Mixmag Producer Special Part 3 March 2011

Producer Special PART three

In the third instalment of our producer special, we ask our panel of production pros – and special guests The Go! Team – for their secrets and tips

Robert James: “Some production mags come with a free CD and they’ve often got decent samples on them. I’d also suggest swapping them with mates who are also producing. Either way, you can always change the sound using effects.”

Words Phil Dudman

o u r e x p e rt pr o d u c e r pa n e l Danny Byrd Signed to Hospital 10 years ago and has excelled in vocal d’n’b ever since.

Grum His 80s sound has earned him remix work for Lady Gaga and Pet Shop Boys.

Rob James Bright new talent behind last year’s smash ‘Sleep Moods’ and ‘Malibu’.

where’s the best place to get samples?

Glimpse Uses analogue kit to make soul-infused techno for Planet E and Cadenza.

Sinden Electro whizz who’s made huge tunes with the likes of Hervé and SBTRKT.

Ste Mac Of Mac & Taylor, whose tracks feature regularly on Judge Jules’ Radio 1 show.

Nicolas Jaar Talented young producer whose LP ‘Space Is Only Noise’ is out now.

Mat Zo One of the world’s most sought-after progressive dance producers.

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Danny Byrd: “When I taught at a college, I saw how people looked for samples; they just expected them be sat on the hard drive. That’s the downfall of the Reason world as well. Although it allows you to start up really quickly, a sample should be part of your identity.

Samples don’t even have to come from the classic ‘crate digging’ scenario. You can do it off CDs, off the internet, Spotify, even YouTube.

Finding your samples is something that separates you from the rest. Sample CDs are good for pulling a few sounds together, but when you’re talking about actual musical loops or even vocals you really do have to search a little bit deeper. I’ve got a sample folder I’ve been organising and building up over the past fifteen years and that’s probably my biggest asset. That’s half of being a professional; not relying on other peoples’ sounds.”

Grum: “I’ve checked out a lot of extended remixes of eighties pop tunes because you can get some great clean drum sounds off them. In terms of wanting some more disco house-style, musical samples, nowadays you can just look at the blogs.

There are loads that specialise in seventies and eighties stuff. So just go for a trawl on there and I’m sure you’ll find some material.”

Glimpse: “I’ve never bought samples, just stolen them. Using sample CDs is dangerous territory; you’ll end up with the same bassline as someone else.”

Sinden: “We all sample, but it’s about changing the sound until it becomes something really unique.”

Ste Mac: “There’s a new site just started called soundorder.com. They seem to have some good things on there in regards to synths and samples. But the best is vengeance-sound.com” Nicolas Jaar: “I don’t really use samples, but if I do I’ll just go and do some crate-digging and record the sample myself. I’ve never used pre-fab loops. I just don’t like it.”

Mat Zo: “I recommend Vengeance and Thomas Penton’s packs for house/trance/techno – but remember, millions of other producers are using the same sounds, so be creative. For d’n’b, have a look on the Dogs On Acid grid. One trick of mine is to record the sound of objects from around the house. It’s amazing how the flick of a lighter can sound like a snare! Great for a minimal dubstep track.”

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sampling special! with the go! team The Go! Team are a band whose live performances and recordings are injected with samples from sources as diverse as Bollywood, Blaxploitation and doubleDutch chants. Tracks like ‘Get It Together’ and ‘Ladyflash’ from their Mercury-nominated debut LP ‘Thunder, Lightning, Strike’ skilfully embed these sounds alongside lo-fi guitars. ‘Grip Like A

Vice’ from second album ‘Proof Of Youth’, contains elements of Captain Rock’s ‘Cosmic Blast’ and audio snippets from the film Beat This: A Hip-Hop History.

Their new album ‘Rolling Blackouts’ continues in their tradition of merging obscure samples with upbeat musicianship to create a fresh sound. Here are main-man Ian Parton’s tips on sampling…

“Sampling can be the laziest kind of music – when you wholesale lift a bit of music and put a beat under it. But if samples are recontextualized and have songwriting applied to them using them can be a genuine art form.

