shallou: Building Emotional Synth Pads and Gorgeous Reverbs

Chart-topping bedroom producer shallou shares his tips for building pads, reverbs and his favourite plugins.

Joe Boston a.k.a shallou makes what he calls “happy/sad” music. What’s that? Music that you can dance to and listen to alone in your bedroom.

The bedroom is precisely where shallou cut his teeth with music production. He’s done a lot since then—including achieving 23 million Spotify streams, and a #1 hit on SiriusXM Chill with the single “Begin”

What sets shallou apart is the emotional quality of his electronic indie productions.

The mix of happiness and melancholy is achieved with carefully crafted synth pads, shimmering piano melodies and gorgeous reverb—and of course great songwriting. It’s music that perfectly fits the headphones and the live show.

We dove into the warm and inviting wash of reverb bliss to find out more about the techniques behind shallou’s sound.

He shared his production tips for building pads, using reverbs, his favourite plugins and his take on loudness in music. Take the plunge.

What’s the idea behind your shallou project?

I aim to take elements of new original sounding acts like Odesza and Tycho and blend more indie elements, thoughtful lyrics and deep emotion. I want people to feel something.

You can dance to it—but it also makes you think of your childhood. It will make you sad or feel better about whatever turmoil you’re going through. Escapism is a big theme of my latest EP All Becomes Okay.

Your music has a lot of softness and beauty—which has a lot to do with your lush synth pads. Tell us about your process for making ambient pads. What tools and techniques do you use?

For pads it’s all about layering. I really enjoy bouncing out a track (for example piano, glockenspiel, flutes) and stretching it out a ton so it becomes a drone.

I also like to wash something out completely with reverb (mix to 100%). Then I sidechain it so it mixes well with the other tones and gives the song more presence and thickness.

Often I’ll stack harmonies of myself singing a chord and sidechain that to make it really organic.

I love to use Massive. I also like throwing Valhalla plugins on Logic’s built in synths and samplers like EXS24 and Retro Synth. I find heavy reverb on an arpeggiated part sounds great. I also use Komplete instruments a lot—particularly FM8 and the pianos. And I love Replika XT for ambient delays and treating vocals.

When you’re creating pads this way, make sure you’re filling a space that isn’t already occupied by other frequencies. If a chorus is too muddy for example, I might create a quick glockenspiel or piano arpeggio and add heavy delay and reverb. Then cut the low end up to 100k Hz to give the track an added ethereal quality. Placing distortion and compression after reverb in your chain can create some cool effects too.

Do you work mostly in the box—or do you have hardware and MIDI controllers?

I use a MIDI controller for getting quick piano chords and melody ideas down. For hardware I use mostly: U87 vocal mic, API 3124V, Focusrite Red 1, and Apollo. I love the Korg Poly 800 II and Juno 60 synths—they have so much character. I like CLA-3A by Waves for compression.

What are your preferred reverb techniques and tools?

Reverb is a huge part of my sound, almost every track has it to some extent. I try to keep it simple and not get too caught up in plugins.

I think having a few workhorses is better than running down pages of plugins to choose from. It helps me create quick presets for more consistency across projects. These are the plugins I use, very basic:

Reverb

KR Reverb · Valhalla Shimmer · Space Designer · Replika XT · Komplete reverb

Delay

Echoboy by SoundToys ·  Delay Designer ·  Replika XT

EQ

Fabfilter Pro Q2 · Logic EQs

Compressor

Waves CLA-3A  · Logic built in compressors · Maserati Waves compressor · Waves L1 Ultramaximizer for limiting

Distortion

Decapitator by Soundtoys · Logic Distortions · Bitcrusher

How do you approach constructing chord progressions?

For chord progressions I always go for hopeful, melancholy, or emotional in some way. I take artists like Max Richter, Nils Frahm, Bon Iver and others as inspiration.

I’ve tried in the past to use jazz or RnB chords but they don’t feel right in my productions—I always end up making something pretty generic.

I like to think about my tracks as scores: How would this work in a scene where someone is having their heartbroken? Or how would this work in a scene where someone is conquering their past mistakes?

What are your thoughts on loudness when it comes to producing? How do you preserve the creative intent and the dynamics of your tracks, while also knowing it’s gonna be on streaming platforms, side by side with other—louder—music?

Loudness always comes last for me. I feel like trying to get things as loud as commercial Pop can interfere with making something sound human.

I will usually finish a mix to a point where it sounds very well balanced and compress the important elements the most. Then I run it through LANDR to reference what needs to be tweaked before I send it to a mastering engineer to boost it as much as possible.

I think there’s a trend of softer music coming back now, more lo-fi and ambient sounds are being used even in pop—Lauv, Selena Gomez’s new song “Bad Liar,” early Lorde. Minimal production is winning the day, and it doesn’t need to be as loud as club tracks to find an audience.

You want things to hit you, but land in a pleasant way, not a harsh way. I think right now there’s a big pushback against the production style of early 2010’s EDM, and many producers are prioritizing sound design over loudness.

Follow shallou on Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bandcamp and SoundCloud. Subscribe to shallou’s mailing list to get updates. 

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