Welcome back to SongBuilder, now in its fifth season! This is the series where we take a selection of amazing Korg gear and build a track episode by episode.
To begin our latest SongBuilder track, we’ve chosen Opsix to set the scene. Having explored the presets, we discovered it’s so much more than just an FM synth and have chosen a patch called P.Piano Seed (not only for its nice percussive, piano-like elements, but also because it has the character of a synth pad when sustained). This makes it a very versatile sound to work with and it responds particularly well with the riff that we are laying down as our first layer.
In order to enhance the preset patch and make it fit our song idea, we edited some of the effects. Opsix gives us three independent effects blocks to use, which offer a fantastic array of sonic possibilities. Firstly, we changed the FX1 block from a Limiter to Unison Ensemble - a type of chorus effect that adds a widening effect to the sound. We increased the depth of the tempo-synced delay that was occupying FX2 and changed the note values of the delay to add some more rhythmic interest. Finally, to achieve that washy, spatial sound that we were looking for, we tweaked the reverb settings in FX3, by changing the type to Space and increasing the level.
We then adjusted the tempo of the Opsix patch to 125 BPM, to match our DAW project tempo. This increased tempo, coupled with the edited delay settings give us some nice syncopation to the pattern. Next, we recorded our riff into Logic and quantized the result to ensure all the rhythms were locked in. Once that was done, we layered an extra line at a higher pitch to the end section of the recording to add some extra melodic interest.
All that remained was to bounce our opening 12 bars of music to an audio track within Logic and then clip the end of the region with a quick fade to add some silence between sections. We then copied the region twice to start forming the basis of our song.
You can find out more about Opsix here, and don't forget to join us next time when we'll be adding a second layer to our track using Wavestate.