The quest for samples is never ending. You need patience and you need time.

At the beginning of writing the new Go! Team album I’ll

get up every day and listen to thousands of records and sometimes only find a few decent snippets. The usual charity shop vinyl route can sometimes pay off, but is mainly wall-to-wall garbage.

It may seem like cheating but the internet is a gold mine for sampling. With the internet you can download stuff from blogs and really motor through to the good stuff.

Ultimately, sampling is about your own personal taste. I dig making something totally new out of some dusty forgotten find, and I never like it when the sample’s too recognisable. You can monkey around with samples in loads of ways: reversing them, distorting them, slowing them down, chopping them up. My favourite technique is to loop it and sit there with a guitar playing different chords over the top.

Unless you have the master recording you can never separate out individual elements – say just the drums – though sometimes if you’re lucky and you pan the song the bit you’re after might only be on that side.

I started in the early 90s with a shitty Casio keyboard which you speak your sample

into, then around 1999 I got an Akai S1000, which was probably the sampler the Pet Shop Boys and those lot used.

Nowadays I’m a Pro Tools gent. If you’re sampling from vinyl you take an output from your hi-fi amp into the computer, then trim the top and bottom so it loops perfectly. I combine it with a cool program called Serato Pitch ’n’ Time which allows you to stretch and pitch stuff really easily. There are other programs like Sampletank that allow you to play the sample on a midi keyboard.

The strange thing about clearing samples is there are no rules; the person you’re sampling can name any price they want even for a one second-long sample, and either you accept or you don’t use it. There’s no logic to it; it just boils down to how reasonable they are.

In theory, if you replay the sample and change the melody slightly you’re safe.

There are people who specialise in reproducing samples, but I try and avoid this as much as I can because often there is something – an ‘x’ factor – that can’t be reproduced. It could be the musicians, the microphones,

the law Memphis Industries is a London based independent label of 10 years standing and home to The Go! Team, Field Music, Tokyo Police Club, Blue States and more. memphis-industries.com n You will need to clear two rights: the master right (ie the person or company who owns the sound recording, usually a record label) and the publishing right (the person who wrote the underlying music or their publisher).

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the room it was recorded in, but when you rerecord it it becomes muzak, too session playery. I’d rather keep the original sample and give away large percentages of our song if it means I don’t cringe every time I hear it. Nowadays I never let the legal side affect the song – the song rules.

If the sample is so buried and fucked around with and unrecognisable it’s probably not worth trying to clear it.

Morally I think this is solid ground – it has become your song. The Go! Team’s first album started off without a single sample cleared because we were pretty small time and it wasn’t worth it, but when the majors started sniffing around it was time to fess up and talk turkey.”

n Identify the master rights owner. If you have the vinyl or CD, check the label copy.

Search www.discogs.com and check PPL’s repertoire database at www.ppluk.com. n Identify the publisher. Again, check the label copy of the original CD or vinyl. Search US publishing sites at www.bmi. com and www.ascap.com and the UK site www.prs.com. n Once you’ve identified the rights owners, approach them with the original song from which you sampled, the sample in isolation and your new song incorporating the sample, and ask for a quote. n If your sample is from a film or TV program there will still be two rights to clear (the master and publishing) but they will probably be owned by one entity. Often the rights holder will ask for a buy out rather than a royalty rate or a share in the new song. n There are various production companies that specialise in recreating samples. Two of the best are www.scorccio.com and www.flickermusic.co.uk

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Producer Special

whre do you start when making a tune or doing a remix?

