SLO-100 for guitars, some things by Waves, many Kontakt or Sineplayer Libraries from companies such as Orchestral Tools, Spitfire, Cinematic Studio Series, Impact Soundworks, Strezov Sampling, CineSamples, Soundiron and so on.

Hardware I have are:

Arturia Polybrute

Sequential Prophet 5 Desktop Module

Moog Subsequent 37

Yamaha MODX6

Also an Arturia Drumbrute Impact drumvcomputer, Rode NT1 microphone, Motu M2 audio interface, two Adam Audio T7V speakers and a T10S sub and a NI Komplete Kontrol S61 midi controler.

Some people try to convince me to buy more hardware, but even though it looks fancy and all, I don't want to turn into a total hardware snob. Most of what I do still is with software. I prefer the workflow. Especially what mixing is concerned. I believe if you're serious about music production you're better of getting a computer and some software. It's cheaper, faster , easier to understand, etc. Still having some keys or knobs under your fingers can be very inspiring.

For the past 10 years I've been working mostly as a solo artist, making music for animations, games, as well as pop songs. My best work I've collected in a Sour Jovis' Demo EP playlist that I'm constantly trying to improve and add songs to. I will eventually release this as a collection of 6 EPs.

That project got pushed back a bit, because In the past 3 years I've been mostly busy with my robot themed band Botsing, which consists of only 2 people; Wouter, who writes the songs, records the vocals an guitar parts. And me (Bart) who finishes the song by recording the drums, bass, synths mixing and mastering. We've released 2 albums so far. The first self titled album Botsing, and the second one Super Double Botsing.

The most recent song on the second album is this one

Which we appropriately made last year for Robotday2022.

The final song for the album will be released this Thursday February 23rd. Keep an eye out for that one.

After that I intend to make some videos about how I did the sound design for Super Double Botsing. So if you want to know how to create some robotic sounding vocals, guitars, drums, bass, synths, etc you're in for a treat.

Best, SJ

[SourJovis]

Yesterday the final song for the album "Super Double Botsing" got frontpaged. We're very grateful for that. If you've missed it it and you like Japanese 80/90s end credit type songs you can have a listen here:

If you don't like that type of song you can skip it. If you're into a heavier kind of rock sound, there's plenty of that on the rest of the album. With that all of the songs on the album have been frontpaged. (except for Follow You, so we removed it from the album).

One day I will make a few video's about how we've created the sound of the album as a whole. But until then I will give you a detailed analysis of just this song in particular.

The song is about restlessness. The urge to set out. Wouter and I are a huge fan of Japan. We went there together on holiday. We (jokingly) said we started this band to become famous in Japan, so we could return there one day to perform. That's why I had the intention to use traditional Japanese instruments in our songs, but I never got around to do it. This was our last chance.

That's why there is a koto and a shakuhachi in here from a Korg M1 released in 1988. Not a physical one, since I don't own it, but a software version from Korg collection.

The gong is an old sample from the Propellerhead Reason Orkester Soundbank. It's a classic one with a very nice full sound. It sounds too good, so I bitcrushed it to make it sound like it came from an old rompler so it better fits the 80s style of the song.

The Fender Rhodes piano is fake as well. I don't have the money and space to spare for a real Rhodes. It's just a vst by Arturia. It sounds nice though. I like the subtle growl it has, that breaths life into such an otherwise sweet sounding instrument. Very organic.

The digital synth pad you hear is also just a software instrument. I'd like to use my MODX6 for such typically digital synth sounds but never have gotten quite usable sounds out of it. Software is just so much easier to tweak and it sounds just as good. This is Arturia Pigments. It's the harmonic engine (additive synthesis), with white noise and bird sounds, a formant filter and a SEM filter.

There's another digital synth at the end of the song. That's an Atari 2600. It's made with a plugin called Chip64 by OchenK. It's the same part I created for the Atari in "All I Hear", because that was the first song I mixed for the first album and this the last one for the second. I thought it would be fitting that the beginning and the end would come together. I don't mean this is the end of Botsing. Just the end of the latest album.

