Being a DJ or a producer doesn't only mean sampling hip hop beats, jazz, reggae or any other sort of recognizable music. RAC was able to take a sample from that nostalgic 56k sound that modems usually make. The sounds made in the track "56k" are beautiful, ethereal, and dreamy. You would have never known that this glitch pop was made with the sometimes annoyingly loud crackling sounds of a 56k modem.
RAC described the technical process below:
I made this entire track using only one sample.
The dial-up sound that so many of us remember from browsing the internet in the early days.
It’s not really meant to be a real song, more like an exercise in simplicity. It’s very easy to get stuck using the same sounds over and over again, so I do things like this from time to time to break the routine.
I wanted to share the actual session file so you can look a little deeper if you’re so inclined. You’ll need Ableton 9 Suite (or at least Live 9 + Sampler). I’m using UAD reverbs, so you’ll have to re-create those on your own.
I sampled the initial tone and created the main melodies with that. The “drums” are made using the noise section. The kicks are pitched wayy down and I used a filter to give it a nice 200/300 bump. Snares are pitched higher and I used reverb to give it a tail. The hi hats are pitched normally but they’re different enough from the snare that it makes sense. The bass is pitched down and heavily filtered to give it a sine wave kind of sound.
If you want to hear where the original sample, click here.
Stream the gorgeous piece of work below: