Recording cinematic, rave-inspired electronica in the vein of Jon Hopkins and Four Tet, Jasper Tygner is a London-based producer that broke through in 2020 after a series of “bedroom rave” videos streamed on Instagram Live caught the attention of lockdown-bound viewers and industry heavyweights alike.
We visited Tygner in his home studio, and the rising producer was kind enough to give us an insight into his creative process by demonstrating how he builds a track from scratch.
All wavering synth lines and skittering drums, the sketch that he created shares a distinctly melancholic thread with the tracks that make up his debut album, Blue.
Drawing on themes of “isolation and connection”, Blue is inspired by the “blue hour”, the evocative moment when the sun comes up and night begins to dissolve into morning.
“I imagined someone on a bus ride home from the outskirts of a city whilst looking out the steamed up window at a deep blue sky with road lights going past,” Tygner says. “I would call the album gently euphoric; it's made for headphones on a long journey.”
Tygner kicks off his track by scooting over to the Moog Matriarch. “I’m usually starting with a melody or a drone,” he says, “I’ll just mess around for a little bit and find something that I like.”
Recording a repeated three-note motif, Tygner chops three bars of audio out of the recording and loops it to create an irregular pattern. “I like to have slightly uneven loops, so they won’t ever overlap and it’s slightly different each time - there’s never a perfect loop.”
Building on this atmospheric bed of sound with a melodic element, Tygner runs his Prophet ‘08 synth into the Vermona Retroverb Lancet, a desktop spring reverb unit with a filter and overdrive circuit.
“I love it – it just adds some grit to the final product,” Tygner says, before laying down a descending synth line on the Prophet and adding an instance of Ableton’s Glue Compressor to even out the dynamics, and Soundtoys’ Echoboy for width and flavour.
Next up is a bassline, also played on the Prophet ‘08, before Tygner brings in some evocative chords. “I always use the Prophet for chords,” he says. “I like having it right here [next to my desk] – it’s just an immediate idea magnet”.
Settling on a high-pitched melody, Tygner blurs the notes into a chord using Valhalla’s VintageVerb before adding two instances of Soundtoys Crystallizer. “I put it on everything,” he says. “You get this beautiful shimmery goodness all over it”.
Watch Jasper Tygner build a track from scratch on the MusicRadar Tech YouTube channel.
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