Let’s create some high-energy Mad Tribe style Psytrance leads
Mad Tribe style Psytrance leads will have your tracks flying high with psychedelic sounds.
Mad Tribe is the high-energy collaboration project between two very well established Psytrance producers, Mad Maxx and Space Tribe.
Both Mad Maxx and Space Tribe have been involved in the scene since the early days, refining their sound over the past few decades. Their solo projects were always more on the “Full-On” side of the spectrum, however their collaboration project, Mad Tribe – formed in 2005, showcased sounds from the edgier side of the spectrum. The combination of their sounds was something unique, electrifying leads and super high-energy basslines.
Today’s sound design tutorial focuses in on a sound that Mad Tribe use often in their tracks, that high-energy robotic lead sound.
Let’s call them the Mad Tribe style Psytrance leads.
The technique I used to recreate this type of lead sound is layering two synth sounds and processing them together. The first layer is made of a Sawtooth wave with some FM (Frequency Modulation) applied. I then applied a band-pass filter to create a sweeping effect when we tweak the cutoff.
The second layer is used to fill up the frequency range when the filter of the first layer sweeps too high or low, I like to use regular Sawtooth waves with some unison applied, it really fills the space.
Now let’s move onto processing these layered sounds…
When layering lead sounds, I like to use some light multiband distortion or saturation, to warm up or smoothen certain frequency ranges in the resulting layers. Distortion can also help to bolster the edginess of the sound, especially when creating these FM type leads that Mad Tribe use so often. Frequency Modulation can sometimes result in rather complex waveforms, that can be harsh or clawing, and processing them with some saturation or distortion can smoothen that out.
Creating groups can also be a great way of controlling a single filter sweep on various layers at the same time, I didn’t go through it in this video, however I feel it’s worthy of a quick mention. I also applied some light delay on the group to add to the overall spacy effect and bring the layers together.
Here’s a link to the tutorial video for an in-depth walkthrough of the process to create Mad Tribe style Psytrance leads:
