It's the hands in the air moment; that point where the music drops down, the beat falls away, and the track winds up the crowd into a frenzy - the build-up. It's often the centrepiece of a track, especially in house, trance and electro music, so it's something you need to get right. But when it all comes together, it can be the making of a track. So let's go in deeper with some tricks of the trade that will help you bring the crowd to a frenzy!Before we start though, let's get one thing straight; you need to dispense with subtlety. Less is not more. The more hype, the bigger and the crazier the better. An understated build-up is basically a contradiction in terms, so remember to go all-out when you do this.
So, when writing, you need to first consider that it's all about contrast. A build will always sound bigger if it follows a sparse, minimal section - and you'll want to drop the track down anyway, since you're probably coming from a driving beat into your breakdown. Listen to some late 90's trance by the likes of Ferry Corsten and Paul Van Dyk for some classic examples of this (they're very cheesy but structured perfectly!); the tracks often drop down to complete silence before the build up emerges. This serves two purposes; one, the crowd gets their breath back and a chance to prepare themselves for the build. Two, the build sounds much bigger when it comes from complete quiet, amplifying the effect of all your careful production.
There are plenty of tricks you can use to bring in your sounds. First, and most obviously, is volume. If you're coming from a quiet section then you don't need to slam in your lead harmonies at full whack; bring them in gradually, and the simple fact of the volume increase will help intensify the build. At the other end of the build, when it's at its peak, don't be afraid to crank the volume of certain parts even higher than they are in the main track - this may be a technical no-no, but it'll all get compressed at some point anyway; and for the last four bars of the build no-one's going to be worrying about a slight lack of clarity when they're busy reaching for the lasers.
Next up is filters. Low-pass filter your lead lines, and gradually turn up the cutoff to increase the intensity of the sound. Simple! Anything with distortion on it sounds great with the resonance turned up too - the high harmonics will really squeal. But don't neglect the high-pass filter - these are very effective when used on kick drums and basslines. The sound of a descending cutoff on a kick-drum roll increases the energy of your track in just the same way as a rising low-pass; so be sure to use plenty of filter action.
Which brings us neatly onto drum rolls. These are not only effective, but also great fun if done properly. Stay away from the old faithful of just going from crotchets to 8th notes to 16ths - it's been done a million times and isn't particularly interesting. Instead, program something a bit funkier, a bit more stuttery, to keep people hooked in. Fade the drum roll in, make the MIDI pattern increasingly busy as it goes along, and think about playing around with the sound too - automate things like pitch, panning, even volume envelopes (try a very short decay with sustain at zero, and then slowly increasing the deay time). But drums aren't the only thing you can 'roll' - try taking a single syllable from your vocal sample, or a snippet from your lead riff, and loop those up. Or even bounce down your whole track and loop that up, kick drums and all, using shorter and shorter loops for a crazy but huge sound.We've talked a lot about increasing things as the build goes on - volume, filter cutoffs, intensity, but there are other things you can try too. Effect sends, for instance; put a reverb plugin on a buss and gradually increase the send level to this buss. Try it with your synths and pads to make a huge spacious effect at the end of the build. Again, you may lose clarity, but this is rave energy we're talking about here, not delicate piano subtlety. Remember - more is most definitely more!
Don't forget about some of the classics, too, like the high-pitched rave-string. This one is simple but always works - just fire up a strings patch in a sampler (usually, the ropier and cheaper sounding the better) and play a high octave of your root note. Whack a load of stereo spread, phasing and reverb on it for extra bigness and let it sit above your build-up to create that kind of tension that only high strings can do. Need some extra anticipation right at the end of your build? Then just add in one bar of silence right at the end, before your tune crashes back into the main groove. Again, you won't win prizes for innovation with that one, but there's a reason it's a popular trick; because it works! On a similar tack, you can also experiment with the "fake ending" - bring things up to such a level that it sounds like you've hit the climax of the build, but then drop them down a touch, and bring everything even higher for another 8 bars or so.
Finally, once you've got all that in place, you can turn to the essential riser. Used well, these can turn any build into an insane rave meltdown - they are the icing on the cake and should be added in once you have all the other elements in place. You have plenty of options here - a simple rising pad can work, or a siren sample. A very popular one is just white noise - filter it, get plenty of stereo width on it, sidechain it off something to give it an interesting rhythm and it will fill in all the gaps left in your frequency spectrum. This is also somewhere that keen sound-designers can really get moving - program those synths to make the wildest rising sounds possible. But for the rest of us, sample packs are a very good option here. For a bit of pocket money you can usually grab a pack with enough complex, interesting risers to keep you in build-ups for years!
So, the world of the build-up is something you need to get to grips with if you want your breakdowns to really do damage on the dancefloor. But it's also somewhere that you can get very creative once you've mastered the basics - the possibilities are almost endless. So don't just sit there - get working on those kick rolls and risers, and bring the hype into your tracks!Looking for the essential sounds to create an epic hands in the air moment? Look no further! Check out Epic BuildUps & Breakdowns 1 & Epic BuildUps & Breakdowns 2 for impressive results!
