I love the kind of sound Knife Party create. It seems to be different from most other EDM in that it sits somewhere between electro house, dubstep and drum & bass in terms of the mix of style, sounds and so on.
However, not many things I can find, if anything at all, about creating this type of sound. Tutorials on creating electro house, dubstep, d&b etc are all exclusively for them style and don’t really fit and any tutorials I do find are specific about copying a very specific synth sound, which I don’t really wanna do as I want to create my own sound in that sort of style, if that makes sense.
This is a very short tutorial but if you pause it when it shows you the massive preset you could copy this and then mess around with the settings of that patch - maybe you can get your own sound or a very interesting sound.
If you want something original, you will have to figure it out yourself. Learn techniques for dub step/house/dnb and figure out how you can put them toghether to make something you like.
It is interesting, though I think it stems from Pendulum days rather than Knife Party, though still partially relevant I guess.
Annoying thing is I love the sound Knife Party create but am not really a fan of DnB or dubstep really so hard to find the enthusiasm to ‘study’ it and learn techniques etc. Needs must though I guess…
You’re right that the video above is pre-Knife Party, but the techniques used are the same, it’s just the tempo that’s changed. They still layer synths, they still use huge amounts of compression and limiting, they still do surgical EQing, and pay a lot of attention to sound selection.
Don’t just think of it as a Drum & Bass technique, and let that put you off, because it’s not.
This “wall of sound” approach has been around for a long time (Rick Rubin etc), people were doing it with rock and heavy metal long before Rob Swire came along! Those Pendulum guys worked long and hard to achieve their production skills and make their tracks sound as good as they do, and the Knife Party sound Rob and Garth achieve is the result of years at the cutting edge of D&B production. There are no short cuts unfortunately!
One crucial thing with Pendulum / Knife Party tracks is that underneath all the distorted leads and grimy noises, there’s always a melody - production along won’t make good tunes.
