University of Westminister Bsc Commercial Music Recording Analysis Andrew Ihegbu

For the Recording Analysis module I chose 6 tracks that I found sonically interesting. No particular order or choice, but due to my extremely digital (8-bit) origins you will probably find that I am inclined to have a very skewed idea of what a balanced selection is anyway. My first track for analysis is Teardrop, by Massive Attack. Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jzn92Qmbqg&feature=fvst To me, this track is nothing short of an incredible achievement in atmospherics and emotive musicality. The first thing I notice is the soundscape, the guitar strumming in the background is quite thin and airy (probably highpassed in analogue to allow it to maintain that odd sheen that is created when analogue blurs the razor sharp clarity that a digital EQ usually posesses) and a slight pad is added under it to fill it out, allowing it to sit on top of the hiss of the tape/vinyl (I'm inclined to think tape as there are no skips cause by scratches on the record making the playhead hop) without sounding empty, tinny and fake. The track, mainly a very simple break by now, is still very empty, so when the warm, thick piano with its lowpassed prog rock/movie theme chords comes in, it quite literally wraps the rest of the track in a deep, thought provoking yet beautiful embrace. Then comes the vocals. The producer seemingly processed these deliberately for their sonic qualities and not their wording, they are perhaps the one thing that made an already great track something classic. A haunting melody line, emotive lyrics that are surprisingly ineligible despite perfect delivery from the singer, deliberately over-compressed and possibly taking advantage of proximity effect to create an artificial yet natural sounding increase in midrange vocal frequencies. (I admittedly fell in love with this track long before could understand what Elizabeth Fraser was saying.) The track is then allowed to progress back down to the break, showing how simple this track really is. The drums, (and hiss assuming that is from the drum recording), guitar, piano and vocal. Nothing else except for a few SFX hits(, notably the one that accents just before the first piano chord at the start). The second track I chose was a bit more lengthy in name as it's a remix with a feature. Still uses less words than those dub tunes! (e.g King Tubby meets Shackleton at Christmas in Kings Square over roast beef etc etc) Blame ft. Camilla Marie - Star (Doctor P Remix) Find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x0OwRtGYqw There's a number of reasons I chose this track in particular. I've been listening to it now for a number of years, and as a dubstep fan and creator I can usually dissect how the bassline of a track was probably created, get down to specifics of what waveforms were used, filter techniques and the types and kinds of distortion. This has had me stumped for ages, and theres no sign of that changing. Lets go back to the start though, the other thing that has kept this track at the top of my play-list for so

long is its mastery over rhythm and clean mix. Even from the intro, which drops you straight into a somewhat complex beat, Doctor P wanted you moving, so he created rhythm by adding swing and energy. Note the stereo spread-ed crash being lightly tapped on each beat to make the track sound wide, full and almost provide a dubstep equivalent to a dance musicians side-chained pump in driving the beat and creating energy. Also note the kick triggered a single 16th before the snap (snare and clap) forcing an almost jarring swing onto the track and allowing the swing hi-hats to sit very well against that straight crash. There is also an abundance of SFX that is used to create and remove energy, all of it sample pack or synth based in nature. The synthesized descending whistle, the high passed crash on the 4th bar, the rising low whistle up to the electro inspired break. The long low freq reverb used on the kick to open the break. Also note that the notation of the break is triplets, this helps maintain a resemblance of swing in the drumless break. The drop is an entirely different beast entirely. It amazes me how P and his mastering engineer managed to find so much space in a track. The first bar manages to clearly squeeze a 8-bit, chorused bleep, stereo spread to space it from the gigantic midrange bass that is triggered, on top of the initial (volume-raised) kick and a pair of crashes. All of them triggered at exactly the same moment, all of them crystal. Then come that unmistakable beat bass, the crash becomes a bell and the entire top end of the track is spread wide open. Although the mix doesnt really place anything toward the left or right, it definitely spreads the top end timbral instruments and the top of the bassline around the drums. This was probably done with stereo delay as they don't seem to have panned in any direction in particular. The same was done with the vocal sample played on the bar in the B section of the drop. The third track is Joker & TC It Ain't Got a Name. This track is at first sight very simplistically built, but in truth is only slightly less complex than Massive Attack's Teardrop. The interesting thing about this track and Joker's (and TC) style in general is how deliberately 'in-the-box' his production is. From the first kick and snare it is already evident that his aspiration is to make it hit as hard as anything that came before in the club, but with no attention paid to how 'roomy' or acoustic they should sound. Even with the delay on the percussive notes of the second 8 bar, things still sound quite robotic until well after the drop. The result is unmistakably sequenced, loud and hard edged. The drums are saturated for power, the clap is wide and compressed, the bright 80s inspired synths are fuzzy and use unfiltered ready-saturated waveforms. Everything is very open, despite the fact that everything is processed to perfection, everything is also deliberately designed to sound unfiltered, despite a lowpass on the bassline taking off the highest of the frequencies and leaving space for the lead synth. After the first 16 bars of the drop, the second part of the A section comes in. Again the priority is thickness and a certain degree of fuzzy warmth in all the synths, but this time the countermelody accented with a slightly reverberant lower synth. The notation brings in little more emotion to what is a simplistic club riff and suits the lead well. The B section after is simplistically oriented around one very large sound. The C section 8 bars later is really where it gets interesting, There is some very subtle panning to the right in both the marcato and arco strings, and the rising SFX used as cadence is slightly counterpanned to the right and spread. This is presumably done with the intent of avoiding frequency clashes.

