How It Was Made: Late Checkout – Made In Paris
Late Checkout is the new collaboration from Creeds and Neika, built from years of working together, trading ideas on the road, and shaping music in the small pockets of time that touring life gives you. Made In Paris came out of that rhythm, and it set the tone for a project built on instinct, high energy, and the kind of ideas that appear when you barely have time to capture them.
This edition of How It Was Made takes a closer look at how they approached the track. Serum 2 shaped the main identity of the record, while simple processing chains in Ableton gave the lead room to grow into the hook they were aiming for. The pair also leaned on a Nord Piano for pads and brought in subtle hardware moments that helped connect the pieces without overcomplicating the workflow.
The feature breaks down their exact decisions inside Serum, how they shaped the lead, why the sound design came together the way it did, and the production mindset behind it all. It also covers the creative choices that pushed the track toward its final form and the small techniques they rely on to keep their style tight and clear in a fast moving hard techno environment.
Serum 2
Serum is and will probably ever be the best synth in our opinion to craft sonorities for any genres you can imagine.
Unlike many plug-ins that could do the same thing, Serum is quite easy to understand, at least more visually understandable than many others.
The new version features 5 sound sources that you can combine to create your very own sound; the cool thing about it is that even if you don’t know in depth how it works you can still try messing around with the parameters and ending with something cool.
The built in presets and the huge amount of external ones from sound companies are also so great if you don’t want to spend months trying to learn everything it can do !
In this project we mainly used it for the main lead sound with a preset called “ Acid & Trance” from the AOEH2 Preset pack. We needed something wide and powerful to empower to melody we had in mind and this one was the perfect mix between clean sonority and stereo effect.
The preset sounded so good by itself that we didn’t tweak the inside that much. In Ableton, we just added what we would call the “go-to sound goodizer” that consists of a simple reverb before an Ableton OTT with a limiter at the end.
I use this easy to go plug in chain to enhance every synth I have to use in my projects :
In terms of automation we kept it very simple by just using a high pass filter on the main output of Serum when we needed some fade in/out in the mix.
The main job as been to export it in audio in order to add some little cuts with differents fxs all over the track, for example here with an exported reverb fading in the actual synth followed by some audio chops to keep it alive and glitchy :
In the hardtechno scene Serum is being used for almost every aspect of the genre.
From kicks to leads going by the infamous screeches, there are infinite ways to create these sonorities just with Serum.
For beginners I would never recommend enough to simply go on YouTube and check tutorials on how it’s made ; we’ve learned this way and still keep learning from other people’s skills !
But let’s say you want to make your own screech :
- You can start by using a simple saw wave and cranking the unison up to 16 voices. You can also add noise with the noise generator.
- In the fx session there is a cool trick to use : You can just put an Equalizer before some heavy distortion and crank up some random frequency in the mid/high mid ranges and it will give this over saturated effect we’re looking for screeches. Adding some reverb and multiband compression afterwards is also good to make the right frequencies pop up in the mix.
- One last trick I’ve learned for more interesting sound is to add a very fast lfo to the Fine tune of the wave from. Here LFO2 is set at a rate of 45.2Hz and assigned to the FIN of the OSCA. It really gives that movement to the screech that will make the difference !
- This is the very basis of a way to make a screech, you can also try to add an other oscillator, add more distortion or weird fxs outside of Serum. Good thing about this overload of fxs in the DAW is that afterwards when you change one little parameter in Serum it will make a whole new sound and you can have infinite ideas for your projects !
HARDWARE SYNTH :
I don’t really use hardware gears in our production. I’m not particularly looking for this “analog sound” to be honest ; I really feel that we can do the same with software as long as you know how to use it.
I still own a Moog Sequential 37 because back in the days I was thinking it could be a good gear to make some nice bass. And it is, really, but in the end I still find myself tweaking Serum or other software 95% of the time !
That’s the advice I would give to new comers : Don’t overthink by assuming that you may not have the right gears or hardwares. You don’t need it to make super good music ; just use the tools you have, use it right, in depth, and you will for sure succeed where many will fail !
I also own a Nord Piano which have some really awesome banks when it comes to piano or more acoustic sonorities. We actually used it to make some piano pads in “Made In Paris”.
I also use it on stage when I play live.
Quick Fire Hot Takes on the Scene + Production
Hot Take 1 : There’s a duality in the hardtechno scene : From one side it has never been easier to produce it with the crazy amount of dedicated sample packs or presets and on the other it’s getting harder and harder to stand out amongst other producers. Thinking outside of the box is always a good idea.
Hot Take 2 : Don’t fall for the trap of wanting to sound as good as your favorite artists. Keep creating and exploring, even if it doesn’t sound as good as you wish, is the best way to evolve.
Hot Take 3 : Of course paying attention to socials is crucial these days but never forget to spare most of your time in production ; socials should be a career helper, not a breaker.
Hot Take 4 : Keep it simple, don’t add elements to fill blank ; instead find a strong hook that drives the track entirely. Having 10 layered channels for your synths doesn’t necessarily make it good.
Hot Take 5 : Trending might be the fastest way for people to hear your work but it doesn’t build a career. Stay focused on it and don’t look for the trend : if it comes, it comes.
