Making witch house

Production, hardware & technical - tips and tricks.
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dirtypharms
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Re: Making witch house

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t u n d r a said "You should be creating the music YOU like, not what you think other people will like. Don't focus on sounding like SALEM, oOoOO, Balam Acab, etc. Just write music and see what comes out. You'll develop your workflow and certain production habits and techniques over time. If you sit down and say "Okay, I'm going to do a White Ring style track today," you'll probably end up hating the results because it WON'T sound like White Ring."

it's interesting that you say this because i always like to limit myself by trying to make music like different people because the results are usually interesting. when i try to not creative i create wierd shit because i can't help but be creative.

as for advice for making witch house, all you have to do is pitch shift some vocals down and put some echo on them. now you have witch house. add a synth and some drums and you're done
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G.R. Zømbi€
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Re: Making witch house

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I'm currently using FL Studio10 and a MicroKorg for all of my latest stuff, I've been using FL for about 4 years now and I've collected my own samples and sounds over the years. I think every softwares and hardwares are worthy, its just how you use it. Find something user friendly and stick with it. Focus on creating your own sound, it doesn't happen overnight!
dittrisi
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Re: Making witch house

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I want to know if there is some pluging to make the bass and the sytnhs as oOoOO or Salem?
halcyon_silence
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Re: Making witch house

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dittrisi wrote:I want to know if there is some pluging to make the bass and the sytnhs as oOoOO or Salem?

I've had some luck using the VST plugin "Sylenth" to create some heavy Salem-esque synths.

what I'm wondering is if anyone has advice for a good plugin to make a bass like on "Expect" and "Oh, Why" by Balam Acab
dittrisi
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Re: Making witch house

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Thank you!
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tapeface
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Re: Making witch house

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I record most of my bass tracks with a irl bass guitar, then sequence and work with Renoise and a tape deck. Renoise is really amazing if you want to be able to draw your own sounds from scratch.
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є
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Re: Making witch house

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Low BPM
Lots of Delay* (Add that delay on your snares and vocals dawg)
Lo-Fi Synths*
Drowned out Vocals (Chanting Moaning sounds really good slowed down, and or Reversed)
Look for samples that give an eerie, celestial, or a heavily sedated vibe
Dat 808

One of the best practices i've found is to tune your samples to sound DXM induced.

Another good thing to note is to listen to the way other artists transition from one part of a song to another; if you can read how a song was made by ear you can make a template. Some softwares map the transitions and change in bmps for you.
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є
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Re: Making witch house

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I usually pull samples from dark ambient music, horror films, and or black mass sermons.

Here's a couple of things you can do with your voice with vocal processing.
Record yourself chanting or moaning or saying something in an eerie way. From here you can decide what you want to do. You can transpose (pitch shift) your voice low to sound sedated and weird. You can also reverse the clip to sound deomic or evil. You can use a vocoder to process your voice to match musical notes and sound lo-fi and or robotic. You can add delay and reverb to your voice to make it sound even more slurred and washed out. You can add a modulator to your voice which you can tune to make yourself sound like some hellish alien cyborg. All these effects can be combined for even more awesomness as well.

Here's a good examples to run with.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV8OcQvkWPQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCIqVlELCts
I'll take a song like this and section off a loop of instrumentation or chanting.
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SH∆UN
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Re: Making witch house

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Excellent ideas here. I'm looking at some of the applications now. I really want to start making some music. So many ideas, but not enough free time.
Brewce34
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Re: Making witch house

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ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote:Low BPM
Lots of Delay* (Add that delay on your snares and vocals dawg)
Lo-Fi Synths*
Drowned out Vocals (Chanting Moaning sounds really good slowed down, and or Reversed)
Look for samples that give an eerie, celestial, or a heavily sedated vibe
Dat 808

One of the best practices i've found is to tune your samples to sound DXM induced.

Another good thing to note is to listen to the way other artists transition from one part of a song to another; if you can read how a song was made by ear you can make a template. Some softwares map the transitions and change in bmps for you.

this is the most helpful group of letters I've ever seen
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tendernessofwolves
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Re: Making witch house

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Rather than making a new post I thought I'd add this to the end of this one...

How long do you prefer your songs to be? Both as a listener and an artist.

I listen to A LOT of doom metal and prog, 12" mixes etc. etc. so I'm used to quite long songs. In my own song writing, so far, I've found that I've paid little attention to how long my songs last. I just tend to go with the flow and end them when it seems right. So that can be 3 minutes or nearer 10.