The track then recycles through the A B and C sections until it reaches the real magic of the track to me. The outro brings forth a very melancholy arppeggiated glass-like synth, complete with reverb. This I believe this was left to the outro as a conscious decision by Joker and TC as it would not sound very good on the club PA system, but sounded great on an MP3 or any home records. Ram Jam Black Betty This is a classic, but very interestingly composed, back in an age where people were as impatient and you could actually have a decent solo in an intro. There's a lot of reverb in this record, but I imagine that was due to the recording facilities. It's important to notice just how stereo the drums are when recorded. The overheads were obviously stereo mic'd and it seems like the left hi-hat in the chorus was right under the left mic. Interestingly there is quite and abrupt cut at the end, where I would guess the drum recording was stopped too early. Blatant as it is, it stands out as interesting that this track was still able to do really well even with such glaring mistakes in its recording. Unlike modern recordings the guitars are also recorded pretty central to the mix, these days we prefer to use tricks to spread them out. Interestingly, the track then goes through interesting changes. Taking the intro and literally repeating it after the first verse is done. I think the producer was trying to reuse the break before the first chorus as a pre chorus instead. It worked, but the cut just after the verse again was painfully obvious. The obvious cuts can be explained by looking into history, as literally one of the first tracks produced semi-amatuerly that despite its faults would go on to be released unfettered in history, the production on this, while acoustically sound, suffers from poor tape cutting problems. And they tried to cut a lot of parts in order to loop or splice them. The breakdown is indicative of a very good mix on the board as any flaws in the recording would be prevalent there. Considering the era this was made in, the recording was soundly mixed, but not so soundly engineered. Micheal Jackson - Beat It http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRdxUFDoQe0 Beat its is extremely well produced. From the introduction, with its obvious signs of 808 snares layered with real samples, alternating snares, and hard panned guitar counter melodies, you can tell that the power in this track is really down to the mix. When Michael Jackson is brought in, the Rhodes chords that come in underneath the track adds basis for the melodic content for Michael to sing on by bringing progression to the short guitar riffs that form the basis of the track. The sparse backing vocals throughout the verse are panned on a per case basis. The chorus is multi-tracked, harmonised and stereo spread to raise the energy that Michael generates to great effect. And to allow the energy to dissipate gracefully Quincy Jones adds ping-pong delay to the post-chorus along with manually sang psuedo-echoes. I also feel asif this this track is a lot louder than the most from that era, but it could be due to the track on VEVO being remastered. Kito & Reija Lee - On The Jam (Mensah Remix) I picked this track specifically because I think its a very uniquely produced form of bass music. Mensah deliberately likes to produce using many early 80s synthesizers, so 808 + 909 sounds are

rampant in the introducing beat. Interestingly the white noise that substitutes a crash is side-chained to the kick, and spread, either by delaying one of the stereo tracks or using very very slow chorus. The kick after the drop is actually a high-passed 808, leaving only the click. A sub sine is then added below so the notes can be modified. Interestingly the already mixed vocals alternate between their clean versions and a counter pitched version utilising Logic Pro's Vocal Transformer in robotic mode. When the track drops, a very prominent bassline dominates the mix, similar in composition to the Joker track, but deliberately not as bright, this allows it to sit back in a mix and be layered on, whilst still sounding prominent and solid. The 16th hats are hard panned to the left, and the snare was reversed then processed with reverb then reversed again, giving you the feeling that you slide into it, but also removing some of the impact by removing the short attack it originally would have had. The interesting sound-staging that Mensah creates with this drums is in part because, if you listen closely, all the hats have a small amount of reverb and is pushed back in the mix. There was pitched SFX used on the drop to create a lot of energy, a brief word with a friend of Mensah tells me they it was created by playing a synth called Camel Audio Alchemy, playing with its alternative scales with a gliding legato. Then a thin pulse LFO was added to give it that echoing effect.