by Native Instruments

Why it works: Recreating the production tricks that got Jakatta – “American Dream” to the top of the organic house charts

PROFF’s interpretation of Jakatta’s “American Dream” has held a top spot on Beatport’s Organic House Charts for months – a real feat, especially with so many standout organic house releases from labels like Anjunadeep and All Day I Dream.

But this track’s staying power isn’t just a lucky break.

There’s some expert-level production happening throughout, and we’ll be diving into those moves here. By the end, you’ll have a few practical ideas you can try in your productions, hoping they’ll lead to the same kind of impact for your next release.

Jump to these sections:

  1. The kick is king
  2. Texture through spatial effects 
  3. Subtle automation keeps things fresh over time
  4. The final drop has something new
  5. Percussion uses the whole stereo field

Learn how to recreate some of the most impactful production decisions using Komplete 15 and the bundle of tools, libraries, and plugins (plus maybe a couple of extras, too).

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1. The kick is king

In almost every single genre of dance music, the kick drum dominates the mix. But in the softer styles of EDM, and especially in organic house, it can be tempting to have melodies and ambiances creep louder and louder until the power and punch of the kick pale compared to the textures of your track. PROFF’s Interpretation of “American Dream” is a thundering reminder that the kick drum is king in club music and should always be mixed and processed accordingly.

PROFF’s kick is warm, round, and punchy, which makes it hit hard on bigger club systems without being overly transient-heavy and “thwacky,” like many of the kicks used in the more commercial genres of EDM. Starting with an incredible kick sample is a given, but after that, you’ll need to lightly process and tweak the kick to get it thumping in the mix as silky smooth as PROFF does, and Battery 4 is the golden ticket for this.

Battery 4 is a powerhouse drum sampler with tools to perfectly dial in the kick (or any drum hit). An easy workflow in Battery 4 would look like this for kicks like the one in this track.

  • Find a killer sample: Battery 4 has many amazing deep house kicks, so you’re all set.
  • Volume shape: Make sure the amplitude envelope is just right. You don’t want a long and stubby tail conflicting with the bass line. Tighten it up with the volume envelope!
  • Pitch: A kick’s vibe, tone, and energy change drastically with just a couple of semi-tones of pitch adjustment. There is no need for tuners here; just use your ears and see if +/- a few tones help the kick’s timbre sink into the sub-bass.
  • Filter: Organic house kicks are often rounder and warmer than other genres. Roll off everything above 5k hZ as a good starting point.

Saturate: A bit of light saturation can reintroduce warmth and roundness, adding a bit more weight and punch to the sample.

Battery 4 offers a suite of tools to dial in the perfect kick drum
Battery 4 offers a suite of tools to dial in the perfect kick drum

2. Texture through spatial effects

If you really listen to this track, there isn’t much going on in terms of melodic content. There are the main plucks, the vocals, the groove, and lighter supporting ear candy elements. And yet it still manages to sound massive and nuanced. How does PROFF manage to get so much out of so few elements?

The answer can be found in the background of the track, as effects like reverb and delay add so much to the texture and soul of this track that they can almost be considered an instrument layer in their own right. And while it can be easy to throw a couple of reverb and delay presets onto a send bus and call it a day, giving these spatial elements a bit of extra TLC can make all the difference between a vanilla-sounding organic house track and one that stays at the top of the charts for months after its release.

Guitar Rig 7 brings an insane toolkit for this exact purpose.

While many producers use it to process their lead synths and other instruments, it’s equally effective as an ambiance generator when used on a send bus. Start with one of the ambient presets and dial in its settings, add even more unique effects to the rack, and send different melodic elements to it so that your pianos, strings, vocals, and more contribute to this dense backdrop of texture running in the background of your track!

Stacking effects in Guitar Rig create unique textures and backdrops for your tracks
Stacking effects in Guitar Rig create unique textures and backdrops for your tracks

3. Subtle automation keeps things fresh over time

Streaming algorithms and dwindling audiences’ attention spans have pushed producers to release shorter and shorter tracks these days. Still, PROFF easily maintains interest and keeps your attention for over seven minutes straight on this track. The subtle X-fact is through automation, which gradually brings elements, both lead and supporting, in and out of focus throughout the arrangement.

