pjburnhill.com - Tutorial: Remember the Name

Way back when I was using Impulse Tracker and especially in the early years after buying my Yamaha A3000 sampler and getting hold of Emagic's Logic I really didn't know what I was doing when it came to music production. Not that it made any difference, you just made do with what you knew and I was happy as larry whenever I finished off a tune that people seemed to like. No matter if most of those people were your friends who just wanted to 'encourage' you; “It's really good! You should keep on working on it! Especially on that bass, I'm sure it sounds great on your speakers!” I was happy about the comments and never seemed to get the hint of sarcasm in their words!

It wasn't until I started to talk to some guys with some experience and came across some tutorials on mixing and sound design on the Internet that I really started to understand the complexities of making a piece of music sound decent[1]. When I was reading of other people's tutorials on how they made their tracks I learned a lot about techniques and 'protocol' that later came to save me hours in production process and actually started to make my tracks sound like they're actual music… of sort.

So, since I've benefited so much of those tutorials and studying HND Music Production at University of Brighton in UK I've learned a few things, I thought I might as well write one off my track for anyone who might be interested! And I'm not expecting people to get all excited about what's written in here, what I have in mind is that 'me' 10 years back when I had the tools but could've really used a little help on those simple little things that make a big difference! So here we go…

'Remember the Beat Box'

CCMixter.org ran a competition in partnership with Creative Commons, Warner Bros. Records, Machine Shop Recordings in which you could win a Technics SL-1200MK5 turntable for remixing Fort Minor's 'Remember the Name'. I thought what the heck, I'll give it a go. I downloaded the samples off CCMixter's site and listened to the original 'Remember the Name' track (I hadn't heard it before).

I cleaned the vocals a bit on Audacity's noise reduction since they had quite a lot hiss in the background and put the vocals and the strings, which came with the remix pack to Logic's audio tracks. I then started just listening to them over and over again to spark some ideas. It didn't take long before I came up with an idea for a beat (which is usually good enough for me to start with!), which I then recorded by beat boxing it into logic.

I sometimes record ideas by singing, humming or beat boxing but not as often as I should! Good ideas are usually forgotten as quickly as they are realized and thanks to beat boxing my idea straight away into Logic, I could go back to it again and again for quick reference. You can hear that version at http://ccmixter.org/media/files/pjburnhill/6328. As you also notice I had a bass-line idea, which didn't quite make it till the end, heh.

Drum and Bass

After having done the beat box version I then loaded up my favourite sampler 'Kontakt' as multi-instrument[2] and loaded my kick-drum, snare, hihat and shaker-instruments[3] each as different instruments inside Kontakt and assigned all of them on different MIDI channel for Logic. So basically I could trigger all my kicks on virtual instrument MIDI track 1, snares on track 2, etc.

The reason for this is very straightforward; I can fill the channel's whole key-range with just one type of sound, i.e. kick which means that I have a plenty of kick-sounds to choose from quickly! And I can also layer them; not only having one sound for the final kick but multiple, each kick sound adding to the final kick sound something I want. I do this with all my drum sounds (kick, snare, hihat, shakers, etc.) and I find this method absolutely crucial in making good sounding drum kits when it comes to electronic music!

I spent some time in finding the right kick, snare, hihat and shaker sounds by adding and removing sounds from them and then laid down the beat I had beat boxed into Logic while making some small changes. When I felt that the beat was pretty much structurally there I applied a little general compression on the sounds to get the right feel and started to work on the other sounds.

I put down a bassline similar to what I had put down on the beat boxing, using Buzzer2[4] free[5] softsynth. I love Buzzer's 'random'-button, instead of changing loads of parameters by hand or starting with a preset, I just keep on clicking random until I get something interesting and then work like mad tweaking the parameters so that I get the sound I really like. I've long lost any sense of pride or proper etiquette and 'right conduct'; “You can't make music by accident. It's not allowed! If you come up something good by accident you must delete it!” Pfft, it's mainly about having fun, isn't it? Heh.

