Recently I was asked to do a profile of one of my tracks for the Influenza series on the Culture Bully blog. The format is similar to this one so I figured I’d stick it up here. I chose Outdoor Life (out now on Phuturelabs). Check the article out here.
I think it’s a pretty good read.
best,
Matthew
Ghislain Poirier has been making girls shake they asses for what seems like forever. Known (by me) first for Montreal’s Bounce Le Gros (which roughly translates from French as “Serious Bounce”) club nights, which, besides being a serious party, were an awesome place to meet hot French-speaking girls. He’s now signed to Ninja Tune – one of the more sensible pairings in electronic music. I’ll never forget his African rap and grime mix for Mary Anne Hobbs a few years back – not many people are rocking African rap, in French no less! This track is from his latest album, Running High.
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
Just felt it was like running.
2. How long did it take to create?
I don’t remember. A few sessions over a few weeks/months probably. While digging into my archives I saw that I started the beat/idea while I was in Stockholm late 2008. That what’s usually happens, I just start quickly ruff ideas (but rarely on the road…) and go back to them and try to see if it can be a good tune or they need a vocalist, etc.
3. Were you sober?
Always sober when doing music.
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
Both in the same time.
5. Did you master it?
No. I can’t. I prefer to ask a professionnal! It’s worth it to invest for a good mastering.
6. What sequencer did you use?
FL studio.
7. How’d you make the bass?
Synth is from FL studio. I don’t remember the name of it,
8. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
Not really. I just use basic stuff like EQ, delay, reverb.
9. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
No acoustic instruments. In general it’s very, very, very rare that I put acoustic instruments.
10. What are you most proud of?
I wanted to achieve something that was very techno but also tropical/carnival in the same time and I think Marathon have that balance. Also, my idea while doing the structure was thinking about early 90′s techno that had macro variations, building blocks instead of playing with textures/knobs.
11. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
It’s not things I dislike, but I do feel that Marathon can have a few variations in the future. I wish to do for fun a version around 100 bpm (slowing down the master or doing a new mixdown), and maybe another version with the a different melody but using the same sounds.
Bonus Question: Is there anything else you think readers will find interesting?
Music is about making decisions.
Haha – not really, but check out this slice of genius from Shamantis:
It’s U Smile by Justin Bieber slowed down to an 8th of the speed, creating a 35min slow-mo epic.
Instead of pitching things up, the future of garage is stretching things out!
Submerse and Resketch are originally from northwest England but are now living in London, releasing tunes separately and together on a bewildering array of labels: Formant, Well Rounded, Fortified, Night Audio and L2S. You can catch these guys all over the UK and Submerse will be touring the US in November, so get on it. Additionally, I’ve met them both and they are certifiably very nice.
This tune is coming out on Whistla’s L2S record label, so keep an eye out.
Submerse & Resketch – Get away (Forthcoming L2S) by submerse
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
Goes from the lyrics in the track also fits the mood we were going for. Nice combo!
2. How long did it take to create?
Overall about 6 hours over 2 nights
3. Were you sober?
We were high on life haha!
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
After we got all the sounds, ideas etc. we did the mixdown last and spent about 1 to 1 and half hours on the mix. We just treat it as 2 seperate tasks.
5. Did you master it?
No. We put a limiter on the track, then did a flat mix to be masterd if the track gets picked up by a label.
6. What sequencer did you use?
Ableton Live
7. How’d you make the bass?
Used a VST. Sub heavy sine wave with 3 oscillators, de-tuned one of the oscillators using a triangle wave to give it some definition.
8. Any essential virtual instruments or FX?
Dont want to give to much away but we use the Waves plugg ins. They get used every tracks for EQ, Compression, Reverb, Analyzers and Limiter.
9. Did you use hardware? If so, what bits?
No we didnt use any hardware in this track.
10. Did you play in your parts or draw them in?
Drew the parts in. We Looped part of oringinal melody then just just worked around it.
11. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
No, not in this track.
12. What are you most proud of?
The sound of the madagascan marmoset, we traveld six hours throught the rough jungle tarain just so we could record its battle cry…. haha
Thats not true by the way.
The whole outcome of the track is what we are most proud of. When we orginaly started the track we went for a 8-bit lead and aimed for a quite heavy electronic track. When making the break down we couldnt really figure out where to go with it so we put some strings down. We found they complimented the vocals a lot more and decided to base the whole track around that feel.
13. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
Not really if there is something that sticks out that we are not really happy with we would just take it out. The best part of doing tracks together is we have 2 differnt view points so we dont keep an element of the track unless we are both happy with it.
Bonus Question: Is there anything else you think readers will find interesting?
The vocal that says “Get Away” was just the word that sounds like “Away” Reversed to make it sound like “Get” Then we placed them close to each other!
In process of making the track we both had visions in our minds of an empty beach. This came from the strings and the vocals, i think at the time we really wanted to get away from the small town we both live in! Also we had ideas of Monkey butlers bringing us freshly made pina coladas! This was a serious motivation for the track in our hopes that one day our dream may come true!
According to his bio, “Hovatron is a young producer and recording artist from Montreal. Coming up alongside like-minded teammates of the now infamous Turbo Crunk parties, Hovatron has crafted a sound that has been described as a ‘cross between warehouse techno and new-school laptop crunk’. He enjoys long walks around his neighbourhood, Olympic coffee and modular synthesizers.”
He also runs the Many Brain blog and has been remixed by Lando Kal (Lazer Sword) and Lunice. “Young Blood/Bad Blood” will be out shortly on the Low Riders label. His awesome website is the Sistine Chapel of hideous Web 1.0 retro-ness.
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
Nothing too serious and deep, I just thought those two expressions are really funny as they mean quite different things, are very close to one another and are different interpretations on blood as a concept. And I guess I felt the track had two different « gears » throughout it so something like that made sense.
2. How long did it take to create?
As with all things I do, usually the general idea has been sticking around my head for a while, I record extremely quickly and then go back to it a couple of times throughout a week, bounce out a version labelled « draft » which truly ends up being the final.
3. Were you sober?
Yep.
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
Nope. Writing, performing, recording, mixing and all that kind of all happens at the same time.
5. Did you master it?
For now yes, however it should be seeing a release sometime this year on LowRiders’ new label, so send off an uncompressed version and they will re-do that final polishing.
6. What sequencer did you use?
I use Ableton Live for sending MIDI to my synths, and then record back into it. It’s an extremely powerful tool to play around with some ideas, and easy to start sequences on it and quickly forget about the computer and move on to the instruments and play around, until it’s all ready to be recorded.
7. How’d you make the bass?
This company called Analogue Solutions made a very accurate Roland TB-303 clone, called the TBX-303. So that little silver box is responsible for the basslines on this track. I’ve since gotten a Roland MC-202, which is an old analog Roland box that takes the best of the SH-101 synth architecture and the infamous TB-303 sequencer, so I guess I’ll be using that to perform this track live now.
8. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
Compression. Sometimes super light, sometimes overdone to get a specific effect or sound, but always there… probably not a great thing. Maybe one day I’ll produce Eno-style and keep all the dynamics in there.
9. Did you use hardware? If so, what bits?
As I said above, the 303 clone provides that lead bassline. The de-tuned chord stabs were made with a Yamaha DX-7 I owned for about a month, before selling in order to get a Juno. I never quite understood FM synthesis and all that hyper-complex algorhythm patching, so when programming the DX-7 I always just changed different things somewhat randomly… and so at some point I stumbled upon this patch where the chords were falling out of tune. It was infuriating at first but then it grew on me. The white noise washes and a few of the other bits of synth are from the Korg MS-20. I usually play around with ideas and jam with the Roland TR-707 but those drum tracks never end up in the finals.
10. Did you play in your parts or draw them in?
The DX-7 chords were played, but then kind of chopped and sequenced. The 303 was sequenced, as it should be !
11. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
Nope !
12. What are you most proud of?
The DX-7 chords. I was really into that progression and that awful frustrating mistake of the de-tuning ended up adding a particular feel to the whole thing that I’m really happy about.
13. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
I’m not sure if it’s something peple would ‘notice’ per se. I wish it kind of degenerated into a warehouse acid jam… which it kind of does everytime I play around with it in the club. Maybe I’ll do a 9 minute reprise with the 707 , a ‘Warehouse dub’ or something.
Hissy Fit is the name Word’s spellchecker suggests for the name of the person who runs this blog. Click on the About This Blog/Matthew Hiscock link at the top for more. Berry is on the Parc Avenue EP.
