Dennett is a 24-year-old producer who continues to stand out from his peers with his compelling sound, combining melodic and bass-heavy elements with an emotive touch. He’s been championed by the likes of Diplo and San Holo and even had one of the most-played tunes at EDC Las Vegas this year. His latest single, “Blossom,” is another solid track from this promising young artist, earning the nod of approval from LA event brand & record label Good Society, who signed it to their ‘Good Society Vol 4.’ compilation alongside the likes of Sumthin sumthin, Maddy O’Neal, and others.  

“Blossom” offers a beautiful, cinematic experience that packs a punch. I love when artists can create such vivid soundscapes into a track that could provide the soundtrack to your favorite video game or send a festival crowd into a frenzy. We wanted to pick his brain about what tools he uses in the studio, his plugins to create the unique Dennett sound, and so much more. Let’s unpack this a bit further in the latest iteration of How It Was Made: Dennett – “Blossom”

Serum

Serum is a wavetable synthesizer that can create an insane amount of sounds. It is a staple in the electronic music community and it has been my personal go-to for most of my synthesis. Getting a lot out of this plugin comes from a lot of experimentation, and thinking outside the box.

The way this main Neuro sort of bass is made is by taking a wavetable of your choice, and using frequency modulation from another wavetable. We then automate this frequency modulation to get super cool and deep tones out of the sound. After that we use a ton of filtering, distortion, and compression to get that loud and dirty sound that we hear in a lot of bass music. Automating filters is what gives it the movement it has and there are multiple filters causing this movement, modulating at different speeds. 

To get unique sounds with this plugin you really need to experiment and let all the rules you have heard about music go out the window. See how you can use the plugins features to your advantage and get weird with them. We are in a time where there are a lot of tutorials on how to make any kind of sound you can think of, so we need to spend a lot of time trying to do something no one has done. A personal favorite technique of mine is combining different filters with each other and having them modulate in different ways. 

Ableton’s Warp Feature

This feature that Ableton has is the most underrated sound design tool there is. There are endless possibilities with this because you can take any sound that has already been created, and turn it into something completely unrecognizable and unique. 

For this track, we used ableton’s warp feature to take an arp sample and turn it into about four different melodies going on throughout the track. Since this sound needs to keep it’s musicality we were a bit more careful with it. We stretched the sound out x2 and x4 and used the “complex pro”

Other producers could use this to stretch out any glitchy sample to create super cool textures using ableton’s texture warp mode. Also just pitching around the non melodic samples can give you some insane bass fills. Using this warp function has taught me that you do not need to synthesize every sound in your track and you can get insanely cool sounds just by resampling sounds you already have. 

Pitchmap

This plugin is insane because it allows you to take any sound and put it in a certain key. For example if I had a synth loop in the key of C Maj, I could use pitchmap to change it to D min just through the plugin. While this does not seem super impressive at first, Pitchmap has its own unique sound, that when you do this, you can use it as a crazy sound design technique. 

In “Blossom” I used Pitchmap to turn a lot of non melodic sounds melodic. I put this plugin on random bass sounds, giving it this resonated melodic chord sound. One super out of the box thing I used it for was putting it on a police siren, which turned it into this random melody based on whatever notes the police siren was playing. It was like a random melody generator and turned out awesome.

Using Pitchmap in your own production can turn some heavy dubstep basses into melodic ones, by adding a slight melodic tone. It is truly a unique sound and it really combines both heavy and melodic dubstep when used on dubstep basses. For melodic sounds I would try this plugin on any sound you can because the results can be so interesting!

Quick Fire Tips For Making Bass Music

Tip #1: Have fun with it and don’t limit yourself by any rules. Combine melodic synths with super heavy sounds that normally would not mesh together.

Tip #2: Make sure to have good drum selection. Picking the correct drum samples is key because the drums really drive the track.

Tip #3: Focus on having a lot of sub movement because this genre is very bass heavy. Having a sub that is interesting will elevate your track. 

Tip #4: Create a memorable melody and build the track around it. Use this melody as a motif or a hook in the song while creating other melodies that are just slightly different.