How It’s Made: Josh Teed – Taking It All In EP

Josh Teed, a visionary artist who seamlessly marries the worlds of experimental bass and instrumental finesse, breaks new group with his latest EP, “Taking It All In.” This EP represents a culmination of his experiences and artistic exploration over the last five years, offering listeners a glimpse into his evolution as a producer and musician. 

Delving into the creation process of “Taking It All In,” it becomes clear that his approach to production is both meticulous and innovative. Utilizing a combination of FL Studio, Arturia Analog Lab, Thermal by Output, Fruity Granulizer, and UVI World Suite, he crafts a sound uniquely his own.

 From the analog warmth of synth patches to the crisp distortion of bass lines and the intricate textures created through granular synthesis, each plugin plays a pivotal role in the EP’s sound design. These tools, combined with my creative vision, result in an EP that reflects my artistic journey and is a testament to the endless possibilities within electronic music production.

FL Studio

It all starts with the DAW. FL Studio will forever be my favorite to work in just purely for my comfort level in it. I use FL for everything from live recording, to sound design, mixing and everything in between!

Arturia Analog Lab

This plugin is one of my favorites for analog synth sounds. It’s a VST with hundreds and hundreds of analog synth patches modeled after the original hardware synths.

I used this for the majority of the soft synth sounds in ‘Taking It All In’ including everything in the second section of ‘Just Breathe’. A lot of the pad, pluck, and lead sounds you hear in ‘Taking It All In’ are from Analog Lab. I really love the authentic analog feel of the sounds you get from this one.

Thermal by Output

One of my all time favorite distortion tools out there, Thermal is a distortion VST for people who like to get real deep in the nitty gritty (like myself lol). It’s a multi band distortion that lets you select the frequency range on each band, and use LFO’s automate any and all parameters of the distortion, it also has some really nice effects in the VST like reverb/delay/bitcrush that I almost prefer over some of the dedicated VSTs for those effects!

In ‘Taking It All In’ I used Thermal for distortion on most of the bass synths, leads, and some drums. I really love using this plugin for the crisp high end it gives sounds.

Fruity Granulizer

One of the most simple yet powerful tools in FL Studio. Granulizer takes any sample and lets you break it into individual bits (grains) and adjust how quickly, slowly, and randomly it plays back.

I used Granulizer on just about every track on the EP for a variety of things including, ambient textures, glitch FX, transitions and risers, and bass sound design. It’s so fun to create a crazy one shot sound and run it through Granulizer and see what you can create!

UVI World Suite

This one is kind of an honorable mention. I’ve used World Suite for a long time, it’s a playable sample library of instruments from all around the world, broken down region by region.

I used this one primarily in Autumn Breeze for all the instruments in the drop sections. I also used it for some of the textural sounds in ‘Taking It All In.’ I’ve used this one to a heavier extent on ‘The Journey East,’ but it’s such a handy plugin I had to give it a shoutout here.