How It Was Made: Sleepy & Boo - Lucent [Where The Heart Is]

That would definitely be Arturia’s Pigments, one of our go-to soft synths.

Pigments is so versatile and powerful. It fuses wavetable with virtual analog synthesis, gives you tons of ways to manipulate and shape your sound, and you could easily use it for every synth in your projects.

We knew we wanted “Lucent” to have a prominent chord progression, but we wanted it to have a more modern timbre, and Pigments definitely delivered the sound we wanted.

The chord itself is actually a layer of the pad sound with a percussive hit, that helps it cut through the mix - fusing different sound engines together is one of Pigments’ hallmarks.

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We also used our Novation Peak synth on “Lucent” as well, this was key to adding some of the different synth leads that fluctuate throughout the track. Peak is another one of our studio favorites, a very flexible 8-voice polysynth that has some great effects and modulation options. 

Really good for leads and deep pad sounds as well. With the Peak, there’s no built-in keyboard, so we like to connect the TORAIZ SQUID sequencer to it. The SQUID is awesome for helping you get started on a track, we use it to build basslines, synth sequences, arpeggios.

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It has a number of modes you can work with to come up with ideas and quickly move them along. It’s got a chord mode which works great with the Peak to come up with some really lush sounds.

We’re always trying to envision how a track will sound on the dance floor when it’s being played out, and what kind of scenario would a DJ play it. Is this track something for the peak hours of a party, is it better to build the groove of the party, like a warm-up vibe?

And once we get a better feel of where the track is going, we start to add elements that complement appropriately.

We’re definitely big fans of dub music and how it’s been incorporated into house and techno - so sharp chord stabs that get drenched in echo and reverb is something that we use for character in our tracks, it really helps build a hypnotic groove.

Sound design is important for this kind of vibe, so we do a lot of mixing on our Pioneer HRM-7 headphones, and those provide a real accurate way to refine delays and panning.

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We split our drums into three Ableton groups - kicks and lowend, hats, and percussion. Each one of those groups we adjust accordingly to the vibe of the track. We spend a lot of time finding the right samples that will work together.

We have a library of “tried and true” samples that have become part of our drum palette, but we’re always on the lookout for something new; Now we’re getting more into creating our own drum sounds - we have the Behringer RD-9 and RD-8MK2, which are both really cool replicas of the classic Roland drum machines. And we’re starting to do our own field recordings and process those sounds into percussion.

For “Lucent” we ran different processing chains on each individual drum sound - saturation, filter, EQ, delay, overdrive - it all depends on what we think is needed to help the elements stand out in the mix. On each group we adjust the EQ so there’s no unnecessary low end finding its way in the mix. With the hats group, we use Ableton’s Drum Buss to tame some of the highs, and add a little color and crunch.

For percussion, UAD’s Teletronix LA-2A Legacy is a classic compressor that really warms things up nicely without overdoing it. We use the UAD Apollo Twin X sound card as our audio interface, and all those vintage plugins can add so much color and character. 

Reference monitors are important for making sure tracks sound good. We use the Pioneer VM-80s in our room and they are really useful for dialing in the mix levels and balancing everything. 

They are very accurate for playback, and we like to use the four DSP presets on the lows and highs to hear how our tracks are coming together in different monitoring scenarios. 

Nicky Romero’s Kickstart plugin is something we have a lot of fun with. Obviously it’s great for quick sidechaining, but we take it a little further by automating the mix level. 

This works great on percussion loops - you can open up the drums a little more by dialing down the mix, and then tighten it back up by turning the mix back up. 

Definitely useful for adding some movement, tension and groove to your tracks. Kickstart 2 just dropped and we are really excited to check that out. 

DJing in New York is a great experience because nightlife here is so varied and diverse, every time you play somewhere it’s a new adventure.

We like to make music that speaks to all different kinds of people. We’re definitely drawn to memorable chord progressions in our tracks, there’s something really powerful about chords coming together throughout a track to tell a bit of a story; that was what we were striving to do with “Lucent”.

We love sharing music with people and we want our own tracks to reflect that as well. One thing we’ve learned from DJing is that every part of the set can convey emotion, not just the obvious things like lyrics or melodies. We love sharing music with people and we want our own tracks to reflect that as well. One thing we’ve learned from DJing is that every part of the set can convey emotion, not just the obvious things like lyrics or melodies.

So a lot of our tracks build on that concept through adding and subtracting layers, and using that interplay to push the energy.

The takeaway is that a great night on the dancefloor, the highs and lows of a set, is the emotional experience that people really connect with.