Imaginate's Incredibly Unique Approach To Foley

Color Bass is an emotional and melodic offshoot of contemporary Bass music, undergirded with strong Dubstep sensibilities. Imaginate is a brilliant Color Bass artist and sound designer who uses Foley recordings in every single sound for this pack. Drums, bass, FX, he finds a way to weave in Foley recording to add incredible character to every sound. In this Q+A he shares his very unique creative process behind his sample pack ‘Foley Color Bass’ for Black Octopus Sound. He opens up about his sound design, composition, recording and production techniques and reinforces the art of using Foley in production.

Our Conversation with Imaginate

Splice: How did you uniquely approach making a Color Bass sample pack?

Imaginate: Besides the foundational recording process of capturing original one-off foley recordings which are then designed into the final sounds (drums, synths, bass, fx, wavetables, presets..) for Foley Color Bass it was a blend of being influenced by what makes the genre what it is, and then forgetting all of the conventional rules to make space for injecting my own taste in composition and sound design. Color Bass is a beautiful and complex genre; however, it relies on very specific parameters, especially in composition and sound design.

Splice: What makes your sample creation process specifically unique? What do you love about it?

Imaginate: You get to blow things up-literally and figuratively- and let chaos and randomness influence absolutely everything. This is especially true for Foley Color Bass and my Foley and Elements series collections, where perfection is an afterthought. Conventional, squeaky clean recording was never the goal. It’s about capturing raw and interesting timbres, unexpected performances- sounds that have character and clarity. I wholeheartedly believe all of the randomness, chaos, and unpredictability, straight from the beginning, is going to influence two things:

1. The Philosophy: Being careful creates careful sounds. Careful sounds are usually uninteresting sounds. You have to give up control to find something fresh- something real, even with something as mundane on the surface as a metallic but beautifully resonant tortoise statue in the backyard. Maybe the resonance “dangerously” clipped the mic because you weren’t being careful…but maybe that clipped tone has the special something to it. The “it” factor. It’s exactly what makes a sound come alive.



2. The Uniqueness of the Final Sounds: The sounds I create come from original, one-off foley recordings- and they’ll never be replicated in the real world. They’re singular. That sense of unique oneness is what lies at the heart of a pack like Foley Color Bass. Have you ever tried to create a neuro bass from the sound of a welder’s torch, or set your guitar cab/amp on fire just to see what happens? That’s where true sonic exploration lives- the kind that can’t be replicated and is unique to the session or samples. At this point you probably can visualize how beat up my TASCAM DR-05 field mic looks…after all of the madness it’s been through, it refuses to quit. An incredible piece of gear that lets me push limits.

Splice: What is your approach to recording Foley? Are there particular microphones, recording techniques, sound design processes, etc. that you gravitate towards employing?

Imaginate: Nature and unconventional tone recreation is prominently featured in my work, as it is the foundation of every crafted sound in my Foley and Elements Series collections. Every time I record it, it reveals something new. Something novel. Instruments are simply just controlled physical reiterations of tones we as a species have grown to love, loathe, and identify, after all, right? Don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of a Martin acoustic, resampled breakbeats, and most definitely an orchestra, but there is something special about the tone of wind blowing over a bottle, or the low hum of electric appliances which can be re-characterized into what sounds like a soft felt e-piano, or the drone of a dystopian ghost town. This thought process is just as important in the capturing of the “instruments” of nature as the tools that we use to capture it.

However, for particular microphones, a TASCAM DR-05 is my go to. I barely ever employ traditional recording techniques, and I rely solely on how the tone of the item producing the sound interacts with how the microphones pick it up for the most interesting or satisfying result. When recording, I am usually keeping at least a quarter of my brain in sound designer mode as well- I will think about what it is I am recording, and what specific processes I will employ in order to get the sound of something like a snare drum or synth key, or bits that would make up those whole sounds. And the process changes every time because of the nuance of the original recorded sounds. Over time, that awareness of nuance (listening to 1000s of bells and clicks, for example) develops a precision that employs different processes to get desired results.

Splice: Are there specific compositional or sound design techniques that you gravitate towards?

Imaginate: When it comes to composition, I wanted to bring something darker, pensive, a little more exotic while retaining the high-energy tone. Instead of usual triad chords or carefully constructed harmonies, I allowed for more experimental combinations and progressions to take shape. Thinking less of intervals and more about context. One of my favorite ways to explore this was through placing Xynth Audio’s Chroma plugin (a powerful harmonic resonator) on everything, and not reorganizing resonances to be in key with the samples it was processing. Sure, maybe the fundamental of a bass gets all wonky for example, but who cares because the harmony produced from the way the frequencies of the initial sound and the plugin interact would be interesting.

With sound design, there is loads of layering and experimentation. To work hand in hand with the compositional approach for Foley Color Bass and the experimental nature, I wanted to achieve interesting and satisfying tones that were inspired by more than the Color Bass genre, drawing from some of those in Progressive Metal / Djent, Hyperpop, and Industrial. For example, heavy low mid aggression in the lead basses, layered with experimental and “colorful” harmonic iterations of the sound. Bright, glassy, and shiny synths as inspired by the flavor of Hyperpop, and distorted trashy percussion and drums to further the aggressiveness and pop, as found in Industrial. When designing sounds and producing songs, I use my taste of tones that I love and discover in my musical endeavors to inform what techniques I’d like to use. This keeps every project fresh and engaging from beginning to end for me, and above all I want to present that same freshness to the audience. Foley Color Bass was an absolute pleasure designing. It allowed me to blend my eclectic taste while leaving room for experimentation.

Thanks to Imaginate’s fearless approach and relentless experimentation, Foley Color Bass emerges as more than just a genre-focused sample pack — it's a raw, one-of-a-kind collision of nature, noise, and nuance. From igniting gear (literally) to harnessing the imperfections of field recordings, this pack captures the chaotic beauty that lives on the fringe of sound design. Whether you're diving into Color Bass for the first time or searching for textures that challenge convention, Foley Color Bass offers a singular, explosive toolkit for creative exploration. Check it out now on Splice and bring some beautiful unpredictability to your next production.