The drum computer during the first halve of the song is of course a Roland TR-808. Another fake since I don't own a real one. Not even a Behringer clone or something. This is just a software imitation by Jackbox. I refuse to get a Roland Cloud subscription until I absolutely have to. I own a real drumcomputer as well. An Arturia Drumbrute Impact. It just doesn't sound as sweet as an 808, with the pleasant rubbery kick, the claves and that sweet, sweet analogue conga sound. Super cheesy... That's why I like it.

The acoustic drums during the second halve is a Yamaha 9000. Fake as well since we don't have a drummer at the moment, and drums are a pain to record anyway. We do write our own drum parts though (no loops). We just use samples to get the sound. That's "Native Instruments - Abbey Road 80s Drummer - Black Kit". I took off all of the effects and processing and mixed it myself. I tried to maintain an 80s feel. This is the same drum kit I use on every other track of the second album. The drum parts were more straight forward on this track than the rest of the album.

The bass is some kind of custom Muckelroy. It's also fake. A sample pack by "Impact Soundworks - Shreddage 3 - Abyss". Wouter tried to record his bass for this album but said it didn't sound right. The programmed drums and bass create a very tight rhythm section that emphasises the robot theme of the band I suppose. I think it sounds good anyway, and that's all that matters. You may not expect this type of bass for the style of the song. I've used it throughout the whole album, so for the sake of consistency I've used it on this track as well. I just kept it cleaner and then added a bunch of chorus to make it sound more woolly. This bass is normally really good for harder rock and metal sounds. Though I've used it for funkier baselines as well, like on Signs and Tracker. I think it's pretty versatile.

So that's it for the "fake" software instruments. All of the rest is "real" hardware.

Wouter wrote and performed the vocals. He wrote the entire song for that matter (I've just changed it a lot).

Wouter also played the acoustic guitars during the first halve of the song. He actually played them throughout but I left them out in the second halve. That was a suggestion Wouter made himself.

Wouter also played the electric guitars. That's a Gretsch G2210 Streamliner Junior Jet Club Gunmetal. The atmospheric guitar effect I routed through a Soldano SLO-100. Yes, a software version once again, since we own 0 physical amps. It's a vst by Neural DSP. They're actually Soldano endorsed, so it's a "real" Soldano (more or less). "Why such a heavy amp for a clean atmospheric sound?" you might ask. Well, it's once again for the sake of consistency. I've used that amp on every track of the album. It sounds great on slick leads played over the chorus and verses. Clean it sounds very nice as well. For the solo guitar part at the end I've used a Marshall Plexi Super Lead 1956 by Softube. They're endorsed by Marshall so that's a real Marshall (yeah...). Before the amp there's a fuzz pedal (by Kuassa on vintage mode. I'm not sure what it's modelled after. Is that a fuzz face?) and then a wahwah pedal (NI real wah, modelled after a Real McCoy Custom RMC-1). That's basically the Jimi Hendrix signal chain am I right? Not that Wouter tried to sound like Hendrix. I just think it's a cool sound so I used it for pretty much all of the solo's on the album. I think Hendrix used a Dunlop Crybaby. I did that on one of the early songs, but I like the Real McCoy better. As far as software imitations go at least.

This is the only track on the album where I used all 3 of my analogue synthesizers. It's also the only song where I actually owned all 3 of them. The result might be a little underwhelming. Less is more.

The bass in the second halve is a Moog Subsequent 37. It's a super boring straight forward bassline. One note.

The synth strings during the last chorus are a Sequential Prophet 5. That's right a real Prophet 5... Rev 4 from 2020... Desktop module... B stock... Oh well.

It's the first and last time I had the chance to use this thing, since I only just got it. It has mono output, so I recorded it 4 times and panned the notes. It really sounds out of tune compared to the rest. That's one thing you'll find out the hard way working with analogue hardware synths along digital things. I had to mix it all the way to the back of the track to make it sound remotely nice. I think it still ads a nice organic layer.

