The making of Maureece - Trauma Trigger

Maureece

Catalogue Number: Radar 15 (Combined Forces Recordings, The Netherlands)
Sequencer Used: Impulse Tracker 2.14
Release: May 2000
Company: AMP international (www.ampinternational.nl and www.80aum.com)
Licensed to: Radar records.

The first thing I do when I'm going to make a song is searching for samples. So I had some vocals on my hard-drive from a while ago. They came from a cartoon on TV. The sample was used in the song, it goes "Activating....Trauma Trigger". So I had some vocals. In every club style song, pumping kickdrums are very popular. So to get a pumping kickdrum I had a standard 909 kick, I eq'd and compressed it to get a massive hard-kicking bassdrum. The percussion is always a standard sound in the kit I use. So I had Vocals, loops and percussion in my track, but still no melody. So I went to cakewalk to make a melody. The melody was created by the Yahama MU-100r, with step-recording on 16. So now I had a melody, when I did that I went into the notes of the melody and changed some notes lower and higher to vary it. The bassline I used was also made with Cakewalk and a bassline kit. The bassline channel and the melody channel are exactly the same but I delayed the bassline from the melody. The whole song was sequenced in Impulse Tracker, so I had to convert the lines in Cakewalk to .wav files. Then I Eq-ed them and used them in Impulse Tracker. The strings, melody and bassline came out of the MU-100r, the rest of the sampless are wav files, which are all own made, so nothing is ripped or sampled. (Apart from the vocals which came from a cartoon.) So, I had all the samples, the melody was there already, so the only thing I had to do was build up the track.

In patterns 0-4 (so that's 4 rows of 64 ticks) I believe I build up the song, I put everything in it and listened to it. That sounded good, so I carried on with the track. I always begin with not many elements, but I build them up so the DJ has a long enough time to mix the track in. After the build-up, I made a very long breakdown that built up to the middle where the track exploded (not literally!). The vocals are very dark, that made the track special. It's a very hard trance track, but effective. To create delays and reverbs I used the same sample but a little bit later and the volume less. So you create a reverb without external equipment. I used all the samples stereo and put the channels stereo in Impulse Tracker (so for one wav file I use 2 channels - Left and Right). After the middle you must go to the end (common sense really!), I always leave the end exactly how the track begins but back to front (so I start with everything, then build out to nothing.) This is so the DJ can mix another track with it. So you see that you can make a good song with Impulse Tracker, but you always have to use other programs to make a melody and stuff like that.

Be original and think before what you wanted to produce.

I have made 3 EPs with a tracker:

Maureece - Trauma Trigger (Radar 15)
E-MP-hasis - Sliders (Radar 17)
Maureece - Primary Attack (Radar 18)

Now I'm working fully with Cakewalk. I don't use a sampler but the soundcard and its effects. There are many projects I have left, so I'm a very busy producer.

At my website, you can see my full discography and other things. I hoped you enjoyed my article and sorry for my English, I'm Dutch... ;)

See you around....... Maureece