Robby East’s latest venture into melodic house, “Overwater,” featuring the vocals of Jodie Knight, signifies a remarkable return to Lane 8’s label This Never Happened.
During the creation of “Overwater,” Robby East utilized a range of powerful highly accessible synthesizers and plugins, each contributing distinct elements to the track’s rich soundscape. His meticulous approach to sound design, incorporating techniques like compression, EQing, and effects such as Echoboy and ValhallaVintageVerb, further elevates the track’s immersive nature.
The best part about hearing Robby break down his favorite plugins in his own words is knowing that there isn’t some incredibly expensive synth that’s giving him his secret sauce sound. You can achieve similar results, so let’s let the maestro himself unpack how he uses his three favorite tools, along with a couple of quick-fire tips for making the melodic house as well.
These production methods and insightful suggestions for crafting melodic house tracks—such as maintaining captivating chord progressions, exploring breakbeat rhythms, and employing strategic EQing—show a master at his craft. So take a listen (or multiple listens) to Robby’s latest release so you know what our end goal is, and then let’s dive in…
DIVA
This one has probably been mentioned on here many times before: Diva.
Diva is a really powerful software synth that can emulate analog synths really well. It might be a little more limited compared to Serum and Vital in some ways, but it makes up for that with its warm analog sound and the possibility to pick and choose modules from famous synthesizers and build your own, perfect analog synthesizer emulation.
Diva is my go-to synth for most things. In ‘Overwater’ I used it for the main plucks, pads, keys and all the atmospheric sounds. (I tend to use Serum for bass because it gives me a little more control.) The main pluck patch is one I use in a few other tracks of mine, like Start Over, Make It Easy, and Center Of Gravity, although they are tweaked and adjusted for every track. It’s a square, saw and pulse pluck with some noise. This plays along with a Serum layer that’s just a very wide sine wave pluck. These both get processed as a group, which is nothing fancy: a compressor, OTT, EQing, Echoboy, and ValhallaVintageVerb.
One of the most important ways for me to make a relatively simple sound come alive is by playing around with the velocity. For this main lead, I’ve linked the velocity to the cutoff and the envelopes. This way, you can really put a lot more emotion into a melody by emphasizing certain notes and making others softer. You can also link the velocity to other parameters and be creative with it; you might get cool results.
Learn More About Dive Here
Imagiro Piano 2
This is a really nice, high quality piano plugin with a lot of control. I generally like softer pianos where you can hear the felt, hammers and pedals for a more organic sound. This one has separate controls for those and is really easy to use. Another really cool feature is the ‘tone’ slider which completely changes the tone of the piano. I think it does some formant shifting on the piano signal but without the artifacts you would get if you try to do this yourself.
The imagiro piano is the main piano sound in Overwater. I’ve only done some EQing, stereo widening, compressing and added some reverb to it. Then I layered it with some subtle synth keys and pads. The piano + all the layers get processed together as a group again with some additional EQing, compressing and Trackspacer to make room for the vocal and lead synth when those come in.
Using the right VST can really make or break a piano part in a track for me. This one has a real human feel to it. Definitely play around with different velocities, turn the hammers up and try turning the tone down for a warmer sound – works great for melodic house and chill stuff.
Learn More About Imagiro Piano 2 Here
Crystallizer
Crystallizer is a granular echo plugin by SoundToys. It’s basically a delay but it only affects a slice of the signal and modulates and pitches it in various ways. This way you can easily create a lot of texture and detail in a track and keep it evolving and interesting.
Overwater heavily relies on atmospheric sounds and I’ve used Crystallizer for a bunch of them. For this track I grabbed a preset called ‘Akwards Pong Hecho’ (?) and put it on a bus with some reverb. Then I copied that bus 5 more times, every time with a subtle variation in the main parameters in Crystallizer so I’m left with 6 send buses, all with a slightly different setting. Now I can automate short bits of the lead melody to be sent to the Crystallizer buses and emphasize certain notes with textures.
Crystallizer is a really versatile plug-in, but besides using it ‘regularly’ as an effect insert or as a constant send, I’d definitely recommend trying to send only a short bit of an instrument – so 1 vowel of a vocal, 1-2 note(s) of a melody or 1 little fill from a drum loop – to a bus with Crystallizer on it with a high feedback (recycle) to emphasize that part.
Learn More About Crystallizer Here
Quick Tips To Make A Melodic House Track Like Robby East
Tip #1:
Try putting The God Particle on your master, it brings in a lot of energy in the high end.
Tip #2:
A breakbeat instead of a regular 4-to-the-floor beat can put the song in a different context and change up the whole vibe.
Tip #3:
With melodic house, the chord progression is basically the whole fundament of the track. When writing one, make sure it’s interesting enough to repeat over the course of the entire track but isn’t so complicated that it gets boring after hearing it a lot of times.
Tip #4:
Match EQing can be really powerful. You can use it for mastering by matching the curve of your master to a professional master and you can use it for separating kick from bass (by removing areas of your bass where the kick is present or the other way around).
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
