How It Was Made: HOLL3 – Space Duck (d0ted)

HOLL3’s (@holl3_dj) Transcend EP feels like a clear marker for where she is right now, and “Space Duck” is probably the track that shows that best. It closes the release with a lot of intent, pulling from UKG, Techno, and the more club-minded side of her sets without sounding boxed into one lane. That part stood out to me in the press materials too. This is her first release on d0ted, and it reads like the work of an artist who already knows how she wants her records to move a room. A lot of that comes from where she’s coming from. HOLL3 has been building her presence in Nottingham for years through Dame Game, supporting female and non-binary DJs while also putting in real time behind the decks herself. You can hear that DJ instinct all over “Space Duck.” The track is built around momentum, low-end control, and sharp rhythmic decisions, but it still has enough character in the synths and processing to keep things from feeling too functional or too clean. That is what makes this such a great fit for a How It Was Made edition. The production choices are practical, but they are also very tied to identity. Serum 2 handles much of the heavy lifting in the bass work, while tools like Drum Buss, Duck, and FabFilter Pro-Q4 help shape the motion, pressure, and space around it. It is a good example of how a producer can keep the workflow fast and direct while still ending up with something that feels specific to them. Serum 2 by Xfer Serum by Xfer – This is my go to for basslines, rave stabs and pads. I guess it’s how simple it is to modulate any parameter, but also the depth you can delve into to make evolving pads, is what appeals most. I also think the oscillators / wavetables are insane – there’s so many and I find that even basic waveforms just sound brighter and crisper than other synths. In this example, I’ve made a sub for my track Space Duck. It’s pretty simple, but also has a dominant energy. It shows how quickly you can make something solid and flexible in Serum 2. I started by messing about with Osc A and ended up on one of the stock shapes: Basic_Wrd. It’s basically sine-ish, but because the top and bottom are slightly flattened it has that soft-clipped vibe, like it’s already a tiny bit saturated. For more weight at the bottom, I used the Sub oscillator and dropped it an octave. I like having a couple of options for how the sub behaves when I play it on the keyboard. I’ll use a spare envelope with a fast decay to modulate the pitch. This pitch ‘blip’ at the start gives it a percussive smack. Then I’ll put it in mono + legato with a touch of portamento (voicing section), so if notes overlap they glide nicely, but if I play them separately you still get that punch on the front-end from the pitch envelope. One tip: use the macros – they’re a game changer for switching the vibe. Instead of assigning loads of modulation sources directly to things like cutoff, wavetable position or pitch, you assign them to a macro first. Then, you link that macro to those destinations. That way, you’re not just turning one thing up, you’re controlling the amount of all your mod sources at once. It’s great for slowly building up intensity before a drop, Drum Buss by Ableton Ableton’s Drum Buss is meant for drums, but it’s one of my go-tos for bass too. All the parameters here could be achieved within Serum, but it just works and keeps it straightforward when I’m writing. It’s one of those little tricks that instantly makes things feel bigger and more alive. I’ll usually push a little Drive to bring out the harmonics, then use the Transient control subtly to give the front edge a bit more bite. Boom is my favourite. Used gently it adds a nice bit of low-end weight, but it’s very easy to go from “bigger” to “out of control”, so I keep it subtle and let the sub do the real work. It’s a quick way to add character without building a whole chain of plugins. Duck by Devious Machines Duck by Devious Machines is an instant sidechain tool that gives you that classic “pumping” effect without needing a compressor or a trigger track. You just drop it on your bass, pads, or anything you want to duck, pick a curve, then it rhythmically pulls the volume down in time with your BPM. Once the pads were running through it, the track had that floaty, spacey motion straight away, and the whole vibe clicked. Calling the track Space Duck felt pretty inevitable at that point. I also used Duck as a ‘traditional’ sidechain when mixing the track. I sidechained it using the kick and put it on my percussion, bass and synth busses. This just gently nudged them out of the way when the kick’s playing. It’s important to use the high and low pass depending on the destination, for example, I will get ‘Duck’ to duck the low – mid frequencies of the percussion bus leaving the higher frequencies intact. If I’m using it as an effect, for that pumping, house style, I’ll leave the frequency controls turned off for maximum Duck. Fabfilter Pro Q4 This EQ plugin goes wa