Introducing ‘Artist Toolbox‘, our Brand-New series where we ask Toolroom artists to give us a run down of their top 5 essential Music Production tips, secrets and instruments, to help give us a better insight into how they create some of the records released on the label. For our first article, we asked none other than Rene Amesz to drop a few of his production secrets for the #ToolroomFamily.
So Cubase 10 and higher comes with an amazing sampler keyboard which was amazing but In version 11 it’s even better. Typically, I use it a lot on various sounds like drums or synth shots. With the time-stretch knobs you can freak the hell out of every sound, turning a simple closed hi hat into a lead synth for instance. The possibilities are endless with this!
In Cubase 11 they added an LFO section to it which makes it even freakier. I use it for whatever sound I want to tear apart. It can make almost every sound raw and funky or freaky and clicky, just the way I like it.
Next up, it has to be the Valhalla Vintage Verb plug-in. This is one of my go-to reverb plug-ins as it sounds so clean and beautiful on whatever instrument or sample you want to use it on. From short tight reverbs to long beautiful hall reverbs for your synths or effect samples, it can do it all. You can pick this one up relatively cheap from their site, but as far as plug-ins go, this one SHOULD be on your radar.
This reverb Plug-In is my favourite one for short and raw reverbs on drums. Just play around with it and you’ll find out why. It gives so much width and space to your drum section that you don’t really need to do much, a little bit of this one on your sounds is enough.
I’ve released a couple of sample packs. My latest Sample Pack Toolroom Trademark Series Vol. 2 and the older Trademark pack are my go-to packs. Even though I made them myself, I find myself just cutting the loops and sounds to create brand new samples out the existing ones. I sometimes layer 3 or more clap loops to create a new one… Endless fun with just a few of my own packs!
5. Arturia Minimoog V.
When it comes to creating raw and funky sounding bassline, synthstabs or even beautiful sounding strings the Minimoog V from Arturia is my go to synth. It’s so versitile and playing around with the 3 oscilators gives me endless fun during every studio session. I’ve used it in almost every production from ‘Live Stream‘ to ‘All 4 Love‘!
