Emily (Tusks) Bringing Out Ether
with MiniFuse
Emily’s music project Tusks abounds with an etheric darkness stemming from romantic mystery and high musical sensibility. We visited the London-based dark alternative pop producer to see how she layered a track from her latest EP with the MiniFuse, weaving a tapestry of emotional vocals with warm synth lines, melodic guitar, and sandy percussion.
Building from prophecy
The song Emily builds using MiniFuse 2 is called ‘Is This Real?’. The hardware she has at hand consists of her laptop, a MiniFuse, her guitar, and a MicroFreak. The direct audio from the MicroFreak is going through MiniFuse, as well as a vocal channel going in. Simplicity allows for her creative flow:
I think having a really intuitive and simple setup, which allows you to do everything that you need to do straight away, enhances that creative process, because you're not worrying about having to plug things in and out.
MiniFuse 2 and 4 come with MIDI ins and outs, so you can easily send and receive MIDI information for flawless production.
The first layer she initiates her composition with is the warm, voluminous chords of Prophet V. ‘A lot of my process is sitting down and creating a repeating phrase, and then using that as the base structure, and then the song builds from there.’ Generating a musical skeleton of a song can be daunting, but when you can rely on intuitive hardware and software, the inspiration can flow in a closer, more immediate way.
Emily’s using MicroFreak as a MIDI controller to control the virtual instrument:
With the versatility of the MicroFreak, it’s a really creative way to make music.
The Prophet V instantly fills the room with authentic warmth. Emulating analog sound is what Arturia prides itself in, and Prophet V is an iconic synth that deserved to be fully honored:
I actually recorded the original part on an actual Prophet Five, and playing the Prophet [V] virtual synth back, I can't really hear much difference. I think it sounds really, really realistic.
Of course, there’s always more to our selection. A curated choice of expertly emulated synths is a reflection of Arturia’s artist-centric ethos:
You've got the whole Analog Lab collection there at your fingertips, so you can just be fully creative without having any boundaries.
Grainy beat
The next layer we hear is a glitchy drum loop that instantly adds a sense of mystical, spacey urgency that propels the song forward.
I really like creating stuff that's maybe a little bit dystopian. I think that's kind of why I'm more towards sounds like the MS 20 sound on the MicroFreak, things that are floating.
The brittle scratch effect of the percussion is processed through MiniFuse with pristine accuracy thanks to expert build.
Ease of use is central to immediate workflow as well:
The MiniFuse is great. I think the fact that it's got like the MIDI ports, as well as the audio ports, is really useful - especially for a set-up like mine, where I'm controlling quite a lot of synthesis by MIDI.’ With MiniFuse, you can record via USB-C blessed with low latency, not needing an extra power source.
Heavenly messages
With a 110dB dynamic range and 0,001% total harmonic distortion of the MiniFuse, Emily’s angelic yet defined vocals are recorded with crystal-clear accuracy. She’s using the Pre 1973 preamp, one of Arturia’s powerful effects included with the MiniFuse.
I really like putting [Pre 1973] on my vocals to just warm them up and give them a bit of character.
The doubly layered melodic guitar lines are a bliss to record and witness. They add a sense of journey, travelling slowly and far into a soothing distance. With a reliable audio interface, the journey of creating that is as easy as it gets:
The MiniFuse has got some really good functions, like the signal boost for the guitar. If you're DIY-ing your guitar straight in the mix between the USB and the input, that’s really useful as well, and also the extra USB port on the back.
Bountiful software
MiniFuse comes with a host of creative software titles. The ‘Is This Real?’ track is getting layered in Ableton Live Lite, a user-friendly staple of the industry relied on by beginners and pros alike:
I created this on Ableton, which is always a really intuitive way to create a track. There were quite a few of the effects, which were super useful for this kind of track.
Arturia FX are also part of the software bundle MiniFuse comes with. Besides the Pre 1973, Emily favors the Rev PLATE-140 reverb, which she used on quite a few of the instruments in the track for an ‘atmospheric reverb.’ The Delay TAPE-201 echo was something she experimented with for the first time, ‘which was really fun to mess around with, especially with percussion to give it a little bit more of a rhythmic edge.’ The last part of the FX included is the Chorus JUN-6 analog chorus, sitting very well with Tusks’ musical style:
The Juno Chorus has actually been a favorite of mine for a while now. I really liked putting that on, especially like the MicroFreak line that I recorded, just to give it a bit more character.
When it comes to MiniFuse’s sound palette, you can rely on hundreds of keyboard and synth presets plucked straight from Arturia’s award-winning V Collection suite. The possibilities are endless.
Freak it up
As the song keeps building up, the magic comes together. The MicroFreak makes an entrance as an eerie element thanks to the innovative way the artist uses it: ‘I really wanted to recreate a synth like the MS-20 using it. And so patching the matrix, I had the envelope controlling the pitch rather than the keys to kind of give it that eerily, moving feel to it.’ The result is a soundscape bathing in a haunting, meaningful calm with a strong sense of story.
Then I had an LFO on the cutoff, which I was making faster and slower as the track went on. It's great because you can really build the synth right from the basis.
Making authentic sonic vision possible is at the heart of Arturia’s mission. That’s why we make gear that pushes the possibilities of anyone’s creativity. With MicroFreak, you can achieve of sense of multiplying your producer self:
With a MicroFreak, it's also like having almost another band member, because you've got so much functionality with building sequences with having the arpeggiator, and then all the different programming you can do with the matrix. It is kind of like having an extra person there, who you can create with. It's such a good compositional tool actually.
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