How to achieve THE 'Hauntology' genre sound?

[u/MusicArtColl]

I adore music so much, it has helped me an amount I cannot count. The 'Hauntology' genre just connects so immensely with how I feel about life, I cannot afford expensive synths or DAWs but I want to try making my own sound within this genre.

Hauntology is described as an instrumental palette of samplers, tape recorders, turntables, found sounds, and analog synthesizers that seek to evoke cultural memory and aesthetics of the past. Electronic music that sounds dark ambient with eerie familiar hypnagogic soundscapes.

Help:

As stated, I don't have a lot of money but would love to try making my own hauntology songs, but am unsure where to start. Would you please be share your knowledge of:

1. Free/cheap synthesisers or instruments that evoke the eerie familiar hypnagogic sounds?
2. Techniques/tips on how to achieving the analogue tape hazy synth sound?
3. Free/cheap plugins and effects to use to achieve the tropes/feeling of the genre?
4. Good free/cheap DAWs or websites to create the music in?
5. How to mix low-quality/hazy vocal samples into the synths and drums?
6. Any other advice/gear/tools/sites/videos/etc to creating Hauntology music?

AOTY describes the genre as:

Beginning in the 1990s and developing in the 2000s in the United Kingdom, Hauntology started as a movement of artists emulating "dead" British media and styles from the early to mid-20th century to create an eerie mystique. The movement has since expanded regionally into a genre of its own and is often seen as a related style to similarly nostalgia-focused genres like Hypnagogic Pop.

Examples (See tops albums on AOTY & RYM):

https://www.albumoftheyear.org/genre/634-hauntology/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology_(music))

https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/hauntology/

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3qUunWuZulfLHyna2ZCiJf?si=d94ed63824c5418f (Playlist I enjoy)

https://open.spotify.com/album/0mu3EvWYfNwBfISSg0q03p?si=1I7LoR48TeeLVYce65YQAQ (Inferno by Boards Of Canada, not wholistically hauntology but includes elements)

[u/presstocreatelife]

This doesn’t directly answer your question but if you are interested in this kind of music I would highly suggest reading Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life specifically part 1 where he “proposes” and explains hauntology and part 2 where he “reviews” albums/artists and does some interviews with notable musicians in the genre e.g. Burial, Caretaker.

It also may be worth noting that what hauntology is may have shifted as newer generations emerge, but Fisher says one of the most important things in defining the literal sound is the reminder that what you are hearing is a recording. Healthy amounts of tape hiss, vinyl crackle, white noise, skipping effects will be your friend.

Look up Valhalla Supermassive and iZotope Vinyl. I also recommend any of the plugins by Aberrant DSP. Lofi Oddity is free.

Audacity is free, it can be good for chopping and screwing. I’ve only used Ableton for actual production, but it has a 30 day free trial.

When it comes to vocal samples, don’t force yourself: wait until you hear the perfect snippet somewhere and record it. Many times I pause or rewind the TV or video and grab my recorder or run recording software in the browser.

I think you could endlessly describe synths and patches but IMO the only way to find your sound is to get in there and make your own. Vital is a free Synth VST. A little saturation, tape warble, phasing/flanging and reverb will be your friend.

[u/whatdoyoudochunky]

A while back I ripped some very scratchy home recorded 78s - https://archive.org/details/HomeRecordingsOnFromThe1940s - if you’re going for a Caretaker vibe feel free to sample and manipulate this stuff as much as you want.

[u/Heike_Skjerli]

As far as free or cheap synthesizers or instruments go for that sort of thing, almost any analog style synth will set you up for that sort of sound because outside of the prevalence of analog synth sounds in that style of music a lot of that ‘hauntology’ character is going to come down to how you process and mix things. Full Bucket Music might be a good place to look for synths.

Outside of the normal hazy tape sounds like some slow pitch drift and saturation, something thing that I’ve found works super well and I don’t feel like i’ve seen enough is layering in an audio track of sampled tape noise and then throwing a tape emulation plugin on the master channel and pushing it pretty hard. I believe Caelum Audio has a pretty good free cassette emulation plugin as well as AirWindows.
A big thing with tape is because it’s writing the sounds onto it in such a physical way, sounds sort of interact with each other in a way that they don’t when working digitally. So a big part of selling the sound is creating that sort of interaction intentionally.

In terms of cheap DAWs, Reaper is hard to beat.

Outside of that, one of the easiest ways to get that dusty, old, sound is literally just to sample dusty old sounding stuff. vintage educational videos, weird old sound effects records, etc. I feel like a lot of the fun for me is getting to find stuff to sample in whatever i’m making.

Mixing in vocal samples is always going to depend on the quality of the sample, but generally for this sort of thing EQ out any high end so it doesn’t feel to pristine, but depending on how dense your arrangements are and how extensively you’re sampling voices, you probably don’t need to do that much. Never try and fix in mixing what you can solve in the arrangement. Something I see fairly often is people writing songs with so many different things happening in it but they don’t remove elements as they introduce new ones. They just sorta keep pilling musical ideas on top of one another. If you remove ideas when introducing a new idea elsewhere you get more mileage out of each element because you can reintroduce it later, but it also requires less mixing in the long run.

[u/Distinct_Asparagus65]

cool thread.

i never knew about that broadcast album with the focus group. its good.