'I'm making melody'

Having put down the initial drums and bass, I wanted to add more character into the track so I thought I need some sort of synth element. This time I took Zoyd[6], another free softsynth and took the default sound that it opens with and changed it around to give it more character to suit my need. I kept on playing the chorus bit of the song and took my Evolution MIDI keyboard and started to play around with melodies and ended up with what is now the main chorus lead synth.

When I had laid down the melody for the chorus, the original verse bassline didn't really fit with the mood or sound of the chorus so I went back to Buzzer2 and tweaked the parameters a bit more and changed the melody of the verse bass to complement the chorus, doing a sort of weird partnership with the chorus high-pitched synth lead and the verse bass.It wasn't quite straightforward as it sound, I tried loads of different sounds and different bassline melodies but nothing seemed right until I came to what it now is.

Having changed the verse bassline I decided to add an element of that bass into the chorus as well. So I used the chorus synth melody with stabs of bass to attenuate the kick-drum and melody.

By now I had a well-established chorus with vocals, strings, pumping beat, high-pitch melodic lead synth and growling bass stabs. All I needed was some cool effects!

Getting Creative

I've always liked filtered strings so when I heart the strings in the sample pack and knowing what kind of style I was going for, I knew I wanted some filtered strings in there! I cut the last bar of the chorus strings into Kontakt and put a high-pass filter on the strings and started playing around with the cutoff which made it sound like a box of Lindt Chocolate; Sweet! I used the filtered strings to attenuate the fills of the chorus; give it some nice atmosphere. Then I added a tape delay onto Bus 1[7] and ran the strings through that so it doesn't end too abrupt when the sample ends.

I also wanted to mess around with the vocals so I decided to make two tracks with Izotope Vinyl on one track (which makes things sound like they've been taken off an old vinyl) and pitch shifter with down tuned parameters on the other track. I made a cut here and there to add feel to the track. This made a big difference especially in the latter part of the song lyrics (breakdown section).

I ran part of the main vocals through a tape delay with automation and automated the panning of the delayed signal when the delay occurred, like for instance at 0:36. I also took the 'remember the name' clip from the main vocal and ran it through Kontak with high-pass filter to be added into the main body of the track and the intro to fill it up a bit more.

I felt that the intro needed something more so I made an Izotope Vinyl 'LoFi'-version of the beat and added that into the intro and also changed the strings in the intro with Vinyl to sound similar. This gave the mono 'LoFi' effect on the whole intro which made a great contrast to when the chorus kicked in with full stereo 'High Fidelity'.

Adding Elements

I still felt that the verse needed more body around the vocals, drums, bass and a few effects so I opened Logic's ES2 synth and did the string melody in Logic's Matrix-editor for the synth and loaded a sequencer-synth sound into it. I ran this almost all throughout the track apart from the chorus starting right at the beginning with the strings. This gave the track a bit more 'solidness' - it had more going on than just the basic elements.

But that wasn't enough: I loaded up another Zoyd-instrument and doubled up the bass with a moving, distorted synth effect to add character to the 2^nd half of the first and second verse.

I stretched out the whole song with the elements I had at that point but still felt it needs more elements, more change, which made me decide to double the speed at the end of first verse with more 'drum'n'bass' drums and more elements in that. I programmed the drums for it and changed the bass to more lively and added another crazy Buzzer2 synth to add to the atmosphere to the double-speed part. This gave some change in the track and that part dropping into the chorus made a nice distinction.

I then decided to change the first part of the second chorus vocals & strings totally 'LoFi' and to kick in at '... 50% PAIN...' with a doubled pitched down vocal to give a big punch into the 2^nd part of the chorus.

Everything seemed to come together and the only big thing to do was to sort out the 'breakdown' part after 1^st part of second chorus. It took quite a while and nothing really seemed to work that well until I just put the kick with some snare and hihat action and the distorted bass stabs with another ES2 synth in the background with low and high pitch stabs. I had to work on it a while to try to get the build-up to the last chorus and I still feel that I could've done a better job on it.

