How It Was Made: Truthlive feat. Erica Ambrin – Surrender

Truthlive has built a reputation for blending deep house frameworks with electronic soul, R&B, and hip-hop sensibilities, leaning heavily on groove and musicality. Much of his work sits in a lineage that values feel, swing, and texture, drawing as much from beat culture as it does from club systems. His latest single “Surrender,” featuring Erica Ambrin, lands on Mise En Place, a label known for its careful curation and ear for understated, soulful electronic music. For this How It Was Made, Truthlive breaks down the production of “Surrender,” a low-slung, soul-rooted cut built around feel rather than excess. Working entirely in Ableton with a tight, repeatable toolkit, the focus stays on groove, timing, and restraint, from Serum-led chords to subtly humanised vocals and bass. It’s a clear look at how small decisions around swing, space, and sound choice add up to something warm, loose, and quietly effective. Xfer Serum I used Serum for all of the synths on this track. I generally only use Serum. This session is with the OG version, not Serum 2 (granted I love Serum 2). That’s just because I hadn’t added Serum 2 yet when I did this (was hella late to the party). I am a big believer it’s not what you use, but how you use it. Serum does pretty much everything synth/patch/sound design related I need it to. It’s a one stop shop for all things (not drum or sample based). I don’t want to poke around endlessly on all of the available synth plugins and the infinite possibilities. I want to create. If I get bored with Serum, I’ll try something else (which rarely happens as it’s so flexible). That said, I most often use a stock piano to create my original chord progression or primary composition parts. Once happy with the basic concept(s), I then drag the midi info played on piano on a separate track, to the tracks with Serum on it. This is a fast workflow process. Get the main chords dialed in, first–then copy/paste/edit. So much of the other musical parts can be made using some, or all of the OG midi info. None of the notes I am going to use exist outside of that initial overall palette. I can be as creative or simplistic as what sounds good. I use the following default (custom template) chain on all of my Serum tracks to start (add or takeaway as needed): Xfer Serum -> Ableton EQ Eight -> Nicky Romero Kickstart 2 -> Xfer OTT -> Ableton Auto Pan (* legacy version from 11 or prior) -> Ableton Auto Filter -> Bass Kleph’s Easy Wash Out -> Ableton Wide Stereo. I find those tools can almost always achieve the full sound design I am looking for (for this track I used Serum’s internal EFX for reverb, delay, etc.). They are all I used on this track on both primary synth components. * Oddly, I didn’t use any bus tracks for this. Normally I will do more precise tweaking of EQ, compression, reverb, soothing, etc, it just didn’t happen on this song. Sounded fine as is. Specifically, I cut and enhanced the respective EQ’s to reduce frequency competition with the whole complete beat (all elements considered), a ¼ sidechain used at approx 60% wet (not assigned to an input), a 1/16 panning (* enable notes button) with the phase at 180 degrees at 18% wet, turned the downward setting on the OTT to 0%, upward to 43%, and turned the Mid EQ down a bit to smooth out some harshness it brought out, and then used filter and wash at various parts in the overall sequencing to make it less repetitive and boring for the overall flow and transitions between stanzas. The non-bass synths used are a key (chords main) and a pad (chords pad). That’s it. Often I will stack sounds to create a more original and fuller sound design feeling, but this track didn’t need it. The chosen sounds were already dynamic as is (minor internal setting changes). The keys and pads are the exact same midi info, yet they feel like more. This is because of the actual quality control on the patches I chose, and also a small but meaningful tweak on their respective timing. For the key (chords main) I manually dragged the whole section of midi info (4 bar chord progression) late ⅛ bar. This makes the pad start on the 1 for ambient fill, and the keys sound more natural coming in a little later. I also went in and made some very minor but useful velocity changes to some of the notes to enhance the natural feel. This subtle touch helps humanize things in a way more pleasing to the ear. The exact sound patches used are both downloaded from Splice. They are GoGoi Audio’s stutybeat key daytona (key — chords main) and Formal One’s Pad Magnetic Tape (pad – chords pad). One helpful tip is to use the key settings in Ableton’s Clip View in the bottom left of the screen. Enable the scale button (turns from gray to yellow if turned on). Then set the Scale to whatever key you’re playing in. In the Clip Display section adjacent to the right (where the midi info populates) you can toggle the Fold and Scale buttons to help develop more nuanced alterations and better clarity on what you can o