Discover ATEQ’s secret recipes for techno & dub sound design in XO
ATEQ (real name Florian Lepa) is somewhat of a "best-kept secret" of Berlin's influential underground electronic music scene. He creates a singular mix of techno, dub, and minimal electronic music, draped in hypnotic, cinematic soundscapes.
He constantly chases happy accidents, letting modular synthesizers and drum machines react with one another, capturing the controlled chaos and later sifting out the gold. His happenstance-fueled, yet meticulous sound design process fit perfectly in the making of his “Sub Liminal” expansion for XO.
Create the perfect kick in XO
In the making of his “Sub Liminal” XOpak, ATEQ discovered ways to use XO’s great sample processing features to spice up any kick in your collection.
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Hover over the visualized sound wave on the left side of the slot controls. You will see a wrench icon appear. Click to enter Sample Edit. Here, you want to shorten the sample by removing the first 9 milliseconds of the sample, removing the initial transient. Click the grey, boxed sound wave at the bottom of the dialogue and move the cursor up to zoom in. Move the box to the left to see the very beginning of the sample. Tweak “Fade IN” to 9ms. Close Sample edit by clicking X in the top right corner.
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Then you dial in the Tone and Cut settings. Add more drive to the bass by turning TON (Tone) to the left, in this case -3.2 dB. To negate the added bass by the Tone knob, you then use Cut to remove some of the low end to keep it from overpowering the mix. Hold Shift to tweak the settings with granular control, and set the low cut to exactly 35hz.
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Now, on the Master channel, enable CRUNCH and set it to More 909 to get the color and saturation needed to make your kick really hit. Dial it in to taste - in this case, ATEQ set it to 20%.
Try this trick on any kick to make it hit harder!
