I’m back!!

My apologies to faithful readers for not posting for so long. I was busy recording, and let time slip. This recording is a purely instrumental recording, so I’m going to talk about hip hop music seen through the eyes (and ears) of an instrumentalist, i.e. through the eyes of a conductor.

A piece of music, with or without lyrics, is really like a movie. A movie has characters, just like a hip hop song has tracks, and the first thing you need to do when you conceive a song, is lay out its storyboard. What a storyboard looks like for a song is as follows. You follow each instrument, every time it plays, to get a picture of the number of instruments that are “on”, and “off” as a function of time. That tells you how your song progresses from few to more instruments and fluctuates in between. This is crucial to establish how, and when, your song builds (including the dreadful question: is it building, and if not, why?). As you no doubt know, adding instruments is usually associated with building, and adding instruments adds volume (which you control via limiters and compressors), however adding decibel is not the same thing as building, far from it.

That’s where the storyboard enters. Instead of looking at who does what, which notes are played by which instruments and when, you need to think like a conductor. At any given time, look at the spectrum. Do I have enough bass, do I have too much mid range, are my highs too close? These are the types of question the storyboard can help you answer.

Let’s take an example. Not enough bass.  Remedies: lower the whole song, transpose another instrument down by 12 half-tones, such as acoustic guitar, or use a melodic tom.

The conductor does not care who plays what, he only looks at the continuity of the frequency content. Not enough highs could mean a triangle, an electric piano, or muted guitar, or percussion, etc… That point of view liberates you from thinking purely in terms of the four or five instruments you have in mind, and which usually, end up doing too much. That is usually the curse of the amateur song: not enough frequency content, or not enough diversity.

As for building up a song, you need to think in terms of layers of either melody, or rhythm, or, most likely both. Building means adding a layer. Example: background vocals singing with the singer, but one fourth down, or singing when the singer doesn’t, a counter-theme which is half as fast as the melodic theme, or a muted guitar playing down-beats, a brand new rhythmic instrument such as a string synth playing one octave below the melody, high hat playing in syncopation with the main beat. Which solution works best, depends on your song, of course. Play and experiment. That is the name of the game.

Peace.

The phases of hip hop music making (part 1)

It is important, when writing hip hop songs, to know just what we get into. More precisely, when to get out. The question is, when is a song finished? Clearly, much later than you think. Writing a hip hop song means going through a succession of steps. Let’s examine what those steps are.

First, write the song. What does that mean? You have a melodic line, or a beat. I’m more of a melody guy, so I’ll call both, a melody line. I also record prototypes of my songs, before I make a demo, with real musicians. So the first question is: which instrument should play that line? If you think this question is easy to answer, you may be up for a few surprises. Each instrument has its constraints, its phrasing, its tone, its speed constraint, its particular EQ, as well as the emotional response it triggers in the listener’s mind.

For the sake of argument, let’s say you think the lead instrument is an acoustic guitar. Good for you. Now, what key? The key is chosen so that the melodic line receives the proper lighting. Dark, or bright? You find the key through trial and error. You should end up quickly hesitating between only two keys. But “quickly” might be a stretch. Sometimes, it takes much longer. Next question, which octave? Is the key F4, or F5? Are we sure it’s a guitar, and not a bass? Should we get a guitar to play a bass part, or vice versa?

Which begs the real tricky question: is this melodic line part of the melody, or part of the rhythm? That is what lurks behind the guitar vs bass question. Let’s assume that question has been solved. We now have ONE instrument nailed. At least for now.

We play it over and over, hoping to hear the response. That’s going to be the accompaniment. The other players. In my next post, we continue down the list.

while you are asleep: hip hop digs

Music in general, and hip hop in particular, has two sides. Where it is sold, and where it is made. Where it is sold, is easy to reach. Simply turn your radio on, go to your record store, download legally and you’re there.  That realm I call shrink-wrapped music. You may listen to it, if you’re a musician, and even enjoy it. But when the time comes to do you own music, you have to head in a totally different direction, to an entirely different place. That place is your power base, your musical home, your fountain of inspiration. This shack, must be isolated, and yet have antennas out to the real world. Let me tell you what you may find in my shack.

Bird songs, jack hammers, sirens, footsteps, country music, silence. All these elements are source of inspiration for my music. As I try to make sense of what hearing these sounds triggers in my brain, the hip hop idiom invariably rises to the surface. But not too soon. Otherwise I sound like everybody else. The urge to fit is sometimes so strong, you end up killing your best ideas right off the bat. You know you much eventually journey from your creation island to shrink-wrapped land. Take your time. Make this trip as rich as you can, and you will be rewarded. Do not try to create from shrink-wrap, create from scratch.

