Uptempo From Scratch With Illuszion

Illuszion starts with the kick. The uptempo kick folder has a bunch of templates, and he opens Bounce 1 Kick 1. He changes it up a little to make it his own. There's an automation that makes it go boop, boop, boop, and there's this peak. The peak is what defines the signature. Change it and the kick changes. It's very easy to make your own kicks like that.

He renders the kick and puts it at 200 BPM, with kick rolls every eighth note. For the extra kicks he goes back to the template, removes the sub with the automations that are already in there, and renders that too.

For the build up, Illuszion copies the kick and makes it faster. Then he makes an automation for the bass and one for the highs.

Then he adds Endless Smile. This is a really nice plugin that will make a build up always sound a lot better. He makes a keyframe here and a keyframe there, and puts it on the lead bus and the build up vocal.

Illuszion makes the whole build up mono, so it explodes open as soon as the drop hits. Stereo is like you hear everything around you. Mono is just in front of you. Everything gets small, and then on the drop it explodes again. A really nice thing to do and very underrated.

He right-clicks the stereo separation on the Master, creates an automation clip and draws it over the build up.