How to Make Botanica Music in Any DAW transcript

Hi everyone and welcome back to Ask the Producer series. Today we are checking out something that is very near to my heart which is the genre of Botanica or pedal core if you want to call it that as well. They're kind of equated with each other. But I just wanted to kind of like go through like a little bit of like my interpretation, what I really love about it, and then how we can start using those techniques in Soundtrack Trap.

This is what I imagine Botanica to feel and look like. Uh, and I'm just going to scroll through a couple of the images, but it's like a perfect marriage between organic life and technology. Now we're going into uh the studio. When we're looking at Botanica as a genre, I feel like something that is Oh, whoops. That's the wrong one. When we're in the Botanica space, we have a lot of organic instruments and stuff like that.

You will hear pianos, you will hear strings, you will hear guitars, you will hear stuff that resonate organically in real life. paired with very glitchy cute 8bit like bit pop and very larger than life elements as well. So it's like it's bringing that futuristic sense but it also has a rooting organic touch to it as well. So what can we now do when it comes to organ uh organic sounds in soundtrack? Well, first off, I just wanted to try and show something that I was experimenting with earlier today.

So, if we were to go into birds chirping, for example, our best friends, free sound, have a lot of great ones, but one that I really got stuck with was this one, Dawn Chorus, Distant Ocean. Very nice, noisy. So, let's start off by building our soundsscape with what we have here. So, first I'm I'm going to want to keep this as is, but I also figured out a fun way to do things set with sound trap. So, we're going to go into the effects rack.

We are going to add visual EQs, two of them. And if you were to go into Hertz C major look seemingly complicated chart of a bunch of different frequencies. What we can read here is the actual frequencies of these notes. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go for 138 because I'm going to want to be playing this in C later just for the sake of simplicity. But we're going to start off there. So 131ish. And it doesn't have to be perfect.

It really doesn't. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to make a super resonant filter here with a really really narrow Q value. I'm going to find 130 and then just duplicate it by two. So 130 would be 260. And then add one more band. And we'll listen to it. Now we got something going on there. So now I want to do the same thing yet again where I'm going to add a [Music] 260. Now we get something really interesting.

Do you hear that? We get a C. So if you listen to Okay, let me just open up the piano for reference. That is a C. Now, what we can do, which is really fun, is that we can take and export this. So, we're going to do that. Export the wave file and open up a sampler track. Now, we pull this in and it trims because it's a little bit too long, which is fine. That's totally okay. The important thing is that we're able to get this.

Now, listen to how cool this sounds. So, we made our own soundsscape using all of these notes. We have these weird glitchy things coming in as well. Great. Fantastic. So, now we have made our own instrument with the starting point. And you might think that those birds might become a little bit too much, but like as you listen, they're singing in different speeds and different pitches, so it doesn't really over it doesn't become too overbearing when you're playing a nicely spaced chord.

So, we're just going to start off with that and we're going to do something super simple. We're just going to pull in like let's see C G D and yeah, let's let's just do that. Three chords that or three notes. That's it. We don't need anything else. So, we're moving in here. Zooming in a little bit. We're going to stretch this out into a full bar. There we are. And that's number one. So, what can we do with this? Well, we can add a well, we can add a bunch add a bunch of different things.

What I'm going to do is I'm just going to duplicate this twice so we can get like a chord progression going. I'm going to merge these note regions so I can change them. Uh, all in all, let's see. Let's go for, you know, I'm always a sucker for this chord progression. So, let's start here. F G A. As we can see, not all of these are going to end up on the right notes. So, let's listen to it. [Music] So that one's a little bit wonky.

So I want to maybe that there and then to E. Yes, that is true. So [Music] So if we just listen to these four chords now with something as simple as just a weird weird noise. Now we can move these notes around if we want to. I think actually what I want to do with this G is just move this. That's a better leading note, that's why. But something as simple as that, we've got something going. So, let's uh go into another technique where we can like create more interesting things with what we have in Soundtrack.

Grab piano. So typical I mean ever since like Porter Robinson and uh the Nurture album like there there's just so much you can do with a piano and it really it really sells the vibe of like this organic feel. So, if we just listen to the grandma's piano, which is a great great preset, right? So, what I want to do if we're going to make an arrangement out of this, right? So, we have this playing and we I mean, we could just have that, but let's do a little bit of something along the lines of this.

So, I wanted to have kind of a slow start, kind of setting the vibe really. And we're playing in C minor, uh, C major now. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to have all of this on. And I'm just randomly going to record some notes. [Music] So strictly a robboto, nothing's happening. We're just keeping it pretty simple with And now we can actually add the same notes here from that chord thing. Edit. Go into change rhythm.

And now we can listen to whatever we got here. So I think I used soft two. So now we have a piano that goes from this into the [Music] and now we can play around with a little bit more. So, let's open up a sampler instrument for the sake of more of these organic sounds that I really want to like port I want to paint the picture, right? So, I'm going to go into one shot. I'm going to go and search for toy where we have these toy mallets.

I think this toy mallet might be perfect actually. So, toy box mallet. So, with this now we have [Music] Perfect. So with that, I want to be able to not make it cut off like that. One fun thing is you can play with glide here because glide [Music] they do a lot of fun things as well. But I want to be able to play chords. So that's why I change it to polyhonic. But I want to change the decay so it stays long. Cuz if you have the K the K really low, it won't play the full thing.

