https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJI24uOEsak
“Hey Graeme, do you think you can make a demo track for OB-EZ really quickly?”
“Yeah, I reckon I can bash one out in a couple of hours…”
So, the challenge was set. OB-EZ was due for release in 2 days, and we needed to produce a video after the music was done. This wouldn’t be a problem, though; OB-EZ is all about fast access to the super fat, analogue Oberheim sound.
So here is my walkthrough of the Oberheim OB-EZ demo track, “Eggs OB-EZ”. (Get it?)
Eggs OB-EZ was produced on Ableton Live 11 and features seven instances of OB-EZ and three drum tracks, all stock Ableton Live content.
The first part to be written was the bass. It carries the main melody of the track. The part was originally written with the Ball’s Bass preset, but I knew pretty early on I wanted to show off OB-EZ’s detuned unison which is just glorious. After writing the part, I looped it and flicked through the bass presets, landing (eventually) on Vesuvius Bass, which is a sort of Reese Bass classic. I reduced the resonance and automated the filter open over the intro to make it bigger for the main section of the track.
Vesuvius Bass, pitched in the octave I had, is slightly mid-rangey which is good for carrying melodies, but I wanted more weight for the louder section. So I doubled the bass track and added Birdland Bass an octave lower. I lowered the filter and filter modulation of Birdland Bass to produce a more muted sub-bass patch with less attack than the stock. This sub-bass comes in and out whenever I needed to support the main Vesuvius Bass line.
Both of these bass tracks are sidechained with the kick drum to pump slightly with the rhythm. It’s not a particularly heavy sidechaining, but it gives some nice movement, especially during the intro and intro melody reprise (bars 18-26)
Obviously, the drums are not OB-EZ, but I should mention them for general interest. It was after writing the bass before I’d finalised the sounds, that I started working on the drum parts. I didn’t think very long and hard about these, to be honest, picking the Borja kit for its lazy claps, the Four AM kit for those atmospheric hats and supporting both of those with the super tight Formaggio kick drum for punch.
I like creating beats with 4 or 5 different hi-hats, shakers, tambourines, etc, for rhythmic complexities. Having already loaded up three different kits, many options were available to me without needing to go diving in sample libraries, so I just used what I found. Anyway, keeping the interest in the high-frequency sounds allows the kick and snare to thump along a basic, but very heavy, 4 to the floor.
There are some EQ sweep automations in the intro and some stock Ableton reverb on the Borja kit for those claps and hats.
The track opens with the Distant Lights V2 patch. It is just a loop of 4 chords, but it is played on a Poly Aftertouch keyboard, which gives each note a slightly different filter position that moves around. I wasn’t really controlling those too deliberately; the aftertouch on my keyboard triggers very easily, and it’s nice to to let the finger weight create textural and natural variations without any deliberate action. These pads drop out for the second section (bars 10-18) to allow the triplet bass melody space but come back when the bass switches back to the slower intro melody.