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Pro Audio

Human Movement takes us under the hood of his new track ‘Waiting’

STEP INSIDE ‘WAITING’, THE NEWEST TRACK FROM HUMAN MOVEMENT

Inspired by the likes of Bicep, Burial, Paul Woolford, and Caribou, new track Waiting from Sydney producer Human Movement gives off big 4am energy. Held down by a lush chord progression, the track bleeds with that dancefloor rapture we’re all missing so damn much right now.

But since we can’t hear Waiting in a club, here’s the next best thing. Eddy recently let us peek into his Ableton Live session for the track, laying out the VSTs, plug-ins, and techniques he used to build the key sounds you’re hearing on Waiting.

Take it away, Eddy.

Chords/Pads

“I pretty much fleshed [Waiting] out in a day – what I wanted and the structure of it. It took about seven hours to make, then it took about eight months to finely tune it. The chords were definitely the main aspect and the first thing I started with.”

“I created the chords in Ableton with Operator. I used a sine wave, put a little reverb on it, then used this plugin called Little Radiator which is part of the Soundtoys package. That really adds a bit of texture, saturates it a bit, makes it more interesting rather than sounding like your classic MIDI chord, it brings a bit more life to it.”

“I’ve combined those sine chords with a pad which is a staple Massive pad with nice strings. If you have the Massive VST, it’s called Orchestra Bastard II. They do really cool, lush, almost synth-y string pads. With the two together it goes really well. The pad plays pretty similar chords… the only thing that differs is the last chord which harmonises well, other than that it’s super basic. Less is more, definitely, for this track.” 

“And there’s one other! I used a full-length Nord Stage keyboard that the Universal Publishing studio had, that comes into the second half of the track. That just adds another layer, it’s subtle but it fills the track out a bit.” 

Operator Ableton
Chords: Operator Synth plus Effects Chain
Chords: Little Radiator

Vocal Sample

“Funny you brought up Bicep – I was trying to figure out how to make the Glue sound, that Glue vocal. I found out how to do it, so if you want to do it you can get any sort of vocal sample, I got a female vocal sample from Splice. Royalty free, you can’t get in trouble, use Splice! Then you basically whack a vocoder on it and cut it how you want, but I also put a [Tremolator] tremolo on it which gives it another rhythm. Then I sent it to an Operator synth that’s doing a few things, it’s a few different sine waves playing into each other. “

“I’ve got a tremolo on there which helps with the movement and the cutting of the vocal sample, I’ve got a reverb to space it out, I’ve got an EchoBoy which is also part of the Soundtoys package, which is a nice little delay. I put a driver on it as well which sort of beefs it up, it’s a saturator essentially.”

“And I’ve also put an auto-pan on it to create a bit of movement between left and right. Then it’s filtering throughout.”

Vocal Chain: Part 1
Vocal Chain: Part 2

Piano

“If I’ve got the [hardware] to use, I’m going to incorporate it in the song. So with the piano I sent the chords into the Nord [Stage] and a Kontakt synth, which is essentially a sample-based synth, just really great recordings of a grand piano. Then I compressed the two together so they sound squished, they sound like one, then I reverbed and delayed it.”

“I did lots of glue compression, I gave it a really slow attack and a really fast release, so the compressor kicks in after the note’s hit. It gives it a really punchy feeling.”

Piano Group plus Effects Chain

Synth – Lead

“That’s just Sylenth, it’s a lead I found called Sicko, it sounds a lot like Bicep! I’ve got some reverb on it, and I put Little Radiator on almost all my basses and leads, it just really livens it up and thickens it. Then an EchoBoy, so it’s not much of a chain. I sent it to a reverb as well.”

“Sylenth is an amazing VST, it’s really good for stock standard basses and leads. I definitely recommend getting on that.”

 

Synth – Acid Line (2:55 onwards)

“This is Sylenth as well, it’s the default preset on Synlenth which actually has this stupid arpeggiator on it but if you take it off, you get a pretty cool acid line. I tweaked the filter cutoff and resonance and also chucked a Little Radiator on it, of course, and the EchoBoy.”

Lead Synth: Effects Chain
Acid Line: Sylenth Settings plus Effects Chain

Ride Cymbals

“What I really liked was the rides that I used. It’s a Vengeance ride, which is fucked because I never use Vengeance samples. I layered it with a live ride which I recorded in Universal as well, so it’s bouncing between the two and it gives it a bit of a feeling like it’s being played live – because half of it is being played live!”

“Then I’ve got this other one that’s really digital and cut off. When you play it all together… if you take the digital ride out it doesn’t have that groove. You can’t really hear it in the full mix, but all those one percent differences really change the outcome of the whole track.”

“That’s what took eight months.”

Rides Group

“I mean, it’s all real simple stuff, just knowing what works and how to use each element well, and how to use each VST and effect.”

“[Waiting] definitely fell in line with everything I was making at the time, and what I’m still making now. It’s something for a live set – I mean you could probably play it in a DJ set, but you’d probably have to close your set with it.”

“It goes for about 3 minutes and 30 seconds, so it was very much intended for listening and something that you’d perform, rather than something you’d DJ in the club.”

 

Listen to Waiting below or stream the song here.