4. The final drop has something new
More commercial genres of EDM have the luxury of more formulaic compositions where the second drop section is usually just the same as the first with an extra blast of white noise or maybe the filter cutoffs slightly more open. It’s simple, effective, and works on massive systems. But organic house music often needs to be more nuanced, adding entirely new elements or groove layers to make the final drop hit. For PROFF, the final drop, around 4:35, brings in a brittle, strummed counter-melody to keep the groove fresh and exciting.
From a producer’s perspective, these small little additions can often be the hardest to include since we usually feel like we’ve written ourselves into a corner at this point and can’t possibly drum up something that could crank up the track’s energy that final notch. But that’s where generator tools and plugins like Schema: Light come into play.
Schema: Light is packed with acoustic-inspired patches and presets that generate tons of melodic ideas and sequences for you to cycle through with your core melodic and groove loop playing until you, seemingly by magic, stumble upon the perfect combination of sequences, patches, and riffs that align perfectly for that last little bit of melodic sauce you need.
Pro tip: While fishing for that perfect patch, start locking various parameters that you stumble on, be it scale, riff, or layer, so that you slowly work towards exactly what you’re looking for instead of feeling like you’re shooting in the dark for a random preset to work perfectly.