Peace.

How to stand out from the hip hop crowd: reinventing yourself

When I’m not busy writing and recording music, I listen to and review hip hop tracks. One thing I notice every time, is how similar all these tracks are. That, as you know, is the kiss of death. Similar means no identity, no cd sales, nothing. Now here comes the real question: How do you stand out from the hip hop crowd while sounding relevant?

By relevant I mean contemporary, i.e. september 2009. You must copy what everybody else does, so it sounds like you’re one of them. And yet, you cannot sound exactly the same. Here is the answer. Read it several times, to really take it in. You must copy the “intention” behind Jay-Z, Nelly, Timbaland, Dre, but not the actual realization of that intention. It’s not the sound, that you have to copy, it’s the meaning of the sound. What does it mean to use a particular klapz, is what matters, not the sound used. Let me give you an example, so you can see (and hear) what I mean. You may have noticed that percussion sounds have gone thick, or fat. That is, they are less percussive, because their duration is higher.

The main reason behind this shift, is simple. All percussion sound the same, when they only last 1/10th of a second. Same, no identity, no sale. The way out, it to make percussion sounds last, say, half a second. Ah but conventional drum machines don’t do that. A kick is a kick. It’s sharp, and very brief. So you have to make it last longer. The trick I use is the following. Record a side kick from your drum machine. Import it into a sound editor, such as audacity. Duplicate it and reverse the copy. Next, place the reverse copy in front of the original, leaving space between them. You want the reverse kick to rise and catch the other kick’s attack on its way down. Apply EQ as needed. Serve chilled. The result, your own, handmade thick klap! Take it home with you and start playing with it today!

Let me know how it goes, have fun, and come back for more music tips for unsigned heroes.

911 Rap song mastering hotline: answers, tips, and tricks

So you have never mastered a rap song and you need help. You have come to the right place. Let’s get you started. First, convert all your tracks to mono, if you have stereo recordings. This is because getting stereo tracks is the end result, not the beginning. The main instrument in a rap song, is the vocals. You want clear, strong vocals. Vocals that stand out from other instruments.

The best technique for separating vocals, is to duplicate them. Get four copies of your mono rap vocal. Equalize each of them differently, emphasizing different qualities of the vocals. For instance, bass range, lower mid, upper mid, and high if applicable.

Second, determine what is the tone of the song. Is this a snoop dog mid frequency song, or an Eminem upper mid, or Houston’s deep voice in “I like that”. That will tell you which of the four copies of the vocals you want to emphasize. Say it’s the upper mid. Fine. Duplicate the upper mid, pan each copy full left and full right respectively. That will center the upper mid.

Next, pan each other vocal EQ from mid left to mid right. To be consistent, shift your three remaining vocal tracks by no more than 5 milliseconds. That is, the most left track is at zero, its first neighbor panned slightly to the right is at +5ms, the next one at 10ms, and so forth. Experiment with this, could be 7ms, could be 10.

Drums need special treatment. Decide which instrument, if any, is providing a sense of space, or width. Could be the drums, could be a synth. If it’s a synth, the drums should be centered, but perfect centering might interfere with the vocals, unless your drums have been emptied of their upper mid frequencies. In which case, you’re fine. Duplicate the drums, shift the pitch of one drum track by 0.001% . This will create an artificial subtle chorus on the drums, and will spatially separate them. Your drums will give a sense of space.

But the big sound will come, in our example, from the synth. Duplicate the synth, and shift it by 10ms, to create artificial stereo. Change also the EQ on one mono synth track. Next, duplicate those two tracks again, and switch right and left. You know have SynthLeft, SynthRight, SynthRight_copied_to_left, SynthLeft_copied_to_right. Invert the last two. This will give you maximum spatial width. Chances are, it might be too much. No problem. Lower the volume of the inverted tracks. This will get the overall synth louder, not less loud, since the lower the inverted sound, the less you are subtracting from the original sound, yielding a louder, but more focused sound.

Additional instruments might be divided in two categories: mono support, stereo expanders. Mono support would for instance be a music box, which is sharply localized, as a contrast to the big synth. It is mono, and panned wherever it fits. Stereo expanders might be fx sounds, of the Dolby 5.1 kind, designed for boosting space without adding to the melody. Same strategy as the big synth, only this time chorus might not be needed, and straight and inverted tracks should probably get comparable volume.

When you’re done, mix down to stereo. Et voila!

What is real music: Machine or Man?

Every difficult question has a simple answer, which is wrong. This question is no exception. The easy answer is Man. Why it is wrong is most machines play more in tune and in rhythm than most musicians. But, I hear you say, is playing in rhythm and in tune ALL that music is about? Of course not. Necessary, especially in tune, but far from sufficient. What is missing in computer music, is intention, and understanding.

