Frank Arnold - Light And Deceit (WIP, Downtempo/Chill-Pop)

[4damind]

Work in progress...
The last songs are about to be released, so it will go on
An idea I'm currently working on. Something along the lines of Paul Hardcastle (his smooth jazz/chillout direction) and Schiller (German chillout project), so more "classical".
BPM: 118

To make it not too long a short selection of the stuff I've used:
- Cubase 13 Pro (running on a Mac Mini M2)

Nord Lead 2x, Wurli V2 (Arturia), Spire, Repro-5, Osiris, Omnisphere, Model 72, Absynth, Kontakt Alicia Keys, Groove Agent, Dune 3, Diva, Ana2, UAD Oxide, SSL Native Channel, Blackhole, H-Delay, VMR, Echoboy, Panman, Fazorton2, VPS Minichain, Vocal Rider, VTM, VSM3, Ultrareverb, UAD Pultec/LA2A, The Glue, SPL Iron, Silk Vocal, Sibiliance, Little Plate, Kickstart2, Gatekeeper...

Click me!

Light And Deceit

[Lodger]

Cool stuff I found an idea you might want to explore is looking at syncopation and the lead synth. Downbeats are very heavily accented and shifting some of the notes could add a lot of flavor. Also, you might want to consider using your lead Synth to do counterpoint w vocal.

[4damind]

Thanks Lodger
The pluck sound is actually syncopated and is also a bit of a counterpoint to the vocals. I'm always a little bit afraid that it will sound too overloaded, so the lead sound is more in the "gaps" of the vocals. But I know what you mean, it could interact more with the vocals.

[4damind]

Small screenvideo...

Light And Deceit