Air Jura

As mentioned earlier, the Jura is modelled on the incredibly versatile Roland Juno 60. Perfect for everything from pads, through to leads, basses and beyond – the Jura also has that classic chorus sound and the chord memory function. At £99, Jura is a steal in our opinion – but if you’re unsure you can demo the plugin before purchase.

Air Flavor Pro

Described as 30 years of sampling crammed into one plugin, the team at Air are bang on the money! With a wide range of Flavors (sorry) – this incredible tool allows you to colour the sound of everything that passes through it. Need your plugin to sound like it was pulled from vinyl? No problem – Flavor Pro has you covered.

Air Mini D

The Mini D is a powerhouse synth – capable of rumbling basses and powerful leads. Although it was on of the earliest plugin releases for the MPC Range, it still holds its own as an essential if you’re making most forms of electronic dance music.

Give Me A Break

In keeping with the production techniques of the time, we’re now chopping our breaks into individual hits and re-sequencing them. This gives us greater control over the feel and quantisation of the drums while also allowing us to choose the pitch at which we play the individual hits.

Real Bass

For our bassline we’ve plugged in a bass and played it live! Before connecting the bass to the MPC, we’ve run it through a pedal that’s capable of generating a synthesised tone an octave or two (selectable by the user) below the notes played. This gives a phat sub bass while maintaining the character of the bass guitar.

Epic Intro Pt. 1

We’re back on the Solina for the string parts within the intro. Playing lush chords to pad out the frequency range and providing a solid foundation for other music elements. Here the MPC One+ really starts to show just how powerful it is, especially as we begin to add layers and effects.

Epic Intro Pt. 2

Next up, we add the Air Stage EP and play some notes which we push through a delay and compressor to add excitement while maintaining control. The suite of effects provided by the MPC offers a stunning amount of options while remaining simple to use and sounding great.

Epic Intro Pt. 3

Time for some creative use of samples. We played a kick drum sample at a lower pitch to give the intro shaker some additional support. We also added some vocals chops – taken from our earlier tracks and then twisted up using the Air effects suite. The final male vocal is once again taken from our Jungle track – giving us another sample chain.

Right At The Limit

We used the Air Limiter to keep our bass levels in check while recording. This processing helped to maintain the focus on the instrument without destroying the dynamics of the live performance.

Just Steppin'

Making use of the Splice integration again, we imported some select drum sounds from Sample Magic’s “Old Skool Garage” pack and pitched them to fit. We nudged the drums on the 16th triplet grid to ensure that there was plenty of swing.

There’s a wealth of great garage sample packs over at splice from Nitelife Audio, Test Press and of course Sample Magic.

RnB Vocals

Despite being a hugely vocal led genre, UK Garage had very few original vocalists. Most of the hooks were provided by RnB vocals – usually sampled from US imports ahead of the UK release. This would lead to UKG tracks releasing at the same time as the RnB original – helping to broaden the appeal of the genre. To stay true to the original vocal roots of UKG, we pulled in an RnB vocal and pitched it to nail the vibe.

Rhodes Chords

Electric pianos were a huge part of the UK Garage sound, with the Rhodes championed by MJ Cole.

Making use of the full size keybed, we laid down some jazzy chords using the Air Stage EP which is part of the included MPC Key 61 plugin library. We added the Air Phaser and Air Enhancer to increase the movement within the sound and positioned it in the mix with some medium reverb.

Bumpin' Bass

No UK Garage track is complete without a bumpin’ bassline. We used the Air Mini D for low end duty on after the second drop. Dropping out the other musical elements, and letting the bass become the focus, we added some rolling percussion to create a danceable groove.

Pitched Kick Drum

To simulate the often used 808 kick drum bass boom we loaded the Akai S950 Test Tone and applied an envelope to modulate the pitch of the sample. With a fast attack and the sustain, decay and release tailored to suit the tempo of the track. You can use any of the MPC range as a sampler thanks to the versatility of the sample playback engine.

Adding Tension

Before dropping into the vocal, we add the Solina to provide a sustained single note played in the upper octaves to add tension. This classic technique is used throughout house, garage, jungle and drum n bass to great effect.

Chop N Slice

The core element for our track is the previously used Soul stack we imported from Splice.  We time stretched the sample to fit our tempo and then chopped it on the fly to help us humanise the use of the stack. We placed chops at different points and switched between them to create variations.

True Grit

If you’re going to make Hip Hop, and then you’re going to try and pull off the sound of the MPC-3000, you need Air Flavor Pro. We used several presets to colour the sound of our track, with the SP1200 used in conjunction with the Decimator plugin to get our Rhodes part to sound authentic.

Electric Piano

To add to the vibe of the original sample, we added a Piano line playing some shorter chords. We used this later into the track to add some variation – playing it rhythmically to complement the original soul stack sample.

Still Storch

We headed back to Splice to find some drums and stumbled across the Still Storch sample pack. Having found a selection of drums that worked well together, we sequenced these to provide a solid foundation to build the rest of the elements on top of.

Take The Lead

For our main hook, we used the Air Mellotron – a faithful recreation of the classic Mellotron –  which we played live. We decided against quantisation, as the feel of the lead really suited the overall vibe of the track and informed our other choices when it came to instrumentation.

Further Mellotron Processing

The lead is incredibly important – providing the main hook for the track. With this in mind, we used the Parametric EQ, Vintage Compressor and Small Reverb to help sit the part in the mix.

String Stabs

Flexing the workstation muscle of the included Air instruments, we reached for the Air Studio Strings to give us some hard hitting stabs.  We processed the stab using the standard Air Flavor, EQ and some reverb to place them in the mix.

More Mini D Bass

As has often been the case, we returned to the Air Mini D for bass duties.  It’s easy to see why we rate this synth so highly – it’s versatility makes it one of the most well-rounded instruments in the MPC expansion shop and one that’s worthy of a demo.

Vocal Processing

We needed a vocal, so we hit Splice (no surprise there) and downloaded another acapella part from 91Vocals. We pitch-shifted this to fit the key of the track and used the Air Vocal Harmonizer to add a harmony at the interval of a 5th above.