The pure-pop appeal of Olivia Rodrigo’s euphoric Drop Dead is undeniable, even if the lyrical approach feels incredibly personal, laced with all the idiosyncrasies of the current social media age.
I’ve been playing this track a lot, and have become fascinated by its colourful, evolving arrangement. There’s so many elements of this Dan Nigro-produced banger that are crying out for deeper exploration. The opening, more electronic, section of the song has particularly captured my attention.
This section provides us with a beautiful soundscape and backdrop for the vocal, which is continually punctuated by a synth bass which is deliciously trance-like in tone.
The upper elements rely upon reverse and delay effects, applied to an excessively high-pass-filtered synth pad, but it is the indulgent bass part which I really love.
It's such a retro - yet modern feeling - sound that I can imagine using it in a range of different musical contexts. But first, we need to remove it from Drop Dead…
Up for a challenge, I thought it best to to create this bass sound from scratch, element-by-element until we get something fairly close to the original.
However, with a little re-working and re-voicing, the same sound can be exploited for tracks reminiscent of those trance-floor classics, such as Underworld’s Born Slippy, as well as your own dynamic pop hits!
Firstly, we're going to need the right tool for the job - namely a synth…
1. Choosing a synth
In choosing the best synth for the task, we have to form an opinion from the sound itself.
There is a sense of close tuning - almost phasing - in the sound. This could be replicated with specific plugin effects, but going straight to the source of the sound indicates that the ideal partner is a synthesizer plugin which offers three oscillators.
There is less choice of synth in this domain, as a majority of synths offer only two oscillators, but it does suggest the use of a Minimoog-inspired sound source.
Options such as Logic Pro's ES2 are viable, but with so many Minimoog emulation plugins available, something with the classic Moog architecture is your best solution as a first call, if you have one available.
I'm going to be using one of the most cost-effective options; Cherry Audio’s superb Miniverse plugin.
2. Start from a clean slate
Whichever model of plugin synth you use, it makes sense to begin with a default patch or setting.
Most plugins have some form of ‘new’ patch option, and in the case of Miniverse, you simply need to click the New button, which is located top-left of the plugin window.
3. The oscillators
I start building the patch with the use of all three oscillators.
We need to set all 3 to a range of 16’, setting the first two oscillators to a regular sawtooth. The third oscillator can be set to either the reverse sawtooth, or you can generate a slightly different colour/timbre by experimenting with one of the pulse waves. They all provide a slightly different tone, but will pleasantly alter the texture as a consequence.
One thing to always be aware of is that some Minimoog plugins adopt the traditional ‘Osc 3’ button, which means that the 3rd oscillator does not track the pitch of the keyboard, unless the setting is changed.
Make sure this is deactivated, as you definitely want Osc 3 to respond to your playing.
4. Some light de-tuning
Sticking with the oscillator section, we need to make some subtle alterations to the tuning of both Oscillator 2 and Oscillator 3.
As we are working within the plugin and digital domain, we need to engineer a small degree of de-tuning, so that the oscillators do not phase.
There is small degree of phasing taking place on the track, which adds to the overall sonic character, but making some subtle adjustments will hone this to perfection.
The tuning of Oscillator 1 is fixed globally, so move to the tuning pot of Oscillator 2, adjusting it by a minuscule amount, to a value of +0.02. By similar token, adjust Oscillator 3 to a negative amount of -0.02. This should create a thick and rich texture.
5. Mix balance
Moving onto the next section, make sure that all three oscillators are activated in the Mixer section, and that they are adjusted to the same volume.
We have set all three oscillators to a volume of 8 out of 10 (80%), but you can obviously adjust this to suit whatever you're working with.
6. Filter settings
This bass sound benefits from a relatively heavily filtered setting, with accentuation provided by the filter’s envelope.
Moving to the Filter section, we have set our low pass Cutoff pot to a value of 30%, ensuring that the Filer Emphasis (resonance) value is set to 0.
7. Setting the Envelope
Turning our attention to the Filter Envelope, we want a really harsh attack time, which we have set to 0, followed by a decay time of around 400-450 milliseconds, which is fairly snappy. We don't need any sustain, so we have set this to a value of 0.
In order for the filter envelope to take effect, we need to ensure that the Amount of Contour pot (A.K.A Filter Envelope amount) is set to an appropriate value. Try something in the region of 40% as a starting point and adjust to suit your track.
The amplitude envelope (Loudness Contour) requires very similar settings, although we have chosen to set the decay time to a value which is closer to 600 milliseconds. Similarly, we have set the sustained value to 0.
One final point to check, with regard to Minimoog-style instruments and the envelope section, is that the Decay button is switched on, which means that the envelopes will provide a release phase, and not a heavy release gate. It’s often located bottom-left on Minimoog plugin windows.
8. Distortion and delay
The synth sound itself is now ready to use, but there are a couple of additional elements which are fairly vital, if you want to create a similar texture.
Firstly, Minimoogs always respond well to a degree of saturation or distortion, so we have applied a very small amount of Soundtoys Decapitator to our sound, which will introduce a lovely grittiness and bite, at the front of each note.
Even more important though, is the selection of an appropriate delay. Of course, you can use any delay you like, but the example used here (and on the track) is relatively clean.
This means that the graininess of a tape delay style plugin, might not be what you need. We have used a basic delay (Echo) from Logic, which is designed to keep the signal clean and unaffected, apart from the obvious repetitious delay element.
The delay needs a fairly generous Feedback amount, while the Wet volume control is set very low. This means that the delay is audible, but does not get in the way of the signal. We have also sync’d the delay with our DAW, ensuring that we have 1/8th note delay repetitions.
Repurposing
With a little further imagination, and a switch to a polyphonic synth setting, this Drop Dead-inspired patch is perfect for punctuating chords which repeat using delay.
Use it much like a pad sound, and you can always soften the envelope attack, if it feels overpowering or heavy as you play each chord.
