Speeding Up the Cycle
At a certain point, you feel like you know enough to finish a track but you just never get there because the length of time it would take you to finish is longer than your attention span. This conundrum has been the bane of many young producers and the only real solution to the problem is to speed up your workflow to the point you are finishing it just as your attention span gives in. For me, this project was the first time I managed to achieve this goal.
Link: Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping – Source: (Chumbawamba, 2008)
Really? Tubthumping? The lead single to Chumbawamba’s 1997 “classic” Tubthumper? Really?
Sometimes you go into a project knowing exactly what you want to do. Other times, things just fall into place and you run with it, this is definitely a story of the second. Frequent collaborator, Stephen Rumph, and I were sitting in the studio, trying to work on other projects when I decided to quickly put together a chord progression. I randomly chose G Minor as my scale and went about putting together a simple chord progression.
Chord Progression
Link: Hack Music Theory’s Ray Harmony giving you some tips on how to make your chord progressions more interesting – Source: (Harmony, 2017)
After watching the above video, I had been trying to make my chord progressions more interesting by using the above techniques. After creating a basic chord structure of I – II – VII – VI, I added in some changes on the 4th beat of the first 3 bars and then on the 2nd beat of the 4th bar in the progression in order to create interest for the listener. I then duplicated out the 4-bar progression and changed the 2nd chord in the duplication in order to keep the progression similar, yet still unique enough that the listener would have to focus on it to discern exactly what is happening. I then used Ableton’s MIDI effect, chord, to add a 7th above the progression and an octave below in order to enrich the harmonic content of my chord progression. I chose to use a stock Ableton preset, Glass Piano, from the synth Operator for my chord progression. I had stumbled upon it the week before and liked the clean bright sound it gave. I played with the macro controls attached until I found a setting I liked, band-passed out everything below 100Hz and above 20kHz, did some transient shaping to help bring out the sustain on the mids and highs, whilst only pushing the transient between 200Hz and 4kHz and pulling it back on everything else. The final step of the process was some compression and saturation and I was happy with how the chords sounded.
Pictured: The chord progression I used once it was frozen and flattened
Melody
Link: A runthrough of EastWest’s Ra VST – Source: (EastWest Sounds, 2017)
Stephen suggested I try adding a sitar to play the melody/arp, so I whipped out my EastWest Ra library and set about creating a rack of ethnic strings. Rather than just picking one ethic stringing instrument from the library, I re-used an old technique of mine by picking several different instruments and blending them together in the EastWest mixer. By using a Sitar, Santoor, Oud, Celli and Viola together, panning them out within the instrument I get a unique timbre on my string pluck. I quickly made a 1/8th note arp using the scalc’s I made last trimester. Once I had these two ingredients in place, the song started to take shape very quickly. I added a basic drum loop to the track and duplicated the loop I had created out and started to craft out a song structure. We started to look for an acapella out of my collection to use as a top liner when Stephen pointed out Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping. Originally, I was hesitant to add it because I didn’t think it would work, but once I’d dropped it in and warped it to the tempo there was no way I’d be able to take it out, it just fit.
Now, at this point in the process, whilst this track had some collaborative effort from Stephen, most of the ideas and processing had come from me. I went home from the studio that night and worked more on the track until I thought of a drop for the track. I told Stephen about this and he said it was fine for me to just work on it as an original and I would give him a copy a of the stems at the end so he could do his own version if he so chose too.
Finding a Drop
Link: Making a Powerful Drop with KSHMR – Source: (Hollowell-Dhar, 2016)
The drop I decided on was a jersey drop. Characterised by its kick pattern, I took a heavy kick sample from my library (thanks again ol’ faithful Sounds of KSHMR Vol 2) and paired it with a repeating vocal chop from the acapella. By having my top line and percussion in sync it creates a strong motif to hook the listener in. I then took this repeating hook and pitched it down an octave for a phrase, then up and octave for a phrase, then just around the notes of the scale. This technique has been done by many people but most notably in my opinion by Cashmere Cat, whilst he doesn’t use it in this particular song, you can read my breakdown on his jersey track influenced track, Rice Rain!
Link: A Cashmere Cat style vocal tutorial – Source: (Internet Money, 2017)
I then paired this with a heavy bass-house bassline played on quarter notes with an 8th note thrown in here and there. This juxtaposition between the half straight kick pattern and the fully straight bass reinforces the motif, then bounces between the notes adding swing between the beats giving the track a very stompy percussion driven vibe. This bounce was hard to get right, having a punchy transient kick and a whoomphy sustained bass created a lot of mud in the low end. I went to my facilitator, Rose Parker, and asked for her advice on how to best combat the mud. She suggested that I try to notch out competing frequencies, as well as redoing the transient design on my bass to have a punchier attack and slightly less low end sustain. Combining this with the sidechain compression I had already set up allowed my kick to become the focal point on the drop, whilst not compromising the bass’s clarity in the mix.
