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Following on from his massively popular ‘Dark Room Techno’ course, Sonic Academy proudly welcomes back Techno virtuoso Kirk Degiorgio for an all-new ‘How To Make’ course and this time he’s creating a sublime IDM track from scratch.
Kirk’s been on top of his game since the early '90s and a pioneer of this style, so whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned producer you know you’re in safe hands and this 3 hour easy-to-follow course gives you the professional insight into creating your very own intelligent dance track.
Taking his influences from various artists in this much-loved genre, Kirk starts with a blank canvas and builds an evolving beat using classic 808 samples before laying down the main chord progression using Plugin Boutique’s helpful ‘Scaler’ plugin.
We then add classic sounds from the Jupiter 8 and DX 7 for the pads and bass, fill out the percussion by slicing up a breakbeat before adding a beautiful melody, arpeggio and a classic 303 acid line.
After the arrangement, Kirk shows us his method of exporting and running everything through a tape emulation before we get a detailed look at his mixdown process finalising the track ready to be sent off to mastering engineer.
Go check it out!
It’s so nice to see a left field genre get some love. More of these!
Nice to see an IDM tutorial and it sounds cool. Thanks!
totally sold me on scaler, i had no idea what it can figure out the scale from notes, been looking for that for ages in ableton.
OMG That track is soooo Dope!!! Another winner from Kirk. I’m going to actually have to buy a subscription for this tutorial alone. 
This is not to be missed original techno laid out by one of the founding fathers of IDM. My advice buy this piece of history, don’t think twice.
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Inspiring, very competent. Highly enjoyable tutorial.
Another fantastic tutorial Mr Degiorgio. Deep techniques always shown in a playful way. Highly inspiring, thanks for sharing all this.
Hi Mr Degiorgio,
I own an Apogee sound card so I don’t have access to the API Channel Strip and the Studer emu plugins from UAD.
Any recommendations for a close alternative ?
EQ plugin with same kind of characteristics ?
Could Softube Tape achieve the same subtle results as the Studer ?
Thanks
Great plugin suggestions, process, and other tips for adding subtle detail that amount to a great sounding mix in the end. Thanks!
Slate Digital plugins have many channel strip plugins (VMR 2.0, Console stripes etc) very similar to what Kirk was showing. They also do a Studer 827 (tracking) & Studer A80 RC (mixdown) Virtual Tape Machines plugins too.
Hi there! I would place more importance on the techniques/methods rather than the plug-in developer. There maybe a 5-10% difference between “quality” but in general - all of the big players and many of the smaller developers make excellent alternatives to those I use in the tutorials. I would advise to try demos as much as possible simply to see if they fit your workflow and if your CPU can handle them. Good luck and enjoy!
it really is a neat little tool! I think they are coming with a large v.2 soon, so look out for it!
Thanks for that I’ll check on their website. They now support iLok Cloud so no more dongle, but it seems to be reserved to the subscription options.
big like ! thanks for this session ! cheers from berlin