The Sound

Ok, I have to make a confession: I usually don't mix a track at the end of a production process but during the process. This is not considered good practice and I would suggest keeping your hands off of extensive EQ'ing or compressing, let alone using a limiter or MultiPressor (multiband compressor) while you're making the track. If you can. But that is how I usually work, I like to get things sound nice before I continue. If an instrument or an element sounds bad it really distracts me and I can't ignore it until I've sorted it out. Pet hate I guess, heh.

Well let's start with the drums: I EQ'ed the individual snare sounds I used in the 'collective' snare sound slightly in Kontakt to remove parts of the sound I didn't like. I did the same with the shakers and used Logic's Channel EQ and Compressor to work on all of the drum tracks separately before running them together onto a single track where I used MultiPressor and Channel EQ to get the whole beat sound more 'wholesome' - Kick with nice 'oomf', cut down middle range, clean and crisp high-end. Learning how to use a compressor and EQ is vital in making beats sound good!

The beat has to be tight as it can without destroying all dynamics and free of any 'lingering' breathless tails of what is usually in the drum samples, especially kick and snare. It's like building a house with stone[8], everything has to fit together perfectly and you need EQ and compression to do that. If you're using free drum samples or samples that have been sampled from another record the 'kick' samples can and usually does contain elements of the hihat, snare tail, reverb tail, bass, other percussion, track vocals and the guy who was shouting next door when the track was recorded. It could be that that's exactly what you need in your kick but chances are that you don't. So time to EQ (and compress).

When compressing take care of how fast atteck and decay you use, slight alterations can work miracles between tight, well timed compression and something that sounds like the drum kit is actually alive and breathing, but not even doing that too well. And remember, sometimes late attack can work wonders, especially if you want a real punchy, almost click-like attack, very HiFi!

I also added Logic's SubBass on the kick to make it shake stuff and stand out of the bassline. When EQ'ing drums and bass, always make a decision which one takes the lower region of the 'bass-spectrum' and which takes the higher. The first one is around 30Hz-150Hz while the latter is roughly around 150Hz-300Hz. I will say it here: most of the time when everything else seems to be generally 'OK' in a track but it still doesn't sound clear, the problem usually is that part of the Kick-drum and Bass occupy the same frequency range! Sorting this out will make the difference between floor filler and floor cleaner(?)! And I am here talking only about the bass-spectrum or region, most sounds have a resonance frequencies which defines the character of the sound which are all over the spectrum so even though you cut the kick at around 200 by a few dB it will still sound like a kick although you might need to attenuate places in the spectrum that gives the character to the kick.

And also I ran the drums through Apple's Matrix Reverb (which is actually quite a good reverb!). Reverb covers over differences between sounds making things that go through it sound more like they are from the same source. If you use a sample that was recorded inside your cupboard with a sound that was recorded inside Grand Canyon, they will sound very different in their dynamics and spatial image. What you usually need is one reverb with a short tail and one with a long one. Short to gel the drum kit and other percussion together, and possibly both short and long on vocals, brass, guitar etc. This said I only used one hall-sized reverb on the track. The idea is that all the sounds in the track sound like they're carved out from the same tree, even though they aren't. It's about creating a sound atmosphere that is comfortable.

Speaking of sound atmosphere, I also panned parts of the hihat and shakers to both sides to free more space in the middle for snare, vocals and other stuff. There's something bit unorthodox I sometimes do with the kick drum which I did in this track as well: I used StereoSpread[9] on the Kick drum to spread some of the bass frequencies around the stereo image. You shouldn't do this too much since if you want your track to be cut on vinyl and the bass frequencies are way off the centre, the needle of the turntable may jump while the vinyl is played. But I like the effect and it makes the bass to stand out even more without muddling the vocals or other elements in the middle, which is very valuable.

To top the drums off I put a limited at the end of the effects chain to limiting the drums from running their own show and causing the channels to light up red.