Last but not least, there's the Arturia Polybrute. (As seen behind the Prophet 5) You can hear it after the last chorus all the way to the end. I had no idea what I was doing when I played this. I was just playing random notes from the chords, while sweeping the morphé like crazy. You can barely hear what's going on anyway. It creates this random texture.

Well that's all for today. See you next time. Let me know if you have questions regarding the production of this song.

[SourJovis]

Hey how are ya'll doing? I don't know how many people read the deconstruction of "Can't Wait". Nobody has responded yet (You know you can comment and ask questions right here in this thread right?) In any case I will just reconstruct the next track (going in reverse order). So the next track is Tracker:

We made this track last year late November for Robot Day 2022. My second favourite national holiday, right after Pixel Day. Check out the other creations that where made that day. Some really awesome stuff. Tracker is about how AI controls our actions in modern times. How shocking all of this is to us, yet how we refuse to do anything about it, because it's convenient at the same time and really, you just can't fight it.

Wouter wrote the songs as usual, and he recorded all of the vocal tracks and guitars as well. He also sent me tracks as suggestions for the the bass, drums and synths, but I changed those a lot. I really went wild on the synths this time because I felt this is the most robot/computer themed track on the album and therefore should be the most electronic of all of the tracks. Interestingly enough; this is the second version Wouter sent me. He originally made a track that was far more electronic, but he changed it into a much more rock oriented song, to better match the rest of the album, only for me to change it back into an electronic song again. His rock input gave me more to resistance to pit my electronic influence against, so I think in the end it worked out. Art thrives better in chaos. I also think Wouter is best at the vocal and guitar parts, but he should leave the synthesizers to me, because I'm the synth dude and I can write more interesting parts for them. Although sometimes Wouter writes synths parts that I really like and barely touch. Like in Can't Wait, he wrote the melody for the Korg M1 koto + shakuhachi part. I came up with the sound for it, but kept his melody the way it was.

Drums: The drums as always are Yamaha 9000 samples from the Native Instruments - Abbey Road 80s Drummer - Black Kit sample pack, although this time around I replaced the close mics of the snare with samples from my MODX6 (real kit I think it's called), to get brighter twangier snare that cuts better through the mix. The room and over head mics are still from the duller fatter snare of the original kit. That's weird but I believe it works somehow. I've changed the drum patterns considerably compared to what Wouter wrote, because I wanted to emphasise the accents and create a pattern that works better with the bass and fits the rhythm of the song. I made it more techno sounding with the danceable hihats and such. This is perhaps the only track where I didn't program the drums so tight and robotic, but actually created a groove, that I implemented throughout all of the other instruments. Isn't it interesting how the most robotic song has the most human groove?

Roland TR 909: The acoustic drums were layered with a drum computer the Roland-TR 909. Not the real deal, nor the Roland Cloud version, but once again a Jackbox. I originally wanted to replace this track with my Drumbrute Impact, like I wanted to replace most of these tracks with hardware, but the 909 was just the sound I had in mind.

Fairlight CMI: The second time I've used the CMI (The software Arturia V9 version). This time not for the orchestra hits like in Signs (which is the most obvious use), but for the percussive sounds (like breaking glass and twanging strings and such) I thought this contributed a lot to the techno vibe.

Bass:Once again the Muckelroy by Impact Soundworks as usual, with the exact same amps. Nothing more to say, except that I changed the parts a lot compared to what Wouter wrote. He made them play exactly the same thing as the guitars did during the verses. I didn't like that. The guitar part was pretty strange in terms of rhythm, so I made the bass more straight forward to provide a better framework for the guitars and give them more context, so it would be easier for the listener to understand the song. I made them very funky and danceable though, which is a strange thing for a Muckelroy since it's such a rock bass. I just like using instruments in an unconventional manner sometimes. It glues the rock and techno together. During the chorus I kept the notes pretty much the same as how Wouter wrote them (just the root notes of the chords), I just changed to rhythm to match the drum parts I wrote. At 1:44 I left the bass exactly as Wouter wrote it, because I really liked that part and you shouldn't just change something for the sake of changing it, when it's already good. I just changed the note lengths, velocity levels and articulations to make it sound more the way a live bass player would make it sound.