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
I think it was because I’d used the French spelling of Park Avenue here in Montreal for the other track on the EP that I had to use the English spelling of Berri Street for this one. Berri and Park are on either side of the old English-French dividing line of Montreal, which is blvd. St. Laurent, or St. Lawrence Blvd. Montreallers know what I mean.
2. How long did it take to create?
Probably 15 hours total.
3. Were you sober?
As usual.
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
Nope. Pretty much as you go, with the arrangement coming by putting all tracks in infinite loop and pressing play and just unmuting and muting stuff in real time, then tweaking that.
5. Did you master it?
More or less: UAD-1 1176, VERY minor EQ, limiting. Nothing fancy.
6. What sequencer did you use?
Logic.
7. How’d you make the bass?
Again, my homebrew analog synth. I put three oscillators through a slightly resonant 24dB/oct lowpass filter with nothing modulating the filter frequency except, perhaps, keyboard tracking. Because 3 oscillators isn’t a lot, the waveforms phased in and out a lot, making the volume vary, so I had to compress it with a UAD-1 1176 just to keep it reasonably level. It still wavers a little, which adds character, I think. Then I wanted the kick to duck the level, so I put Logic’s standard compressor on after that and side-chained it to the kick. It’s still strange to use two compressors on one track when I hardly use compression on anything other than the mix bus.
8. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
For FX: Logic’s Tape Delay, which is all over the track, plus Space Designer.
For instruments: EXS24, which is responsible for all drum and percussion sounds, plus the vocal samples. One annoying thing about the EXS24 – you can’t select to optimize your sounds within it – instead you have to trim it manually, which can mess up your samples’ start times. Also the relationship between audio in the Bin and audio stored in samplers seems a bit confused, especially if you drag something from the Bin to the sampler, then delete it from the Bin. A minor complaint, though.
9. Did you use hardware? If so, what bits?
The homebrew synth above. Also, I’m using a 01x, which is pretty important to my setup. Other than that, nothing. Everyone should have hardware.
10. Did you play in your parts or draw them in?
I play them in and heavily tweak them. The vocal sample took a fair amount of tweaking. I usually, and in this case especially, put too many notes in and have to chisel away to make room. Here the vocal was really busy and I chopped away probably 75% of it.
11. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
Not this time. The vocal is an acoustic instrument but I didn’t record that.
12. What are you most proud of?
That vocal. I think it turned out pretty well considering how little I used. I guess that’s the power of delay and reverb. Also, the synth organ part’s got that late-night-sweaty-club thing going on.
13. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
For some people, 140 is a bit fast, though it does sound decent pitched down.
Bonus Question: Is there anything else you think readers will find interesting?
I used only ten tracks on this one: 2 kicks (layered), 2 claps, hats, percussion, bass, synths and two chopped up vocal tracks. Most of them just have one plug-in – a highpass UAD-1 EQ. The most plugs on a single channel is 3, on the bass. I’m not one for using loads of plugs. Didn’t use any of the sends, besides to do the side-chaining. People that use 72 tracks to make a tune are really making their lives unnecessarily difficult, imo.
Bok Bok is awesome. If you don’t know who he is then get yourself back to Bass School ™, or just go to his myspace. In short, along with L-Vis 1990 and the rest of the Night Slugs crew he’s making some of the best music out there at the moment.
This is a tune that everybody seems to love and I didn’t really like when i built it, i thought it was kind of a joke tune almost. So I think for that reason alone it’s an interesting one to talk about:
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
The name comes from the lyric ‘citizens of the city’ that Bubbz the vocallist on the tracks shouts out. I was really into that line and the way he pronounced the words. This was originally a remix and it spiralled out of control until ti was its own track entirely with just traces of Bubbz’ vocals remaining ghosted out.
2. How long did it take to create?
One afternoon.
3. Were you sober
No.
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
I mix a lot on the fly, always, and then tweek and finalise the mixdown at the end. That how I did Citizens as well.
5. Did you master it?
No I leave that to a professional.
6. What sequencer did you use?
Ableton Live, always.
7. How’d you make the bass?
Any old sine wave from wherever, sampled one cycle of it, loop, process the shit out of it!
8. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
That would be telling.