The bass itself went through a large processing chain, the most interesting portion of which was the multiband splitter I used to overdrive only the high end and saturate only the mids which helped me to define the sound on lower quality speakers. Low end will never truly come through on laptop speakers or $2 headphones, so in order to make sure the average listener can still “feel” the bass, you need to push the regions the bass doesn’t usually sit in. I separate my sub bass from my regular bass in order to have a cleaner sine wave sub that will bang on good speakers paired with something more dirty and interesting that can be pushed in its upper frequency section to come across better on all speakers. Whilst the result wasn’t perfect, the learning process I went through on the way there will certainly help me in my future projects.
Vocal Processing
For the vocal processing I gave my brand new VocalSynth2 a spin. As one of Izotope’s flagship effects processors, VocalSynth2 gave me the ability to add rich and unusual harmonics to my vocal line in order for it to stand out. Rather than just use a processed signal, I grouped the processor and created a blank chain so that I would be able to mix the clean and processed signals. From here I created several duplicate channels so that I could separate the chorus and verse, so they didn’t overlap. I started out by finding a preset I liked within VocalSynth called Beyond the Snow. From here I tweaked the settings within the Biovox, Polyvox and Vocoder settings as well as adding a delay and chorus to thicken out the sound. The result I got was a very distorted robotic sounding vocal layer that I could mix with the dry signal to added emotional and flavour to my remix.
Link: EchoSoundWork’s tutorial on VocalSynth 2 – Source: (EchoSoundWorks, 2018)
Composition
Compositionally I tried to keep things interesting with different elements coming in and out at different points to keep the listeners interest, however since this is a dance track and one of the main focuses it it’s djing compatibility, I didn’t go too crazy with these elements, only really making changes at the end of 8 bar phrases, with one or two more drastic changes thrown in for effect. I feel that while the composition itself doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it has still helped me strengthen my understanding of how to use elements like repeating vocal hooks and basslines to create a unique and interesting song.
Conclusion
There is tonnes more processing and automation I did on this remix than what I’ve spoken about here, some of it is fairly rudimentary, others more complex. I chose to focus on the things I found important in my process, rather than cover every tiny detail. For instance, there is a bunch of reverse reverb I used to soften the transitions of instruments, however, you can easily find out how to do that from this tutorial here. Essentially what I am saying is, not every technique you learn you will use straight away/in every song. Some things you will learn may have no practical application until you find the application, and a lot of the work I did on this remix came from muscle memory rather than research. The things that did come from research, I spoke about here, and as for the rest, my only advice is to watch tutorials until your eyes bleed.
I’ve realised it’s time to bring out the project gun and finish this once and for all after a couple of weeks not having done any more work on it. . One of my favourite sayings is that art is never finished, only abandoned. This remix has taught me a lot, and given me a lot of self-confidence going forward, but if I were to keep focus on “completing it” I would rob myself of the opportunity to learn more on my next project. As far as I’m concerned, this remix will never see the light of day, there is no point in putting out something that is clearly sub-par. I got feedback which I used to improve the project but not even close to the standard I want to associate with my brand. Maybe one day I will return with a more advanced skill set and put the polishing touches on it, but until then, Auf Wiedersehen Tubthumping.
Works Cited
Chumbawamba. (2008, April 25). Chumbawamba – Tubthumping. Retrieved July 2018, from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkmIyC6v00
EchoSoundWorks. (2018, May 23). iZotope Vocal Synth 2 – First Look. Retrieved July 2018, from ADSR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL5c9SgkU8s
Harmony, R. (2017, February 9). How to Write Great Songs: Chord Progressions. Retrieved June 15, 2018, from Hack Music Theory : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmrG-CeJdfc
Hollowell-Dhar, N. (2016, December 1). Lessons of KSHMR: Making a Powerful Drop. Retrieved June 15, 2018, from Splice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggPFSHV-6rA
Hollowell-Dhar, N. (2017, November 10). Lessons of KSHMR: Secret Reverb Tips. Retrieved July 2018, from Splice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcICh7UsPuU
Internet Money. (2017, June 12). CASHMERE CAT VOCAL SYNTH TUTORIAL. Retrieved June 15, 2018, from Internet Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOHtGM6WUNk
Liam Lyttle 