Guitars:Nothing new to say about the guitars. Wouter played all of the guitar parts on his Gretsch. I made it sound like 4 different guitars with the same amps I use throughout the album. I may make a video about it.

I wanted to make the synthesizers really special for this track, so I intended to use mostly my hardware synths... But I didn't, and that's okay. You may think it's a waste to have all of these hardware synthesizers and use software synthesizers anyway, but I also think it's a shame to have all of these softsynths and not use them, so I tried my hardest to get unique sounds out of them you couldn't get out of any other synth. Sounds I couldn't get the same sound out of my hardware.

The sequence is a Korg MS-20 (V9). I've used the ring modulator setting for one of the oscillators to create sharp gritty a sound I couldn't get out of my Subsequent 37. Originally I wanted to use FM form my MODX6, but couldn't get the sound I had in mind out of it. This made more sense. Another track I originally wanted to use my Subsequent for was the solo the Minimoog Model-D (also V9) plays during the 1st chorus as well as over the vocals of the last, but I've used 3 oscillators to get a very full sound, which the Subsequent can not do since it only has 2 oscillators. I've used a fuzz pedal on the Moog and then an SLO-100 just like on the lead guitars (my former music teacher will hate me for it, but I don't care. That's the whole reason I quit music school in the first place). The Tom Sawyer (the Rush song) like sound was done on an Oberheim OB-Xa (yes V9). I always though Rush used a Prophet 5, but Tom Oberheim's website claims it was one of their synths. He may be right. In either case I really like this sound and I can not get quite the same out of my Prophet 5. Speaking about Prophet 5s, I used it as a place holder for the synth strings during the chorus, but ultimately replaced it with an Arturia Polybrute for more fragile and evolving sound. The Polybrute is the only hardware synth I ended up using on this track, and with that it's also the only synth I use on every single track on the album. During the chorus the vocals that sing the counter melody are layered with a single Yamaha DX7 bell (you've guessed it V9). I wanted to use my MODX6, but I didn't. Not because I couldn't get the same sound out of it, but actually because it would sound identical and I didn't want to waste time recording the hardware without any result.

The Orchestra during the chorus is made entirely with CineSamples libraries (Cinestrings, CineBrass, CinePerc and Voxos), though the strings are layered with Cinematic Studio Strings and the woodwind clusters are Project Sam the Free Orchestra (I thought I would never find a use for it).

I hope that was informative. If you have any questions let me know.

[SourJovis]

We're happy to announce our latest song Can't Wait was named Best of February 2023! as the first song in the list.

The song break downs I wrote are big walls of text that may look intimidating and difficult to read. I'm trying to make them more inviting and interesting. For this occasion I made another breakdown of Can't Wait, but this time with less text and pictures of every instrument. You can use this as a guide to make the earlier more detailed description more digestible.

Drums and Basses

Mic, Guitars and Main Keys (Note I mistakenly said the electric guitar was a Gretsch, but Wouter thought it more likely he used his old Yamaha, though he isn't sure either)

Additional synths and Samplers

Let me know if you think this works better for you, if it's boring either way or if you have other questions or remarks.

[SourJovis]

We're happy to announce the entire album Super Double Botsing is out now on Spotify. Listen to it here.

To Newgrounds members there's nothing new to hear, since all of the songs were already released on here. If you prefer te listen to the songs on Spotify you can do so. The difference is on Spotify it's mastered with a bit more headroom because I like that a bit better and because Spotify turns the volume down of loudly mastered songs anyway.

Please enjoy.

I think it's also good to know that although I haven't uploaded to Newgrounds in a while, I've been hard at work on songs for animations and games. Because they're still under development I think I'm not allowed to tell to much about it, because then I'll get in trouble with the creators, but I'm sure the projects will be massive once they're released.