Dive into melodic house mixed with UK garage influence, the sound dominating the electronic music scene right now. In this new preset pack inspired by industry giants like Fred Again, Rüfüs Du Sol, and Four Tet, you’ll find 20 customizable bass and synth lead Serum presets that capture this timeless sound.

Infuse your tracks with a melancholic and nostalgic vibe, plus learn how to achieve this sound easily with our expert tips below.

New Pack Spotlight: Production Tips and Tricks

For Beginners:

Easy leads.

An easy and foolproof way to create a lead melody that lies on top of your bassline is to duplicate your bassline progression into a new MIDI track and then shift the MIDI notes up +7 semitones with the up arrow. This will result in a lead pattern that follows your bassline progression and automatically sounds in key!

Try it with analog drums 🥁

Next level: Intermediate

Portamento notes.

Utilizing portamento through MIDI is a great way to add movement, drama, and flow between your chords, leads, or basslines. First, make sure the portamento knob is dialed in. On Serum, the portamento knob is on the bottom right. Higher values (greater than 250m) yield more dramatic results, while lower values (less than 250ms) can sound more straightforward. A great starting range for basslines is 100m to 200m.

To activate portamento, the MIDI notes must overlap in the MIDI clip, as shown in the screenshot. Note that the amount of overlap between MIDI notes does not dictate the amount of portamento between notes. Only the portamento knob value will dictate the time between notes.

Experiment with FX 🔥

For Advanced

Creating cohesive transitions.

Creating a cohesive transition between sections of your track requires knowledge of what effects to use and how to use them. For example, automating a lowpass filter to close on the whole “Synths” group might not be a good idea since this group includes your bass. A lowpass filter may exaggerate some resonant rumbling and will not be efficient enough in gradually removing the low end from your track to transition. Instead, create a more professional-sounding transition with three quick steps.

First, cut off the orange drum loop starting from the first kick on the last bar. A drum fill or emphasized vocal phrase can fill this space instead. Second, automate a ramped high pass filter on the green bass channel to smoothly remove the low-end bass from the track. Lastly, do the same on the red lead channel but with a reverb mix knob to create a wash-out effect. The end result that you achieve from these steps will be a professional-sounding transition into the next section of your track.

Try it with tech house 🚀