Clairo "Pretty Girl" Serum Tutorial & Breakdown
Did you know that "Pretty Girl" is the song that started it all for Clairo? She never intended to sound lo-fi or dream pop; she was just using the resources she had at the time, in this case a cheap keyboard and a microphone. She then decided to make a video of herself dancing and lip-syncing to the song in her room, and the rest is history. She went viral, made a few albums and became the face of dream pop and bedroom pop. Once you read this tutorial, you will notice how few elements this song has and how simple it is, and yet it's a great song. That goes to show that you don't need fancy gear to make it, so let's learn all the sound design behind this amazing song: below you'll find the bass and three keys patches (intro, chorus and bridge), with audio and settings for each.
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The Bass
As we said before, the instrumentation is quite simple, so let's start with the bass. We need a PWM Maths 2 in oscillator "A" and a sine wavetable in oscillator "B". Give each one 6 voices so we have a nice, wide sound, and add some FM in oscillator "B" for extra harmonics. Our filter is modulated by envelope 2. Add a little distortion and compression in the FX tab, then use envelope 3 and route it to the master tune with around 10 ms. This gives it the character of an organic bass instead of a synth bass.
The Keys Intro
All the following instruments are just keys with different setups. The first one that pops into the song is in the first verse, and if you ask me, it has a killer melody. We use a sine wave in oscillator "A" and an FFT_Add_2nds at wavetable position 50 in oscillator "B", with some FM coming from oscillator "A". The sub-oscillator has another sine wave one octave up. This is what gives us a toy-box kind of sound. Now, with the filter, cut everything above 3 kHz and use a little tape saturation.
The Keys Chorus
These keys are quite simple to make. First you need an Analog_BD_Sin in oscillator "A" with five slightly detuned voices and a little bend. To give it a little movement, use an LFO and modulate the panning and the level. Oscillator "B" has an Anti-Stasis with four voices and some FM at around 40%, which gives the patch a brighter sound. The filter is cutting everything above 2.5 kHz and envelope 1 has a natural decay of 3.5 s.
The Keys Bridge
For the final part of the breakdown, we have the chords that play in the second verse (or bridge, whatever you want to call it). We need to start with another sine wave in oscillator "A", also slightly bent. You may be wondering why all these patches seem so similar. That's because the changes are very slight. In this case, this preset is brighter than the others, thanks to oscillator "B" and its FM_Freak wavetable with up to 50% FM. The filter is cutting everything above 5 kHz, letting through more high end than the other sounds, and that's it.
Make your own Pretty Girl-style track.
You've heard how the bass and the intro, chorus and bridge keys are built. The Bedroom Pop Pack has sounds like these ready to load in Serum, along with the rest of its 125+ presets.
Want the whole palette? The Indie Pop Bundle adds our Dreampop and Indie Pop packs: three packs for $39.90.