And then you see it that it dies down. The sustain is what is going to allow our new sampler preset to be able to sustain the note when I'm holding it down. But something that is also very important. So when I release the key keeps kind of it has that nice fade. So now [Music] so now we can actually play with this thing in the same area where we had that kind of like tempoless just free flow piano. So let's do that. [Music] And there we have something going.

So all it's just that simple. Like I am literally not even thinking. I'm just pressing notes at this point. And if there's something that doesn't really sound the way that you want it to, you can just go into the piano, change it around. Let's just say that I'm thinking about this whole thing as creative expression. Yes. Now, we have something that is really like fun and exciting here. And I wanted to actually make this a special episode where I'm actually going to record me playing something.

So, I found something at home that you might enjoy. It's an ocarina. So, I'm not sure really how to play this thing. Monitoring off. And we're back. [Music] [Applause] [Music] You know what? I don't hate that. That is because I don't know how to play that thing. But when we use the autotune, it actually or like the the vocal tuner on this thing, it works perfectly fine. And you know what? [Music] It's not horrible. At least it works.

And you know what? When it comes to music, there are no rules, man. You just do whatever makes you happy. And [Music] Listen, I I love that. I love the fact that we just did that. So, really stupid, but let's get with it. Okay, so next up, orchestral string ensemble. No, we're going to go find the cello legato because I really love how this sounds. Now, we're going to go into uh like probably just pulling this in and changing the playing style to something that is like slow.

[Music] That doesn't sound like the right key, right? Also, the fact that it is way too high in pitch. I want that low cello sounding. [Music] Maybe even lower. Let's go. Let's try that out. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Perfect. And let's add one more layer, but change the preset to double bass. Double bass. Double bass. Verd slow. and remove all of the other key notes here. So, we're going to do all of these. We're just going to No, wait.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where am I going with that one? I'm not thinking straight. There we go. There we go. Remove all of that. And all right. Of course, we go to transpose 12 down. [Applause] [Music] Now we have something that sounds good with that one. [Music] Okay, you know what? That that start that beginning sounds absolute ass. But it's so close to working though. Okay, let me pull this away and let's see how it sounds now.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Also, let's hide it with some Let's more reverb. Let's hide everything. [Music] And then we can just continue on with this. Let's do four more bars. Perfect. Final element to think about when adding these things is the glitchy elements, right? And here we have I mean we have so many different glitch elements. So let's see what we can find. We have these sweeps maybe. Well, you know what? Maybe maybe let's do into the transition here.

Right. And then what else do we have? That's a bit too much. You know what? This is perfect. I'm I'm just pulling in a bunch of them and let's see how we can place space them out to make them sound actually decent in the mix. However, now that we have this, I'm going to move this over here. And the thing is, like, mind you guys, you don't have to have super loud stuff in your mixes to make them actually matter. You just want a little bit of that.

See, that's super loud. That's enough. Let's pull this back in. And then maybe we want to add like a reverb on there. Like really, this is like painting. You're painting a space. Perfect. [Music] And then let's add more reverb to this one as well. Big plate. Let's go for it. [Music] [Applause] [Music] This one was a bit loud. So, let's pull this one down as well. [Music] Oh, they don't end on where they're supposed to because I want it to kind of like hit like that.

Oh, let's drag in a subdrop as well. SFX. Yeah, this is perfect right there. And [Music] [Applause] [Music] And now you can go even more wild with this. I know this was a long video, but like me as exploring explorative kind of like explaining the different things that I would add to this. It does get pretty complex in a sense, but you can do so much more in these. Uh, think about how you can merge different elements and then export them and add multiple effects.

Like for example, let's just do this piano, right? Let's duplicate this track. Let's keep everything except for this. Now, if I were to play this, but I want this to be like one octave lower. Let's just go for that maybe. [Music] Or maybe even one more. Let's see. [Music] Great. Okay. So now settings, merge tracks. Find that grandma's piano. Merge it. Now we have four chords here. Four chords with a very nice tail to them.

So let's do this, this, and this. And for each and every one of them, reverse them. And we get something that sounds And here you can go in and add even more stuff. What I was thinking actually this would be kind of cool. So if we add the pitch shifter and the vocal doubler then we get a really strange warbly. So, let's start off with the pitch shifter. And with vocal doubler, we get [Music] these super strange kind of warbly sounds.

And that's the thing with a lot of these genres that have a lot of emphasis on like glitchy sounds and stuff. Better sounds are usually the ones that are the most broken. And if we think about it like in the Japanese sense of wabishabi like there's beauty in imperfection [Music] and this is a great element to add into your mix of even more sound design and stuff. The final note I wanted to bring up was you can use a synth for example.

Let's find something as simple like a sign like the most pure type of synth, right? Add that one in. Let's pull the chords that we're using for all of the other tracks. As we can hear right now, super simple, no complicated whatsoever. But we add an effect and we automat Wait, there we go. Let's try to find a solid place for it to crush here. So, I don't want it to sound too busted. [Music] So, the thing with the bit crusher is that it's very melodic in the sense of how it adds harmonics.

So you want to play with it a little bit to make sure that exactly it plays together with the chords that you are playing. So there's no definite placement here of where you want to crush it. But listen to your track. Listen with it on. So now it's adding that kind of like sizzle. And then maybe if we want to go vocal doubler, [Music] [Laughter] we get a great pad from that. So now when we open it up and start playing from here [Music] and there's way more things to make using this.

There are a great amount of YouTube videos out there that have sample packs and everything that you if you want to add more. And like they there are really like pioneers in this genre that can help you find more creative sounds that you can then drag into Soundtrack and do more with. But with all of that said, I know this was a very long video, but I love exploring these types of things. But thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one.

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