Kaytranada & Kali Uchis "10%" Serum Tutorial & Breakdown
Kaytranada and Kali Uchis released one of the best songs of 2019, "10%", which went on to win Best Dance Recording at the 63rd Grammy Awards. It shows why Kaytranada is one of the best producers in R&B and dance music, and his album "Bubba" cemented that status. With Kaytranada, everything starts with the drums and percussion, then the bassline brings the soul and everything else falls into place. Below we remake the bass, the keys, the pluck, the strings and the stab in Serum, with audio and settings for each. Let's take a listen.
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The Bass
Let's start with the funky bassline. It's the backbone of the track, and it's what makes you want to move from the very first bar. The preset is a mix between an 808 and an electric bass: it has the deep, punchy hit of an 808 with the warm, round tone of a bass guitar, which is exactly what gives it that groovy Kaytranada feel.
First, load the Basic Shapes wavetable in oscillator A, set it to its 7th position, and give it four voices, slightly detuned. The extra voices thicken the sound and add a subtle width without making the low end messy. In oscillator B, load Basic Shapes again, but set it to its 2nd position with only one voice. This keeps a solid, focused core underneath oscillator A so the bass stays tight and centered.
Our filter isn't being modulated, and it's cutting everything above 200 Hz. That removes the brightness and leaves a warm, deep tone that sits right in the low end without clashing with the keys and vocals. The part that makes this bass sound a little like an 808 is envelope 3 modulating the coarse pitch. Each note starts slightly higher and quickly drops into place, and that fast pitch drop is what makes it hit harder and gives every note that punchy 808 thump.
The Keys
To recreate these keys we use a Jno wavetable in oscillator "A" with the wavetable position at 1, on oscillator "B" we have an Analog_BD_Sin wavetable, this wavetable gives body and warmth to the sound while the other one brings brightness and air, Envelope 2 (whose attack should be around 80 ms) is modulating the cutoff of the filter and envelope 1 is modulating the detune of each oscillator, now the characteristic sound comes from 2 things, the first one is that the fine-tuning of both oscillators is being modulated by LFO 2, and the second one (and the most important) is to activate the portamento and set it to Always to get that glide effect at the beginning of each chord.
The Pluck
If you ask us this part of the song gives a lot of movement and just playfulness to the track, once that first arp hits you, you already know this is about to be another Kaytranada classic, and funnily enough this patch isn't complicated at all. To make this preset we need an Analog_BD_Sin wavetable in oscillator "A" with 5 voices and the wavetable position at around 50, the oscillator "B" has a Saw wavetable with 7 voices, now to make this patch plucky we need envelope 2 to have a fast decay and to be routed to the cutoff of the filter and then drenched in reverb and delay and that's it.
The Strings
This string section enters at around the 55 second mark, to fill the void left by the keys, it only lasts a few seconds, but that's enough to make an impression, we need a Basic Shape in its second position in oscillator "A" and make sure it has 16 voices so it sounds big and wide, then in oscillator "B" use an SQR_SAW_Wrd, now our envelope 1 should have an attack at around 1 second and is going to be modulating the level of the filter and the PWM of oscillator "B".
The Stab
This final part is quite simple as well, but it's an important part of Kaytranada's sound. That bouncy, sweeping synth shows up all over his productions, and it's a big reason his tracks feel so funky and alive. The good news is that it only takes a few steps to recreate.
To build the patch yourself, load the Basic Shapes wavetable in both oscillators. Set one to its 7th position and the other to its 4th. Using two different positions of the same wavetable gives you two related but slightly different tones, so together they sound fuller and richer than a single oscillator would.
Now for the important part: modulate the filter with an envelope, in this case envelope 1, so the cutoff opens and closes on every note. Then add a lot of resonance to the filter, which boosts the frequencies right around the cutoff and gives the sound that characteristic sweeping, almost vocal quality. Play with the envelope's decay and the amount of modulation until each note has that punchy "wow" movement, and you'll hear the patch snap into that classic Kaytranada groove.
SERUM 1 + 2
Next step
Make your own 10%-style track.
You've heard how the bass, keys, pluck, strings and stab are built. Load the pack and write a track of your own around them.
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