How It Was Made: ROHO – Just Out Of Reach (Nettwerk)
ROHO, the LA-based producer and 3D designer behind the new LP Muscle Memory, leans into feel, motion, and real-time physicality across the project, especially on the standout cut “Just Out Of Reach.” Finger drumming, swing, distortion, and raw textures guide the track forward. But behind every decision is a curated toolkit of plugins that helped sculpt its sound.
Keep Up with ROHO: Instagram | TikTok | X | YouTube
We caught up with ROHO for a full plugin breakdown of Just Out Of Reach and a few quickfire creative tips in the latest edition of How It Was Made. Every plugin he listed comes with a specific use case and a personal takeaway—and even his praise sounds like it was mixed down with no presets. Here’s the breakdown.
Addictive Drums
AD is a virtual drum instrument that blows every other competitor out of the water (no bias). It gives you access to multi‑sampled acoustic drum kits recorded in renowned studios, and allows for a deep level of editing and effects on your drum sounds. Most importantly for me, it allows you to emulate real drum kits to an insanely close degree all while retaining MIDI editability.
On Just Out Of Reach, the personal focal point of the track to me is the drum grooves. I used a combination of hand-played drums and edited patterns to achieve a rhythm section that keeps the track moving at a high pace, with a few different break downs that open the track up in a special way. The kit preset I used for this song was “The Bull Kit” by the legend Orenji Soul at Chiometry Audio. It already had a raw and punchy sound that I love, and then by using a combination of EQ/distortion/soft clipping on top of the drums, I was able to lock in on a super in-your-face sound that set the tone for the track.
I think anyone that wishes they had access to a real drum kit could benefit from using Addictive Drums. It allows you to work with organic sounding acoustic sounds in such a smooth way that you can forget you’re really just using a VST. By combining AD with a drumpad, I’ve learned a TON about the importance of velocity, swing, and unique pattern creation – all of which has elevated my music in a way that I sought after for a long time. And btw…this endorsement is 100% organic I swear !!
Trackspacer
Trackspacer is a sidechain-driven EQ plugin featuring a 32‑band filter that listens to one track (via sidechain) and dynamically carves out an inverse EQ curve on another. It gives you deep controls over how you create space in your mix, and all through a super simple design. Iit’s especially effective for audio elements that need clean interplay—like vocals, basses, kicks, and synths—without the mess of manual frequency carving.
I use Trackspacer on EVERYTHING but it was especially important to this track. Because of how intense the rhythm section is on Just Out Of Reach, I needed to create space by ducking certain longer release/sustained sounds out of the way of the drums. The sidechain effect is definitely one of my favorite tools in mixing, and I almost always use Trackspacer in a way that adds this “breathing” quality to my beats, where there are noticeable ups and downs in the presence of all melodic instruments.
I think Trackspacer is a useful plugin for literally anyone that makes music. Whether you want to carve out space in your mix for a more technically accurate sound or just side chain a synth to a kick at 108BPM and damn near instantly have a bop, Trackspacer really makes it so simple. One of my favorite parameters to play with is the attack – I always find that affecting this makes the biggest differences in achieving the swing I want from my sidechaining.
Wavesfactory Cassette
Wavesfactory Cassette is a cassette tape emulation plugin. Its designed to recreate everything we love about the analog tape sound within your DAW. It is really good at adding warmth, cohesion, and movement—perfect for pads, vocals, drums, synths, or entire mix busses.
I use Cassette all throughout Just Out Of Reach. I typically like to apply it to emulations of real instruments (violins, piano, rhodes) because those are all situations in which I think the instruments benefit most from tape effects. One of my favorite aspects of the plugin is the settings that allow you to control random snaps/dropouts of the tape, which end up giving you (on occasion) really organic sounding “errors” in your beats, which add a lot of character and unpredictability.
Other producers could definitely find use cases for Cassette in their music if they are fans of the tape sound. I’ve learned that its really easy to overdo it with tape emulation and sometimes you end up pushing it so hard that the effects become obviously fake and detract from your sound…so my biggest word of advice is to learn to find sweet spots based on what track you’re working on.
Guitar Rig 6
Guitar Rig 6 is a powerful toolkit for guitar tone and effects. It has a diverse selection of effects, amps, and other tools you can affect your music with. It also comes with some ridiculous out of the box presets for my lazy folks out there (Im right there with you).
One of my favorite things about GR6 is actually to use it on everything but guitars. I’ve found that theres not a single melodic instrument that can’t be made to sound cool with this plugin. On Just Out Of Reach, I used GR6 sparingly (only on e-piano and strings) but in a way that added a bit of warmth and space to the sounds. Flipping through the presets is usually where I find my inspiration from first with this plugin – the deep level of fine tuning that you can do after that is what really brings things to life for me.
For any producer that is a fan of effects chains and difficult-to-reverse-engineer sounds, GR6 is a crazy tool. I’ve learned with this plugin that you can always go deeper and add one more amp…one more effect…one more pedal – but finding simple arrays of your favorite settings is the best way to not become overwhelmed by the choices. When it comes to making really raw, texturally rich music, the character that you can get from amp emulators is bar none.
Quick Fire Tips:
Tip #1: Drums are everything. If you’re not moving before you add a single melodic instrument…get back to the kit!
Tip #2: Instruments like violins, piano, e-pianos are everywhere in music for a reason. Don’t limit yourself if you dont have access to the real versions of these instruments – emulators will save you!
Tip #3: Music that sounds too pretty is the enemy of immersion. Lean into “mistakes”,off-the-grid time, dissonance, etc.if you want to create something really raw
