PLUGIN WEEK 2026: Jon Hopkins is a highly influential figure in the realm of electronic music, with a canon of progressive and innovative work that explores the wildest frontiers of techno, electronica, ambient and the spaces between.
Having been championed by Brian Eno (and co-authoring the exquisite Small Craft on a Milk Sea album with both Brian and Leo Abrahams), his career catapulted, working with the likes of King Creosote and Coldplay.
The diverse and often abrasive sounds of his acclaimed fourth album Immunity brought Hopkins to an even wider audience. Its gear-shifts and often invigorating arrangements proved that those who’d rushed to label him as merely a ‘chillout’ act would have to rethink their pigeon-holing;
“I wanted to make things that are emotionally powerful in some way. I think it doesn’t matter what genre it’s in,” Hopkins told The Line of Best Fit.
But Hopkins’ experimental work started long before the public caught up with him, particularly across the gem-filled second and third albums Contact Note and Insides.
Immunity arguably adopted a harder sonic palette, at least in parts. The throbbing distorted bass sounds stood shoulder to shoulder with the beautiful close-miked sound of his own creaky Yamaha upright piano, most often played with the practice pedal engaged for that distinctive felt tone.
After making the record, Jon spoke to the NME:
“It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had writing anything and friends who saw me in the middle of it said that I looked like I was in love,” said Hopkins, “I was just euphoric. The only problem is that it’s just impossible to sleep. And the reality is that you’re on your own a lot and I’m a sociable person. What’s brilliant is that once you do finish you can just go round the world playing which makes it all worthwhile really.”
During this Immunity-creation period, he cited a select few working methodologies, alongside some favourite equipment.
Jon would often export audio files in and out of his DAW (which at that time was Logic Pro), manipulating in other packages, before returning them back to Logic. His vintage Korg MS-20 synthesizer often played a central role too, as did the process of complex effects chains; the topic of our tutorial.
A thread that runs through Immunity - at least for many of the harder-edged tracks - is the use of distortion. Jon has always been a big user of Soundtoys plugins, and Decapitator in particular was a go-to as a distortion effect that could really burn up his audio.
For Immunity, this light and shade was pivotal:
“I think you need the abrasive first half, if you were to just listen to the quiet tracks I don’t think it would do it.” Hopkins said to the NME on the album’s often sudden pivots. “I think you need to shake someone out of the state that they’re in in quite an aggressive way, then soothe it."
However, Jon was also a big user of the Bitcrusher plugin, which forms part of the Logic Pro suite. In the audio equivalent of doing exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin, this plugin degrades the bit depth of the signal, creating an almost gated and distorted texture as a sound decays.
This prevention of a smooth decay, is coupled with a host of audio artefacts which are heavy on the distortion, and can be extended further, with a reduction of sample rate too.
One of Jon’s common tricks was to apply the Bitcrusher effect to a lavishly long reverb tail. His beautiful felt piano - with a resplendently long reverb - is subtly destroyed by the backend use of bit-crushed distortion
We can generate a similar facsimile to the Hopkins sound, while also exploring the medium further. The starting point is to ensure that you have two basic forms of plugin.
Firstly, we need a bitcrusher; many DAWs ship with something appropriate, most likely lurking within the distortion plugin category.
If your package does not have anything appropriate, TAL Software offers a freebie, simply called TAL-Bitcrusher.
Alternatively, Decimort 2 from D16 Group, is one of the most highly regarded paid options, for just €59.
Secondly, we are going to need a good reverb, and one that is capable of generating long reverberation times.
Eventide’s Blackhole plugin has always been the gold standard in this regard, however the ever popular Valhalla Super Massive (or indeed, many other Valhalla ‘verbs) will also do an excellent job.
If you want something more versatile, consider Lunacy Audio’s excellent Space; it is convolution based, and great for other reverberation tasks, but is also capable of generating some very long reverb tails.
Step 1. Creating Your Track
As a starting point, we are going to keep things traditionally ‘Jon’, by recording a track with a felt piano sample, and some very simple chords.
There are a multitude of different felt piano samples available on the market, which include the superb Soniccouture Deep Felt, sampled from a Steinway Essex upright instrument. However, one of the longest standing free examples comes from Spitfire Audio.
Included as part of its freebie Labs series, Soft Piano has been used on more cinematic and TV scores than we care to think of!
It’s basic, but exceptionally good for a freebie.
For the best effect, try working at a lower tempo, and give your chords time to play out and settle.
Step 2. Adding Reverb
It's time to add our first effect, although you can approach this in two different ways.
Traditionally, you can simply add an effect to your channel strip, however it can be very useful to have control over the amount of signal being sent to the effects chain, so applying some form of auxiliary or bus will offer maximum flexibility.
We are working in Logic, and will assign a bus send to an empty auxiliary channel strip. Be sure to turn up the Send amount, and load in your chosen reverb on the related bus channel. We are using Eventide’s Blackhole reverb in our example.
As our reverb is on an FX bus, adjust the Wet/Dry mix, so that the signal is fully effected (or Wet).
Step 3. Adding Bitcrusher
Now it's time to add the Bitcrusher effect. We are keeping it basic, by using Logic Pro's included Bitcrusher, but many of the parameters will be the same across other plugins.
The primary control that we want to explore is the Resolution control, which allows us to alter the bit-rate depth.
Lower values will result in a harsher form of distortion, with higher values being more pleasant to listen to.
You will also notice that lower values take effect far quicker than higher values, so you may choose to alter this value, dependent upon the space between each chord that you have played in your track. Adjusting the length of the reverb time will equally change the Bitcrusher’s effect on the signal.
You may also choose to adjust the level of the Aux/FX chain track, as it may be overpowering against the original piano track.
As always, make sure you listen to the track with objective ears, and adjust your levels accordingly.
Step 4. Additional Elements
Just like Hopkins himself, it is always a great idea to draw inspiration from music convention, but then follow your creative instincts into your own direction, making it unique to you.
With this in mind, there are a couple of details that are worth exploring.
Firstly, in slower tracks, you can extend the reverberation through the use of delays. You could try inserting a delay, with a healthy amount of feedback, immediately after your reverb in the effects chain.
You can also try adding a second reverb plugin, which allows further reverberation of the bit-crushed audio. This would go at the very end of the effects chain and, unlike our previous setting, would need to be adjusted so that you can hear the dry signal, as well as the wet.
Of course, you can tryout multiple instances of all of these plugins to achieve your own unique style and effect.
Always keep in mind though, that this process will be more successful on slow moving parts, or with intermittent and occasional percussive notes.
