How Jimi Jules Made Whisper To Me
For about two years Whisper To Me by Jimi Jules was one of the most wanted IDs in dance music. Jimi closed his sets with it, Dixon kept playing it, and every time I heard it live it hit the spot. Now it is out on Innervisions, so I remade it in FL Studio: the drums, the lead, the bass and the atmosphere. The presets and samples are from Envision, our Innervisions-inspired producer pack.
The drums: a broken beat
The most typical thing about Whisper To Me is the kick. It does not play four to the floor; it plays a broken beat pattern, and that is most of why the track grooves. At the end of every eight bars there is a fill where the kick plays a few extra times. I also turned one of the shorter kicks down 3 dB, which gives the pattern more groove and dynamics.
The snare plays on two and four. Jimi Jules uses a lot of acoustic drums and live sounds, and this snare is a good example. It has pre-shift, so it starts a little before the beat, which adds feel. A bit of EQ in the highs, a subtle room reverb and a quiet clap layer finish it.
Shakers, hats and tambourines
The top end is built from loops: an acoustic hat loop in fast 16ths for drive, an open hat on every offbeat, a metallic percussion loop and two tambourine and shaker loops. Those give the track a human feel, something I think Jimi Jules is very good at bringing into electronic music. A noisy ambience at low volume adds a bit of analog character.
The lead: a detuned square that never sits still
The lead is the Lead Whisper preset in Envision, my remake of the lead in the track. The main oscillator is a square wave with four unison voices and a lot of detune. I narrowed its stereo width, because the original lead sounds more mono than a fully wide unison patch. The sustain is turned down and the MIDI notes are short, which makes it plucky.
Listen to the original and the pitch wobbles slightly. I got that with a chaos-shaped LFO on the fine tune, plus some random detune in Serum's global voicing, so every new note is tuned a little differently. I think Jimi Jules mostly uses analog synths, and this is what makes a soft synth behave more like one. A second oscillator, a saw with the same LFO, adds grit and warmth, and both go through a low-pass filter with quite a lot of resonance.
In Serum there is a little Hyper, chorus, distortion, subtle OTT, a simple 1/8 delay, EQ and reverb. MIDI velocity is mapped to the filter cutoff, so turning down the velocity of single notes makes the line feel choppier.
The bass: as close to analog as Serum gets
I'm guessing the original bass comes from an analog synth. It is fat, detuned and sustained. My remake, the Bass Teach preset, starts from a square wave with an LFO on the fine tune for that unstable character, a second oscillator seven semitones up and a quiet third oscillator tuned sharp. They run through a Moog-style filter with a long decay and release, so each note blooms into a sweep you feel in the club. A slow envelope opens the filter a little more, because I thought I heard a small glide up in the filter of the original.
For character there is diode distortion, then a splitter: chorus and delay on the highs only, for that detuned width, and everything under about 150 Hz forced to mono. After Serum I added Textra with its white noise preset for a bit of grit, an EQ, a little Soundtoys Little Radiator for drive, and a reverb with its low cut at about 700 Hz, so the low end stays clean. Kickstart in band mode ducks only the low frequencies when the kick hits, so the bass keeps its punch up top.
Atmosphere and the reversed laser
A choir-like atmosphere from Envision brings a mysterious feel. It goes to a channel with a lot of reverb and an EQ that cuts the highs, at low volume, so it sits far in the background.
The last sound is a reversed laser. You can find these in sample packs, but it is easy to make: a sine wave with an envelope on the coarse pitch, the decay setting how long it lasts, some tube distortion for harmonics, a dotted 1/8 delay and reverb.
Frequently asked questions
Who made Whisper To Me?
Whisper To Me is by Jimi Jules, released on Innervisions after it circulated as an ID for about two years. Dixon played it often in his sets.
What drum pattern does Whisper To Me use?
A broken beat rather than a four-to-the-floor kick, with a snare on two and four that lands slightly early, and a kick fill at the end of every eight bars. Live-sounding hats, tambourines and shakers sit on top.
How do you make a detuned analog-style lead in Serum?
Use a square wave with several unison voices and plenty of detune, put a chaos LFO on the fine tune, add random detune in the global voicing, and keep the notes short with a low sustain. Narrowing the unison width keeps it focused like the original.
What plugins are used in this remake?
Serum 2 for the lead, bass and laser, with Kickstart for sidechain, Textra for noise on the bass, Soundtoys Little Radiator for drive, and stock FL Studio EQ and reverb.
Related reading: melodic house like Bedouin, the Textra overview, and afro and melodic house sample packs.
The Lead Whisper and Bass Teach presets and the atmosphere in this video are from Envision.
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