The distorted Bass was a lot easier: I had to cut back quite a lot of the middle range with an EQ since the original sound was very middle-range heavy. I also had to compress it quite heavily since Buzzer2 wasn't giving enough punch! I also added some very slight StereoSpread to move it slightly off-centre to both sides and ran a good amount of the bass into the reverb and stereo delay to make it 'float' a bit instead being right in your face.

Apart from the bass chorus stab, in which I used Logic's PitchShifter 2 the other elements required only touch of compression, EQ and reverb; in some cases delay or phaser to smoothen things out. Once I had all the sounds pretty much under control I whacked a limiter on the main mix channel for the track to get a bit more punchier and so that everything would work together without one of the elements running off to do their own thing.

All in all, mixing is really just about listening. I'm by no means a pro but that's my general experience. If you can't really hear what's going on in the track, there's a good chance that you need to sort out the bass frequencies (and many times it can be a synth or even a snare or vocal with too much low end). If your track sounds boxy, you probably need to cut back some of the middle range. If your track sounds otherwise good but 'old', you might need to attenuate the high frequencies. If your ears are bleeding, turn it down! Oh, and one more thing, always keep the vocals way on top, unless they're there for effect.

Many times you can hear that something is wrong but just can't figure out what's making it suck. It can be the smallest, most insignificant thing and when you sort it out the whole track comes to alive. But it needs practice - listening and practice.

What Would I Change?

If I had had the time and energy to continue to work on this there would be quite a lot I would change in the track. First off I would've actually spent more time mixing the track, I still think it's not clear enough and the kick and bass aren't separate enough. Also I would change some of the synth parts and possibly change the melodies of those verse synths. Like I said earlier, I would also work on the 'breakdown' bridge section so that the build-up would be stronger and better sounding with better synth part and drum programming.

I would probably add some elements with different timing on top like some kind of a seq or ticking sound with 3/4 beat (just a thought).

The Tips

So what tips would I give to those interested in learning how to get things working a bit smoother and things to sound a bit better? Well…

Well that's my 2 cents. I hope you've read something interesting in this and maybe something which will help you in the future!

If you have any comments, additions or interesting points, please go to www.pjburnhill.com and drop me a line.

[1]The irony is that I still don't own a decent set of good monitor speakers! I've got no leg to stand on. But if you're not bothered or even like the sound quality on the track then read on.

[2]Multi-instrument is an audio instrument with multiple audio outputs, which can be assigned to different AUX channels in Logic with different effects, volume, sends etc. The benefit is that you have a better control of the output of the instrument and don't have to apply the same effect on all of the output. Look it as TV channels; if all the news went through Sky News, no matter what the material was it would all be made a propaganda! Heh.

[3]I've spent quite a while searching for decent sounding single-hit drum sounds and made an instrument of each of them so that the whole range of the key is just kick or snare, for instance. Loads of different kick sounds from C-0 to B-8 so basically you can listen to loads of them by pressing keys on your controller keyboard. I guess you could call this pre-production, the sharper the tools are the better the job!

[4]Buzzer2 is AudioUnit-only plug-in but there are loads of similar free VST instruments around. Just browse http://www.kvraudio.com/.

[5]I've made a conscious decision of not using pirated software anymore. I used to and I think people can use what they want, but personally I don't find it morally viable, and there is so much amazing free software out there that you hardly need any commercial software (My major commercial software: OS X, Logic and Kontakt).

[6]Zoyd is another AU-only instrument.

[7] If you don't know the difference between Insert, Bus and Aux, see http://logicfaq.omega-art.com/html/faq15.htm

[8]Stone, not brick. It would be great if all the samples you use would fit perfectly together with the sounds you're already using without chipping anything off of it.

[9]Logic's StereoSpread spreads the sound in the stereo field according to certain multiples and frequency of a sine wave which can be determined with parameters.

Tutorial: The making of...

FortMinor 'Remember the Name' (Dirty Transformer Remix)

by PJ Burnhill

Equipment

Software, Effects and Instruments Used

Introduction