Zeds Dead and Blunts & Blondes have always been an obvious match made in heaven, it was only a question of when.
Well the wait is over and the answer is now with Zeds Dead and Blunts & Blondes’ latest collab track titled “When I Think of You,” which you can check out below.
Making Music Like Zeds Dead and Blunts & Blonde
A lot more goes into making music like Zeds Dead and Blunts & Blondes than most newer producers and fans think. The bass-heavy wobbles and the added layers of modulation across the length of the project requires an incredible amount of attention to detail and nuance (even if the whole goal is to make the crowd hang-bang their way into oblivion on the dance floor).
And we wanted to get to the bottom of exactly how these guys made their latest Deadbeats Records release.
So they let us sit down with them and ask five questions about what went into the making of this track, so that we can learn how “When I Think of You” was made.
Honestly, the Ableton stock plugins are extremely powerful. They are very straightforward and teach you the bare bones of what the plug-in does.
A lot of people fall into the trap of buying a bunch of sick, expensive plugins, but then just find themselves using Ableton stock because they work so well.
I’ve been collecting samples for years now, and I just have an idea of what kind of drums I like. I think what makes drums stand out in a track is how well you can humanize them.
How well you can trick the listener into thinking there is an actual drummer keeping a rhythm, rather than someone programming samples on a grid. An easy way to do this is to slightly move your drum samples off grid as well as mess with the volume throughout.
See in the above MIDI clip how some velocities are changed and notes adjusted off of grid? That can be a great way to make your drums feel more human (and not like a laptop played them)
The vocals weren’t really difficult at all. I use Little AlterBoy and SerumFX. A lot of the “power” I think you’re speaking towards usually comes out of a tune in the mastering phase.
I reference all my tracks with GRiZ and I’s tune, “Juicy”. That’s just for the overall loudness. In order to get some inspiration, I tried to listen to older Zeds Dead stuff, as well as old school Flux Pavilion and RL Grime
Where To Listen To Zeds Dead + Blunts & Blondes – “When I Think of You”
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