However, I know a lot of people favour shorter tracks that are more impactful, which of course leads to shorter album lengths, and probably keeps people's attention better on streaming platforms. so where do you guys fall on this?
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zin
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Re: Making witch house

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tendernessofwolves wrote: May 21st, 2021, 9:43 am How long do you prefer your songs to be? Both as a listener and an artist.
TBH I hate long witch house songs, especially the ones with trap beats, simply because most wh artists can't grab my attention with their productions. They're usually very repetitive, and not adventurous enough. If you've seen some of my reviews I wrote in the main WH forum over the last year, the length of tracks is usually one of the things I moan a lot about :-P

My fav "long" WH track ever is probably this mashup from Deathcoast:


I also love long tracks from MSV, but they're more like suites I guess?
i.e.:


or the whole 20-min each side ATEM album:
https://matersuspiriavision.bandcamp.com/album/atem

Basically - if you do drone/dark ambient influenced WH, and/or have vocals and/or are playful with song structure - I don't mind it long.

Otherwise 1, 2, 3-min max tracks are perfect.


Edit. forgot about Lieu Noir, I stan all his stuff, and his longer trax are amazing:




Edit 2. and this banger could be never-ending, Mascara stole my heart with this track:

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tendernessofwolves
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Re: Making witch house

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zin wrote: May 21st, 2021, 7:48 pm
tendernessofwolves wrote: May 21st, 2021, 9:43 am How long do you prefer your songs to be? Both as a listener and an artist.
TBH I hate long witch house songs, especially the ones with trap beats, simply because most wh artists can't grab my attention with their productions. They're usually very repetitive, and not adventurous enough.
That's a good point. There are tons of songs that start great with an impactful trap beat that can really hook you, but after 2 minutes with no variation it does begin to get a little like "Yeah, so what else is going to happen?"
zin wrote: May 21st, 2021, 7:48 pm I also love long tracks from MSV, but they're more like suites I guess?
i.e.:
https://phantasmadisques.bandcamp.com/t ... in-ecstasy

or the whole 20-min each side ATEM album:
https://matersuspiriavision.bandcamp.com/album/atem

Basically - if you do drone/dark ambient influenced WH, and/or have vocals and/or are playful with song structure - I don't mind it long.
I totally agree there, I mean I've mentioned my love of Coil in the past a few times and for me MSV are the Witch House answer to Coil for these very reasons.
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ɅLUCɅRDɅ
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Re: Making witch house

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ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote: January 28th, 2012, 10:40 am Low BPM
Lots of Delay* (Add that delay on your snares and vocals dawg)
Lo-Fi Synths*
Drowned out Vocals (Chanting Moaning sounds really good slowed down, and or Reversed)
Look for samples that give an eerie, celestial, or a heavily sedated vibe
Dat 808

One of the best practices i've found is to tune your samples to sound DXM induced.

Another good thing to note is to listen to the way other artists transition from one part of a song to another; if you can read how a song was made by ear you can make a template. Some softwares map the transitions and change in bmps for you.
This honestly is quite possibly one of my favorite posts on this thread. It basically gives the game away, while also being vague as fuck. If you know a thing or two about music production then it may be enough to get you started. If you're newer to the game, then read on for my own interpretation and advice on getting started.
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote: Low BPM
An early alternate name for witch house was Drag, let that be a starting point of inspiration. Set your BPM low (most of my recent tracks range from 80-100 BPM) and drrrraaagggg those melodies and basslines out.
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote: Lots of Delay* (Add that delay on your snares and vocals dawg)
Image
A snare example to get you started. Your DAW definitely comes with one, a free one I like is Baby Comeback
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote: Lo-Fi Synths*
And drums for that matter. Lots could be said here, I'm gonna try to limit myself.
You'll probably want a Dark Reese Bass, you can make this with basically any halfway decent synth, this tutorial uses Charlatan which is free. 80s synths can be great for this, but so can things meant for other styles of electronic music, the key is learning how to tweak them and process them. . There are TONs of free synths out there, Charlatan has been mentioned, there's Synth1 modelled on the Clavia Nord Lead 2 Red Synth, SQ8L a software model of Ensoniq's classic 1980s synth SQ80 (Skinny Puppy used this), so that gives you three to get started.

Drums... older witch house tends to use old school drum machine samples. Try this pack of 66 Drum Machine Sample Pack. Casio, Linn Drum, Korg, AKAI, ROLAND, BOSS, YAMAHA. Layer them, add distortion and a touch of reverb to taste. For newer witch house, try looking for Trap or Trance kits on Reddit, or peep this or this.
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote:One of the best practices i've found is to tune your samples to sound DXM induced.
Think Vaporwave or Chopped n Screwed and you'll get there.
ⱣȿƴȼЋῼƋԑℓî¢Δ†є wrote:Another good thing to note is to listen to the way other artists transition from one part of a song to another; if you can read how a song was made by ear you can make a template. Some softwares map the transitions and change in bmps for you.
Priceless advice for turning those 16 bar loops into full songs. This "How to finish an EP in 30 days" series of articles has been particularly helpful, and builds upon this exact idea.
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