"Giants" is the promotional single for League of Legends by the virtual band True Damage (featuring rapper Akali), composed by the Riot Music Team, Harloe, DUCKWRTH, and Thutmose. The track features incredible performances by SOYEON, Thutmose, DUCKWRTH, Keke Palmer, and Becky G. As soon as True Damage released this song, I received a message from Shiro Neko asking me to create the instrumental remake — so here I am breaking down the production process.
The Real Difficulty: Sound Design, Not Music Theory
Musically, the song is quite straightforward and it didn't take me long to listen and transcribe. But in terms of sound design and production, it kept me very busy. This type of production can't be recreated by simply loading similar-sounding synthesizer presets — I had to model each sound from scratch. While you can usually start from an existing preset and shape it to match, in this case I had to build every synthesizer patch from the ground up.
Producing the Electronic Drums
At first glance, the drums seem simple. But listening closely, you'll notice pitch changes in the snare and hi-hats throughout the track. I took my time to recreate nearly the same pitch variations per note — you can see the MIDI velocity and pitch events in the video below.
For these electronic drums, I used samples from Native Instruments libraries, triggered through the Komplete Kontrol interface.
Giants – Electronic Drums MIDI Events & Pitch Automation
A look inside the MIDI editor showing the electronic drum events for my Giants remake. Notice the pitch changes on the snare and hi-hats — each note was carefully tuned to recreate the original production's rhythmic detail. Drums triggered with Native Instruments samples through Komplete Kontrol.
I'm a big fan of Slate Digital plugins for processing my tracks — you'll see them throughout the mixing session. For this track I mixed 2 kick sounds, worked with 5 snares and 1 hi-hat. The 5 snares are not blended together but placed on separate tracks to achieve different sounds and processing for each one.
Both kicks have different EQs, of course. I EQ'd with the Pro Tools Equalizer, then processed the kicks through a stereo aux channel with the FG-Grey compressor and VMR loaded with Revival (for that bottom end) and the FG-S Equalizer.
Snare 1 was EQ'd with Fabfilter Pro-Q using a Left-Right technique for that stereo effect. I also EQ'd Snares 5 and 5B (5B being a variation of Snare 5). Then I processed these snares through another BUS with FG-Grey, a reverb from Verbsuite Classics, and VMR (FG-N EQ, FG-401 Compressor, and Revival at the end).
The Drum BUS: Group Processing for Cohesion
I love busing tracks for group processing. For these electronic drums, I used the Virtual Tape Machine by Slate Digital, followed by VMR with an FG-N equalizer, FG-401 compressor, and a subtle touch of Revival at the end.
Giants – Electronic Drums Processing with Slate Digital Plugins
My signal chain for processing the electronic drums: Verbsuite Classics for reverb, FG-Grey compressor, VMR with FG-N EQ, FG-401 compressor, and Revival for harmonic enhancement. All from Slate Digital — the plugins I use most for mixing my productions.
The Complete Mix: Tracks and Processors
Here's the complete instrumental showing all the tracks and processors I used. I grouped the tracks by type and then routed them through individual buses for final processing.
Giants – Full Mixing Session in Pro Tools
The complete Pro Tools mixing session for my Giants instrumental remake. All tracks are grouped by type — drums, bass, synths, effects — and routed through buses for group processing. This is how the final stereo mix was built layer by layer.
Multi-Track Demo
Here's a section of the song in a multi-track (multi-stems) version, where each visible track is actually a mix of several instruments. This gives you a sense of how the production layers come together.
If you're interested in more anime, gaming, and pop instrumental remakes, or want to explore my available multi-tracks and stems, visit my Music Hub. You can also contact me for custom instrumental productions — I'd love to hear what you're working on.
