Alright, so yesterday I was messing around, trying to recreate that sound from the Dominic Fike track, you know, “14 Minutes”? Thought it sounded kinda cool and figured, why not give it a shot?
First thing I did was boot up Ableton. It’s my go-to for pretty much everything. I started by just messing with some basic synth sounds. I figured it was some kind of distorted synth pad, so I grabbed a Serum instance. Love that thing.
Serum Tweaking Begins
- I started with a basic saw wave on both oscillators. Nothing too fancy.
- Then, I added some detuning. Just a little bit, to give it that slightly out-of-tune, wobbly vibe.
- Next came the filter. I used a low-pass filter and started sweeping it around. That’s where I started to get some interesting textures.
After that, I went HAM on the distortion. I mean, that track is pretty heavily distorted, right? I tried a bunch of different distortion plugins. Ended up settling on a combination of Ableton’s built-in Saturator and a Waveshaper. Cranked ’em both up pretty high. Things started sounding nasty – in a good way.
Effects Chain Madness
This is where it got interesting. I knew I needed some heavy processing to get that “14 Minutes” sound. So I layered on the effects:
- First, a compressor to glue everything together. Gotta tame those peaks!
- Then, some EQ to carve out some space. Cut some of the low-mids to get rid of the mud.
- Next, a phaser. Subtle, but it added some movement.
- Finally, some reverb and delay to give it some space and depth.
Spent a good hour just tweaking knobs and experimenting. It was a lot of trial and error. I’d get close, then it would sound too harsh, or too muddy. But eventually, I dialed it in.
The Final Touch
The last thing I did was automate some parameters. I automated the filter cutoff, the distortion amount, and the reverb send. This gave the sound some dynamic movement and kept it from getting too static.
I wouldn’t say I nailed it 100%, but I got pretty damn close. It’s definitely got that same distorted, lo-fi vibe. It’s a fun sound to play around with. Honestly, it’s more about the process of figuring it out than actually recreating it perfectly.
Anyway, that was my little sonic adventure yesterday. It’s all about experimenting and having fun, right? Who knows, maybe I’ll try recreating another track next week.