Danny Byrd: “Once I have a starting point I’ll usually get an instrumental eight-bar loop together: drums, bass, chords, maybe a few incidental effects. Then I’d lay that out, perhaps into a sixteen-bar structure. I often find at that point that there’s a lot of clutter on the screen, so I find it helpful to save that arrangement and bounce it out as one audio file, then bring in that combined audio file before adding a vocal and working on the little fiddly bits in between. Then I’d bounce those out as audio and bring them back in the same process. Your mind is a lot clearer when there’s more space on the screen, you free up processing power and you can really go to town on CPU-heavy synths. It doesn’t limit you as much and clears your head a bit.”

Grum: “Once I get something going that I like the sound of I tend to start work on some drums.

I might just drop a nice 909 kick drum in there to give it some rhythm and then I’ll work on the bass. I like working with the root note of the bass and how that works with the chords and the melody.

Each chord has a root note which is the note at the bottom. But you can have the bass on the ‘C’ note running in tandem with the chord, or you can move it down to the

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‘A’ which changes the feel. It’s a way of developing chord sequences in melodies by changing how the bass runs along with it. You can change the pattern and it’ll sound right, but it’ll just make it feel different. I’ll work on the main part of the song and get that sounding good, then develop that into a full track by working on the bass sections and the verses and then putting it all together.

Structurally I work on the strongest part first. Everything is centred around that.”

Robert James: “Working from the breakdown I’ll take a few bits, maybe the drums and the bass, make a loop with the vocal then work back to the start so it builds up to the main part of the track.”

Glimpse: “I try to get a lot of movement in my tracks; things open up over 32 bars and 64 bars. Some people fall into the trap of writing a four-bar loop then copying and pasting it for two minutes, and you can hear the blocks. It should sound organic and live and loose and spontaneous.”

Matt Zo: “If I start with the drums I usually move on to the bass. Bass and drums are the two most important elements in any dance tune. They have to work well together.”

Matt Zo: “For a remix, I usually try to start with the most prominent element of the original, and then I build around that.

Getting a groove going with the drums is key, though.”

Nicolas Jaar: “I always start somewhere different. It’s incredibly instinctive. I would have no clue even today. I can start at any section – there’s no format or preconceived process. It could start with me trying to emulate rain, and then that might turn into a one-second snare that I use at the end of the song.

There’s no correlation.”

Ste Mac: “Usually we will work from the centre of the track – the peak of the track, the point with the most energy.”

Sinden: “If you’re doing a remix, have a listen to the track and have an idea about what you’re going to do before you open the project file up and find yourself faced with the blank canvas. Or have a reference track so you can see how it’s arranged. That way you can structure your arrangement in a similar way. Use good quality drums. If you use crappy drums they’ll be hard to rescue in the mix later on.”

so how do you turn a good idea into a full track?

Sinden: “Give it a really good groove. Sometimes I move the loop points around to different parts of the beat so you have a variation in the groove. Having a groove is sometimes all you really need in a track. Some of the best dance records are very simple grooves that are really well worked. They don’t have to be complicated, just interesting enough throughout the track to change a bit and hold your interest. It really is all about the groove.”

Ste Mac: “From the central point we’ll work on towards the outro and backwards to the intro. Going on from the peak you’re losing elements, and it’s similar on the way in, as the track builds towards that main break.”

Nicolas Jaar: “I create the first sound, then the second sound is in conversation with that first sound. Create one feeling, then another feeling, in conversation with the first.

Glimpse: “I just turn on the synth and start messing around. If I hear a sound I like I’ll try and flip it into a track. Usually bombs happen when something sounds wicked and you just capture it.”

Danny Byrd: “Usually the drums.

I’ll spend a lot of time getting them right. In d’n’b, if the drums aren’t right in the foundation then the whole thing usually fails.

Sometimes, though, I’ll start with a vocal sample and put a loop on it to see how it’ll sound, then add a few chords to create a vibe, maybe add some incremental sounds so it doesn’t feel like a plain beat.”

NEX T M ON T H : part 4 Where do top pr o d u c e r s get their i n s p i rat i o n ?

How do you know when a tune is finished?

How to get your tunes in the hands of DJs and reviewers H o w t o ma k e money from pr o d u c i n g www.mixmag.net