9. Did you use hardware? If so, what bits?
Yea I use a MicroKorg and that’s it. I’m about to buy an old Juno but I doubt you’ll notice a difference.
10. Did you play in your parts or draw them in?
I usually play them then adjust the midi after and clean it up.
11. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
I record out of my Korg sometimes but not this time.
12. What are you most proud of?
In this track? I guess how simple but effective it turned out to be.
13. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
I used to hate how upfront and OTT this track is but people seem to love it. It grew on me eventually.
Bonus Question: Is there anything else you think readers will find interesting?
I wrote the up-up-up down-down-down-down riff of this track in my head and came up with how the drum groove would work while walking at roughly 132bpm in my local area. I had Bubbz’ original vocal stuck in my head and that combined with my my walking pace just made the track happen in my head. All I had to do was get home and write it into the sequencer.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then this profile by Dubbel Dutch’s got soul. Or wit. However that works. Anyway, he played the most ridiculous Mexican house, fresh UK funky and a bunch of other random-but-very-cool shit when I saw him live with Bok Bok and locals the ESL crew earlier this month. See him! More info about him here.
This track is his remix of Yolanda Be Cool’s Villalobos for Presidente, soon to be released on Sweat it Out! Records.
1. How long did it take to create?
I can’t remember exactly long it took to make this but there were two versions. The first one I made in about a day, sent it to the label, but then when it was finally time to hand in the premaster I decided to overhaul everything and give it a more danceable feel. So like 2 days of actual work then a month of time between those two hours.
2. Were you sober?
I’m always sober! Ok not always, I drink, but this and many other tracks are made while under the influence of lots of caffeine.
3. Did you master it?
Unofficially yes I do some of my own mastering but for the official release it will be left to a pro.
4. What sequencer did you use?
I use Reason, Ableton Live, and Logic simultaneously.
5. How’d you make the bass?
The sub is mostly from Reason’s Thor 808 kick simulator patch. I don’t really like patches very much but this is one I find myself tweaking a little bit and using a lot.
6. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
Compression. Compression. Compression. A little bit on everything goes a long way…
7. What are you most proud of?
I really like how there’s a flute sample that runs throughout the track and a horn sample that morphs into an arpeggio. And then eventually the flute sample and the horn sample harmonize and both arpeggiate at the same time and it was kind of really complicated to do; I’m not sure what gave me the idea to do that.
I.D. & Baobinga have been producing music and DJing both together and solo since their first single in 2004 was released on Hardcore Beats. I.D. runs the awesome Bass Music blog. Baobinga runs Build Recordings. Together the pair have released on labels as diverse as Mad Decent, Earwax, Trouble & Bass, Enchufada, Heavy Artillery, Cool & Deadly and many more. Their tracks have been played by 2562, Claude Von Stroke, Sinden, TRG, Buraka Som Sistema, Ginz, Untold, LVis1990 and Jackmaster.
You can download this track and the rest of the album here, for free or by donation, with proceeds going to Dove House Hospice in Hull, UK.
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
The name, I’m sorry to say, was a bit of a studio in joke. We were in the the middle of a long series of studio sessions and going a little bit loony. It’s no more significant than that, I’m afraid!
2. How long did it take to create?
I would say something in the region of 35 hours, although we did go back to it and re-tweak it quite a lot. So maybe 40…
3. Were you sober?
Yes, apart from a touch of cabin fever, over-tiredness and caffeine dementia. We’d been in that studio something like 16 hours a day for about 20 days in a row. But yeah, we always work sober; we’re much more productive that way, and it’s easier to be objective about what you’re doing.
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
Pretty much, yeah. We normally try to mix things as we go along, to a degree, but in this particular case we weren’t so familiar with the speakers and the sound of the room, so we had to go back and re-do the mixdown a couple of times to get it right, especially after trying it in a club.
5. Did you master it?
Yes. Usually we’d get things professionally done but this was part of the album project which we mastered ourselves (details at http://bassmusicblog.com/tag/diaryofafreealbum ) – we didn’t do an awful lot to it apart from a spot of EQ and some limiting courtesy of Voxengo Elephant.
6. What sequencer did you use?
Logic 8. It still blows me away how good it is, even after using it nearly every day for over 2 years.
