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Writer's pictureZen World

HOW TO: W&W Big Room Leads



Hey Ninja

Today I will be teaching you how to create a Big Room Lead like W&W inside of X-FER Records Serum.

I will go over every technique I find helps in helping you get the sound of W&W, Maurice West, TWIIG, and many more artist from the Main stage Label.

Let's Get Started!!!

We will be creating this sound


SAW TO VICTORY

The first thing I need you guys to realize is that the anthemic sound of Big Room, Big Room Trance and Trap are almost 80% of the time Saw based sounds that have undergone intense processing.

So it's safe to say that the sound W&W have been using for years begins with a Saw Wave.

We will be inputting a Saw with with 8 Unison (How Many Saws are coming out of the oscillator)

OSC A will contain this as well as OSC B.


w&w supersaw

Make sure to not de-tune the same amount on both oscillators to get a bit of the frequency spectrum covered.

BANDPASS, LOW PASS , OR HIGH PASS

The 3 most used filters when making big room leads of this caliber will be the LOW PASS FILTER, BAND PASS FILTER OR HIGH PASS FILTER.

In this tutorial we are gonna make things a bit advanced and use the high pass filter to help us with layering OSC A and B.

QUICK FILTER GUIDE

  • Low Pass Filter - Good for filtering both OSC A and B and getting rid of some of the high frequencies on it. Can also be used to shape the sound into a pluck.

  • High Pass Filter - Best used only on 1 OSC to layer it with another OSC. Can be used to get really gritty top end and helps in cleanly layering both OSC A and B Together.

  • BandPass - My favorite filter as when used properly can give really nice tonal variations when combined with distortion. I use this one mainly to layer OSC B into OSC A. Think of it as a Filter that lets you accentuate the high, mid or low frequency only.

For this tutorial we will be using a High Pass filter to layer OSC B into A.


As you can see in the image above we have used A High Pass Filter only on OSC B to layer it into OSC A. With the High Pass filter we are removing the Low END of OSC B so that we can only get the high frequency from it. In the next steps we will be modulating it to get a grittier sound but lets move onto the next step.

EFFECTS ARE THE KEY TO GREAT SOUNDS

The effects needed for this lead are gonna be the

  • Hyper: An effect that allows us to imitate the Hypersaw from the Virus TI and a widener using the haas effect.

  • Dimension Expander to make the sound WIDER.

  • Distortion: Saturating the sound with some dirt so it cuts through the mix more.

  • Compressor:We will be using the OTT feature to upwards expand our Lead (Get it louder)

  • EQ: Remove Unwanted Low End.

  • REVERB- Give Space To The Lead.

Down below you will see what the settings of the effects are set at so just copy it.

Up above I provided what we are doing with the Effects and how they affect the sound.



ADDING PUNCH AND DIRT TO THE SOUND

In order to get the sound to punch we will be using Envelope 2 or 3 to add a pitch envelope to both our OSC

They will look like this


Very fast decay time so that the pitch time is fast and it gives us the effect of the punch that is needed.

You will be adding the pitch envelope to the CRS Portion of the OSC A AND B.

When you drag and drop Env 3 to the CRS of the OSC you will see a blue line pop up and a circular icon.

By holding ALT +SHIFT while clicking on it you will see it change to only the right side of the CRS. This is what we want it to look like.


For grit We will be adding LFO 1 To the PITCH fine tune of both OSC A and B To get the pitch moving at a very fast rate to create GRIT. We can also add it to the HIGH PASS filter for added dirt.

The LFO1 Will look like this and be routed to OSC A AND B'S fine!


LFO SETTINGS

Make sure to have only about 1 Pitch change with the LFO as making it higher will get it to sound out of key.

This is how much you will be modulating by


LFO MODULATIONS

On this one don't worry about it being one directional (unipolar).

MONO LEGATO For The Slide!!

Last thing we need for this sound is to activate the MONO Legato so we can add those nice pitch slides we hear a lot in W&W'S Music.

Pretty simple we just want these settings on our Portamento and the Mono Legato activated.


Conclusion

If you followed all my instructions you should a very similar sound to this one.


I hope you guys enjoyed this tutorial. I know some written tutorials are needed as you can take whatever time is needed to follow all the steps needed to achieve the sound instead of pausing a video constantly.

For creating other style of W&W Leads try to do less distortion or don't use a high pass try using a band pass and detune more.

Zen World

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