Beautiful Complication

[Craig Anderton]

Genre

Rock

Instruments

Cherry Audio P-10 (all synths)
Cherry Audio Miniverse (bass drone)
Kontakt 8 (percussion)
Waves Grand Rhapsody (piano)
Drums (Chris McHugh)
TW816x (Gibson Les Paul bass samples)
Les Paul Standard (guitar)
Fender Telecaster Player (guitar)
Gibson J45 (acoustic guitar)
Microphone (UA DLX modeling mic)

Effects

PreSonus Ampire STV (for bass), Limiter, Pro EQ, Room Reverb, X-Trem
Waves Abbey Road Chambers and MV2 (drums)
Helix Native
Waves Kramer Tape (bass)
Arturia Vocoder V
Waves CLA Vocals (acoustic guitar) and CLA Guitars (for Tele)
Waves GTR Vibrolo
Kilohearts Tape Stop
Mastering chain: Pro EQ + Waves Curves Equator + Waves L3-16 (LUFS -12.5, LRA 6.5, True Peak -1.1)

Special techniques

These are the blog post tips used in this song. Page numbers are from v2.2 of my Studio One Tips & Tricks Book. If anyone has questions on the production techniques, feel free to ask!

Tempo track - Manipulating the Tempo Track, Time Traps - Another Tempo Track Tweak (819)
All Vocals - Better Vocals with Phrase Normalization and Gain Envelopes (513)
Lead Vocals - Enhance Solo Vocals (533)
Bass - Make Bass Pop In Your Mix (485)
Massed vocals - Re-Create the Vintage Airy 70s Sound (216)
Massed vocals – Create Ginormous Stacked Vocals (tip coming soon in PreSonus blog)
Smoother Lead Guitar Sounds (445)

Released when

October 27, 2025

Your basic 22nd century love story - boy meets alien, boy falls in love with alien, boy realizes maybe he should have thought about this a little more...

This third release from my 2025 project, "Resonance," was written, mixed, mangled, and mastered in Studio One. The video was done in Magix Vegas. A lot of the song's feel comes from the tempo track changes and the "time traps." as shown in this screenshot.

Thank you very much for listening, I greatly appreciate it! I make music because I love to make music...but if other people like it, so much the better

 

[BobF]

Great production - I really enjoyed that!

 

[Stuart Welwood]

Stunning! That was a real treat. Where do you get the time, Craig?

And thanks for including the details. I'm going to look up right now that tempo track stuff that you're doing on p. 819.

 

[Craig Anderton]

Where do you get the time, Craig?

I'm in an unbelievably fortunate position. Making music is the R&D for my gig. All the books I write result from what I learn while making music. So the more music I make, the more I learn, and the more easily I can write books and do seminars/workshops. I have a bunch of songs queued up, I just don't want to flood the forum but I hope to post something every few weeks.

Although it's gratifying when people like my music, the main goal in posting here is to highlight ways to use Studio One that will help other S1 users. So, mission accomplished if you're going to start checking out tempo track coolness