Over the past seven years, The Disco Fries—the New York City-based duo comprised of Nick Ditri and Danny Boselovic—have become one of EDM’s most buzzed-about acts. With a signature sound that bends the conventional rules of the standard dance template, the pair has achieved success with a series of raging singles both on their own and as part of Fries & Shine with Tommie Sunshine.
Last year, the pair hit it even further out of the park with a pair co-productions on Tiesto’s A Town Called Paradise LP, contributing to “Shimmer” and the smash crossover hit “Wasted” featuring Matthew Koma.
Fresh off the success of the collaborations, the pair is focused on the release Final Fantasy-insired “Ramuh” on their Liftoff Recordings imprint. Layered with uplifting melodies, 8-bit chords, and a heaping dose of big progressive drops, the track—out now on Beatport—is a stunning electro anthem that’s ready for stages everywhere. To celebrate the track’s release, the Disco Fries revealed five production tips to help elevate your productions to the next level.
Layer presets together to create your own unique sound.
Not everyone has time to design all of their sounds from scratch, and it can slow your momentum during the creative process. Sometimes we’ll take three or four different presets and send them all to a bus so we can process them together like one sound.
Mess around with the order of plugins in your channel strip.
You’d be surprised what a huge difference jumbling up the order of effects can make on your sound. Putting reverb before heavy compression in your chain will sound drastically different than putting it in after. We like to experiment by moving effects up and down the chain, looking for “happy accidents.”
Save everything and stay organized!
When we’re in a time crunch it’s helpful to have soundsets we’ve made from our previous projects saved and easily accessible. If you’ve already put in the time to create a dope combination of sounds why reinvent the wheel every time? Same goes for drums and FX.
Make sure everything has its own space.
Pull up your spectrum analyzer on every track and—more importantly—use your ears. Does your vocal or lead synth have low end in it that is translating in your subwoofer? It’s likely not necessary and just clogging up your mix. Same goes for most percussion and acoustic instruments.
Create dynamics to keep your listener engaged.
If you are copying over a chorus, try adding additional synths and percussion the second time around so your track climaxes. If you’ve banged your head against the wall to get your choruses to pop out in the mix but they just don’t seem to, try automating the gain on your master out so it dips down (around -2dB usually works) a bit during the verses and then is full on during the hook.
Stream “Ramuh” below.
