How It Was Made: Moog Diez – Will Soon Be A Woman (Ibrahim Maalouf)
Moog Diez steps into a unique creative space with this remix of Ibrahim Maalouf’s Will Soon Be A Woman. The record blends minimal house foundations with jazz accents, trumpet-driven phrasing, and a groove-first arrangement that sits right in the lane Moog has been shaping over the last few years. The remix leans into both the rhythmic language of club music and the expressive core of Maalouf’s original composition.
This edition of How It Was Made breaks down the tools and decisions behind the production. Moog built the low end and atmospheric movement around Serum, then shaped the surrounding space with Shaperbox and Ableton’s Hybrid Reverb. The interplay between trumpet, drums, and transient layering became the anchor of the track, creating the balance between minimal structure and melodic phrasing.
Below, Moog walks through the exact plugins, processes, and techniques that drove the remix from early sketches to the final arrangement.
Serum
Serum is a powerful sound design tool. It’s all about using tools that help you get to the sound you want efficiently. Every time I’ve steered away from Serum, I find myself crawling back.
For this track there’s two bass sounds used at different parts of the track. The first bass sound is plucky with a quick attack and short release. I’ve also committed a sin by putting reverb and delay on the bass, however it sounds great and that’s all that matters. This first bass is actually 3 sounds layered. The first is a low octave saw wave, second is a high octave saw wave, and the third is a more growly bass with the reverb and delay automated throughout the bar. Together they create this hypnotic and dark bass. The second bass is a deep growly sub bass that plays after the main break. This has a long release and is a simple saw wave as well. It’s also created by layering a low and high octave together.
It’s difficult for me to box this track in a specific genre but to me it’s some version of minimal house. I’m pretty sure most minimal producers use Serum in some capacity. The most surprising trick that came out of this track for me was how good the reverb and delay sounded on the intro bass. So try things and listen to your ears.
Shaperbox
An important part of my work is creating atmosphere. These are subtle background noise and melodic elements that keep the groove interesting. I extensively use Shaperbox to do this.
The atmosphere in this track is a bunch of different elements layered after being processed a number of times. For example I’ll take some groove or any audio source and throw it into Shaperbox, then add a vocoder and then throw it back into Shaperbox and keep going till I start finding interesting sounds. From there I take the snippets of audio that I like and voila.
There’s no hard and fast rule to making cool atmospheric sounds. Just experiment and process audio signals until sounds start sticking out. Then you can chop up the audio and make interesting background grooves.
Ableton Hybrid Reverb
I’m always using Ableton’s Hybrid Reverb on drums and especially horns. The trumpet is the centerpiece of this track and the reverb on that and the drums creates cohesion.
The reverb is simply a big room with a short tail. So it hits you hard then dies down quick. The trumpet sample is duplicated and the second one has no reverb and is eq’d such that only the high mids come thru, I felt it needed this and the result is very nice.
Transient Layering Technique
This one is less of a plugin but more of an important production technique I learned from this track. And that is to layer transient drum hits with the trumpet to really accentuate the groove created by the trumpet melody.
I took a good drum hit sample and just placed it directly on parts of the track where the trumpet hit started. This created the effect of making the melody more groovy. I did the same for the chants, and it really emphasized the groove there.
Quick Fire Tips for Minimal House
- Experiment, don’t be afraid to break rules. This genre is all about expressing yourself and you are categorically not doing that if you follow the rules too strictly.
- This was the fastest I’ve ever finished a track and it’s by far my favorite. If it passes your ear test, then it’s good.
- Make it groovy. The trumpet is the centerpiece but the bongos make you dance.
- Be different and break the norms. This track sounds like two married together, but it’s all about telling a story that you want to tell.