Filtering and volume automation are usually the first things producers reach for to accomplish this, but they’re only the starting point. Reverb and delay are great tools for creating distance for things in your mix, and even saturation can add a bit of brightness and bite that can add or detract focus from various elements in your mix.

Not to belabor the toolkit, but Guitar Rig 7 has all these effects packed into a single plugin. It can automate multiple parameters through the macro-controls, giving you incredibly unique and out-of-the-box ways to fluidly bring elements in and out of your mix.

Pro tip: If you’re using filters to introduce new elements, add a limiter afterward with a healthy amount of gain and a medium ceiling to ensure the heavily filtered sound can still grab the listener’s attention as the brighter frequencies slowly sweep to the forefront of the mix over eight or sixteen bars.

Go beyond just volume to bring things in and out of a mix through the use of Guitar Rig’s Macro knobs
Go beyond just volume to bring things in and out of a mix through the use of Guitar Rig’s Macro knobs

4. The final drop has something new

More commercial genres of EDM have the luxury of more formulaic compositions where the second drop section is usually just the same as the first with an extra blast of white noise or maybe the filter cutoffs slightly more open. It’s simple, effective, and works on massive systems. But organic house music often needs to be more nuanced, adding entirely new elements or groove layers to make the final drop hit. For PROFF, the final drop, around 4:35, brings in a brittle, strummed counter-melody to keep the groove fresh and exciting.

From a producer’s perspective, these small little additions can often be the hardest to include since we usually feel like we’ve written ourselves into a corner at this point and can’t possibly drum up something that could crank up the track’s energy that final notch. But that’s where generator tools and plugins like Schema: Light come into play.

Schema: Light is packed with acoustic-inspired patches and presets that generate tons of melodic ideas and sequences for you to cycle through with your core melodic and groove loop playing until you, seemingly by magic, stumble upon the perfect combination of sequences, patches, and riffs that align perfectly for that last little bit of melodic sauce you need.

Pro tip: While fishing for that perfect patch, start locking various parameters that you stumble on, be it scale, riff, or layer, so that you slowly work towards exactly what you’re looking for instead of feeling like you’re shooting in the dark for a random preset to work perfectly.

Schema: Light helps fill in the melodic gaps to add that final layer of nuance and detail
Schema: Light helps fill in the melodic gaps to add that final layer of nuance and detail

5. Percussion that uses the whole stereo field

While listening to the track, especially on headlines, the drums do as much of the heavy lifting as the spatial effects are for establishing how broad this mix is. The percussion is placed across the entire width of the stereo field and moves across the stereo field to create an incredibly three-dimensional mix.

This serves several purposes, one of which you may have yet to consider.

The first and most obvious one is that the percussion contributes to the three-dimensional world of the mix. With smaller hits playing on the extreme lefts and rights of the blend, percussions feel like they’re coming at you from all sides.

But this is where it gets interesting. By giving each hit its own space in the stereo field instead of stacking them down the center, you don’t need as much volume to make each hit impactful. Many producers keep drums centered to make them stand out, but spreading them across the stereo field lets you achieve this without pushing the volume as high.

Using the mixer feature in a library like Session Percussionist, you can reduce the volume of the hits on the left and right by two, three, or even more decibels and still have the drums pop like you need. This simple step saves valuable headroom for the mastering stage, which allows the overall master to sound even punchier, louder, and more club-friendly!

Use the mixer on Session Percussionist to get the most out of a drum group’s stereo image
Use the mixer on Session Percussionist to get the most out of a drum group’s stereo image

Connecting the dots

Topping organic house like PROFF’s reimagine of “American Dream” shows that it’s not a single magic trick that creates the warm, punchy atmosphere and club-ready feel, but rather a combination of many subtle approaches over the course of the track.

Often, it’s hundreds of small, delicate mixing decisions that come together to create this nuanced, texturally rich style of production that hits hard in the club as well as for casual listening. That’s why this genre is so popular right now. Hopefully, this article has given you effective strategies you can implement in your own tracks to achieve similar results as PROFF did in his reimagining of Jakartta’s “American Dream.”

Check out production bundles like Komplete 15 to add to your arsenal everything you need to make soft, warm, and club-ready tracks like this one, and hopefully, you will start seeing similar results in your own releases!

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