A machine has nothing to say, and it shows. No inflection, no variation in timing and tone, no soul. In other words, no voice. A machine does not understand what it says. And that, also shows. But far more important is the following point. When you compose for a machine, aka a virtual instrument, you open a midi editor, and you write what the instrument should say. And the instrument says it. A real musician never does that. He starts playing, and while he’s playing, he listens to the effect of his playing, and corrects, inflects, shapes future lines, inserting appropriate silence, breathing times, building on each previous note toward a meaningful and satisfying piece. That, no machine can do. To illustrate this, I’m inviting you to listen to a short instrumental piece. In it, all instruments are virtual, but one, the saxophone, is played manually by me, using a virtual keyboard. It does not sound like a true saxophonist playing, but you can easily compared with the stiff repetitive background instruments, which I wrote using midi. If you have thoughts, comments, don’t hesitate to drop a line.

Here is the video.

moonlight-sunlight: how to develop your hip hop song

At first, a good hip hop song is a mystery. We don’t know where it is going, so we listen. Which is the idea. To get people to listen to you. This mystery, I call moonlight. Dark, intriguing, poetic, but not very powerful. Eventually, you must maximize the impact of your song, and come out in the open. That, is sunlight. Bright, powerful, but having no secrets anymore. You need to organize the transition from moonlight to sunlight in your song, unless your name is Nelly, and you can mix both. Listen to Country Grammar, and you’ll see what I mean. Keeping a shade of mystery in bright sunlight is tough, but it makes for fantastic songs.

Today, go play in the shade.

A short song: lessons learned

I got sidetracked with novel writing. Have not blogged in a month! But, I’m back. Where was I? Oh yes, short song.

Here is the idea. Write the shortest song you can. By shortest, I mean in time. Second, write a song with as few notes as possible, while making it as long as you can. Two very different settings here. The first exercise allows you to find riffs, melody snippets which, if repeated, can be part of a hit. The second has to do with how to take your song to the next level, in which you forget to play, and let the song say what it has to say.

Hits are made of this: platinum tips

Eventually, one day, we all get stuck on a music mastering problem. So we sit down and learn from the pros, if they talk, or by trial and error, if and when they don’t. Today I would like to introduce a radically new thought, one that may rock your daily world, if you’re an aspiring musician. Here we go.

There is no such thing as a mastering problem. There, I’ve said it. What am I talking about? Just this. When you notice that your hip hop song does not sound at all like Dre or Nelly, you immediately think this is a mastering problem. Their mixes are wider, deeper, clearer, have more energy, shine, sparkle. And you’re right they do. So? Am I not right in trying to fix this in my own songs? You’re certainly right. But no amount of playing with stereo fields, limiters, clever panning and what not is going to solve your problem. That’s because, when your song doesn’t shine like Chingy’s, mastering is the least or your worries. The one and only reason your song doesn’t even come near Snoop Dog, is: your song has composition problems.

The flaw is in the design of the song itself. No less. Mastering is nothing more than the difficult art of taking an outstanding song and making it a hit. Mastering is not the art of taking an average song and making it a hit. That simply, doesn’t happen. A hit is, at the inception, an exceptional song. Before mixing, before mastering, before dubbing. At the core, raw, it’s a gem.

You need to know when you have a gem, which is worth mastering, and spending an inordinate amount of time doing so, and when you don’t. And the latter is almost always the case. In my next post, we’ll explore what to do when you hit the composition wall. Back to square zero. Luckily, I have a few tips for you if you’re in that case. Thank you for your patience, and stay tuned.

thierry

Rich Mix Music: how to dazzle with your hip hop song

Music mixing is simple. You place each instrument on a separate track, and you mix them together. Right? Well, you can certainly do that, but the resulting mix is going to be flat. No panic, you say, as you reach for your trick or treat bag of special fx. Reverb, EQ, compressor, limiter. Immediately pops the question: one effect for each instrument? or the same effect for all? how about both?

Quite likely, you’ll start putting fx on each instrument as you listen to the mix. Fine tuning each fx to mix well with the others. In other words, you guessed it, a nightmare. As each fx is trying to accommodate every other fx simultaneously, every fx depends on the others, and you can never set anything. If you do set one fx, and adjust the others, you have to redo everything as soon as you try a different set of values for the driving instrument.

There is a way out, however. Put fx on each track “without” listening to the others. Maximize their impact  independently. Make sure each track could stand on its own as solo. If you read my previous post on Miss American Song, each track should be beautiful.

When you’re done, adjust the volume to get the desired mix. This music mastering technique is easier to describe than to do. But it is well worth your time. Enjoy!

thierry