Quality over quantity is the name of the game for James Stanley, AKA LEGATO. Since launching his artist project in the latter part of 2019, he’s only averaged a few releases every single year. Still, the small amount of music that he has released has landed on massive labels like Eton Messy, Anjunadeep, All Day I Dream, and others.
We are almost coming up on the halfway point for 2024, and we finally are getting his third track of the year to be released, with his first release being a two-track EP called Clockworks in early April.
So to figure out the tools he uses to create music as unique, groovy, and textural as LEGATO does, we invited him for another of the latest iterations of our How it Was Made series. So listen to the track below a few times over so that your ears get used to its sound, and then let’s dive into the sauce of how “Either Way” was made.
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“Either Way” is the first track from my upcoming ‘Midnight Rendezvous EP,’ released last week via LabelWorx, starting a new sonic chapter in my career. When starting a track, I always begin by layering a kick as the foundation. I then build the harmonic and melodic components around it, sidechaining any samples, loops, or instruments to the kick to create a pump and feel from the get go. My go-to sidechain plugin is Cableguy’s Kickstart. While Ableton’s compressors are great for sidechaining, I prefer Kickstart for its intuitive interface and presets. Adjusting the mix is incredibly easy and effective – it just works!
Kickstart
The track centres around a beautiful layered brass/string ensemble loop I discovered. I sped it up from 90 to 128 BPM and added a swung groove that mirrors the percussion lines. Although I thought about transposing the loop into another key, A# minor sounded perfect, so I stuck with it. In the break, you can hear another loop from the same pack – that fitted nicely and features just Strings.
Sub Bass
Next came the bass. I wanted a simple subby bassline to avoid distraction from the main brass/string loop and the other harmonic elements around it. Despite often using my Novation Peak (hardware) for subs, I opted for Ableton’s amazing stock VST, Analog. The bassline shifts the brass loop’s home key, giving it a new tonal centre of F minor.
Novation Peak
I then turned to my Novation Peak, which I picked up last year as my first dive into studio hardware. I’ve been captivated by its capabilities and I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface of what I can do with it! I created a patch (which I lost – thankfully I recorded it in the project huh…) to add some movement behind everything.
This two-bar swell chord, which , complements the brass/string loop and offers an alternate sonic focus. Combined with the bassline, it creates that tension and emotion, which I strive to purvey in my mus
Vocal Chain
The vocal came next, sourced from Splice. I wanted a sultry R&B female vocal line, and I found the perfect one, featuring lyrics that formed the track’s title. This track is a bit of a tribute to Burial, one of my all-time favourite producers, who often uses old R&B vocals and inspired by him, I wanted to bring some of his style into “Either Way”.
In the vocal chain, I applied bus reverb and delay, EQ, sharing, saturation, and filtering to blend it seamlessly with the rest of the mix. I love the original autotune movement in the vocal sample, it’s enchanting.
Drums + FX
Lastly, the drums and FX. For some reason, drums (other than the kick) always come last for me. I’m usually so focussed on texture, harmonic, and melodic elements that I sometimes forget I’m making dance music! I chopped up a break and added a shuffling shaker groove.
Nectar Aura
I use a Nectar Aura for drums, a hardware drum pad controller with a handy plugin for Ableton, making beatmaking super intuitive. The pads are decent for a £250 gizmo, and the knocks are useful too for automating soft synth parameters. I then used a transition sample for the FX – not gonna pretend this was a really intricate part of the production process, it just worked!
In terms of mixing, I take a top-down approach, working from the stereo bus to individual tracks. I group tracks by type – drums, instruments, bass, FX, and vocals. Usually, I have three reverb buses (small, medium, large) and three delay buses (delay, echo, ping pong). However, for “Either Way,” I used just two: one medium room reverb and one delay. A crucial production tip I’ve recently learned is to sidechain reverb and delay buses too. It transforms a song’s sound and removes a lot of mud when it comes to mixing.
Platform M+
I use an Icon Platform M+ to help me sculpt the final premaster. It’s an awesome MIDI control surface with motorised faders that’s super compact. The screen above it also displays your channel names, so you always know what individual track you’re working on. The transport controls are great on it and it’s just a super hardware tool to use throughout the production process.
Ozone
Finally, after polishing the mix, I applied iZotope’s Ozone 10 mastering plugin, which I used sparingly to fine-tune the overall EQ, imagining and dynamic EQ.
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.
