In this video, I’m going to show how to rough up the clean sounds with the use of saturation, distortion and tape emulations.

Please make sure you are listening to the video with full range speakers or headphones to hear the results accurately.

You are going to learn how to:
1. Inject some 70s & 80s character into the clean sound, with the use of VHS Audio Degradation Suite plugin for NI Reaktor.
2. Saturate bass using Ableton’s Vinyl Distortion.
3. Apply the tape emulation plugin for the drum group.
4. Add grit and sonic interest to the melodic loop using FabFilter’s Saturn. (Audiotent’s Saturn Expansion pack)
5. Use Ableton’s saturator plugin to shape sounds in an extreme way.

This video was created inside Ableton Live, but the same techniques can be applied to any DAW.

Let us know in the comments what are your favourite ways to add dirt and character to the clean sounds.

The sounds used inside this music production tutorial are from our following products:

Subzero (Moog Sub 37 Presets): https://www.audiotent.com/presets/subzero/
System (Eurorack Modular Series): https://www.audiotent.com/samples/system/
Carbon (Percussion One-Shots): https://www.audiotent.com/samples/carbon/