7. How’d you make the bass?
The main sub sound is a compressed 808 kick with a slight pitch envelope. There’s another sound at the start of bar 2 which is from a Roland SH101 and shoved through a hardware compressor. The original plan had been to have the sub directly follow the rise and fall of the pitched tom sounds, but the riff we eventually used worked a bit better. And sounded a bit more dancefloor!
8. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
Well, the main ones are Logic’s built in EQ’s and compressors – we use those all the time, really solid, useful, effective and CPU-light.
The pitched toms were done in an EXS24. We’ve never really tried any of the other software samplers!
9. Did you use hardware? If so, what bits?
Yes, quite a lot in this instance – the studio we were working in (Multiverse Studios in Bristol) has loads of great hardware so we thought we’d take advantage of that while we could. The SH101 features heavily; the arpeggio bits at the end are from it, and I think the main melodic riff that comes in at the end is from that too. The synth that comes in around 2:25 is a Juno 106. There are lots of random analogue squeaks and bleeps from a Korg MS20, and we would often put things through the DBX 566 compressor and a Drawmer valve EQ too. Usually we’re quite software based but when we had all these great toys around we had to use them!
10. Did you play in your parts or draw them in?
Most of the keyboard bits are played in, because they’re old analogue synths that don’t do midi. Most of the percussion is either drawn in (like the pitched toms, or all the automation) or just snippets of audio pushed and pulled around. But there was also a fair bit of bouncing loops down (like the noises in the intro) – so then you’re just mangling full sections of audio and editing that as a whole.
11. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
I don’t think so, not on this tune. Normally, though, we do like to get some kind of ‘outside’ elements into our tunes where possible, even if it’s only plugging a mic straight into the desk and slapping a chair to get some kind of percussive sound, or recording a shaker. Makes it a bit more fun, and feels less like you’re just arranging samples!
12. What are you most proud of?
With Hither & Thither, quite a few things. I’m proud that we managed to get such a weird group of sounds to hang together so well, and I’m proud that we made a pretty out-there track which still works on a dancefloor – Ben UFO and Untold have been playing it, for instance, and they’re DJs we really respect.
13. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
I don’t think there’s anything I particularly dislike on this one. In general though, the stuff you like and dislike about your tunes is completely different to what other people think. Or the bit you think was a bit shit turns out to be everyone’s favourite part! It’s usually impossible to second guess what people are going to think about your stuff…
Compression, for those who aren’t too familiar with it, is a tool that reduces volume when that volume passes a certain threshold. Basically, it makes quiet bits louder and loud bits quieter.
It’s been used since the beginning of recording over a century ago. It’s used in radio transmitters, especially AM, to keep the volume level and thus the signal reaching the maximum distance. This contributes a lot to the “sound” of AM radio. It’s also been used to deal with the fact that records and tapes add noise to any music recorded on them. Compression of the whole mix is used to keep the volume level relatively stable and thus far above the “noise floor”.
Even when used with a digital medium that’s practically free of noise, our ears are so used to hearing compression that to not have it often makes music sound unprofessional. There are, of course, exceptions: Google “Steve Albini”.
Daft Punk were the masters of heavy compression. Listen to the way the vocal drops every time the kick drum hits:
Side-chained compression is a way of using one signal to control the level of a second signal. Typical “classic” studio uses are using the side-chain input to control sibilance (sharp high freqs on “s” sounds) on a vocal track, or to duck the level of a bassline on every kick.
In the last few years, electronic music producers have really latched onto this trick and probably the majority of tracks being played in clubs feature audible compression of some kind. The rise of “trendy trance” – I’m looking at you, Deadmau5 – a few years back was really just the sound of producers ducking pads and basslines using the kick.
One thing that ducking the bass using the kick produces is a very loud mix, as the two loudest elements in the mix – the low end – battle amongst themselves for headroom. Some people obsess over getting their mix as loud as possible, so the meters stick at zero for the entire track, and it all turns out sounding awful in a club. Great on an iPod, or as you’re riding the Metro, but bad in a club. Google “everything louder than everything else” or “inter-sample peaks” for more on that.
Rant over, here’s a track called “Teeth” by Shlohmo. It’s got giant gobs of side-chaining – just listen how pretty much everything ducks under the kick. It’s totally excessive and produces a lot of tension but yet has a certain charm. It’s in fact so side-chained to the kick that when the kick hits, the meters actually drop instead of peak! That’s a production extremist for you.
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