Up next on Artist Toolbox… it’s Kideko! The Brighton-born artist and producer has made waves in the scene with his energetic, dance floor focused release.
Having signed electrified records on respected labels such as Solotoko, Ministry Of Sound, Realm and more, Kideko’s production techniques and versatile style has made him one of the most exciting acts to emerge in recent years.
Off the back of this, the rising artist has recently made his Toolroom debut with the solid House groover, ‘Soul Searcher’, an infectiously captivating collaboration with the mysterious duo Wh0.
Along with his latest sample pack: Toolroom Trademark Series – Kideko landing, we asked Kideko the all-important question… what are your top 5 tips for music production?
LFO Tool is my go to method of sidechaining, it’s so quick and easy to use. It’s great for a classic sidechain pumping effect but you can also go in depth and really mould the volume envelope to your sound. You can also get creative with it and use it like a volume gate to give sounds rhythm.
I go through stages of using different VST synths but Nexus is my go to at the moment. It’s really versatile and has presets from progressive pads and techno bass sounds to more organic orchestral sounds which I find really handy to have all in one place, they’re always releasing new preset banks too. I also use Serum and Avenger a lot.
There are so many third party distortion/saturation plugins but I always find myself using Logic’s own Overdrive, it’s so simple with only three parameters. I use it a lot on hi hats and claps with the drive at around 5db and the tone at around 13k, I find it thickens things up nicely and can work well on lead vocals too. Be sure to turn the output down after you’ve added drive so you can hear what the effect is doing without added volume.
The whole Soundtoys bundle is so good but my most used are the Decapitator and Little Alterboy. Decapitator is a distortion unit that you can use to get some slight saturation on a kick drum or go full distortion on an electric guitar. Little Alterboy is a pitch and formant shifting tool that I use a lot when I’ve recorded me singing a vocal idea but I don’t want it to sound like me, using the formant shift you can change the tone of a voice/instrument but keep the pitch the same. I also use it a lot when I wanted to layer a vocal with an octave up or down.
I first used a Sub 37 when I shared a studio with George Kwali a few years ago and he had one, I loved how it sounded and realised how fun it is to step away from the computer for a bit and get hands on making sounds on a synth. I mostly use it for bass sounds and sometimes just jamming with sounds over a track and taking small chops from the recording as little bits of ear candy in a track.
