Quelxtro

I decided to do something a bit different for my first track of 2010. Instead of writing an orchestral song, I went with an entirely electronic song, in this case, Trance (although other genres may have slipped in). In keeping with the tradition of naming my trance songs with something similar to “xtro or zo” in the name. I couldn’t come up with a good word to modify, so I randomly added Quel to the beginning of xtro, and came up with Quelxtro. Take a listen:

Quelxtro

Quelxtro was my first attempt at using entirely self-created modulation. Instead of relying on the instrument plugin to do modulation of panning, filters, etc, I simply used track plugins, and did it all myself. Even though it takes more time, the result sounds better, and more professional.

Most of the instruments were either free plugins, or came with Cubase Studio 5. For the main leads and bass, I used Superwave P8 (Great free synth for trance-style leads). The pads were mainly Synth1, with some free presets I downloaded. The main percussion (kick, hi hat, snare, cymbal), was from drum-kits for HalionOne. And the electronic sweeps and hits were included with Cubase Studio 5.

However, some percussion (big sweeping drum hits, and glitch-like effect), was from Stormdrum 2.