Track-a-Week For-a-Year by Kami-O: Interview

Kami-O is a Glaswegian producer, DJ and host of Glasgow clubnight Lightworks. In 2015 he set himself a challenge to publish a new piece of music each week. Here is a case study of the one-track-a-week for-a-year challenge by Kami-O.

Glasgow-based producer Kami-O has been hard at work for the past year. On 1^st January 2015, a few months before finishing college, Kami-O decided that he will produce and publish to the world a new ‘piece of music’ – track, remix, DJ set, mixtape – every week for a year.

He started producing electronic music in 2011, then went to college to study music production. Be 2013 he got the ball rolling, “met lots of good people, sorted my sound out.” But then he reached a plateau:

“I took months over one track. I was really annoying myself, micromanaging everything I did. Everyone asked me to put stuff out more often.”

His solution was to challenge himself creatively, perhaps in a somewhat extreme way. A year later, the 40-track album Annum was released, comprised of (the majority of) songs he created in 2015.

For the first five months, he made tracks using sketches from his back catalogue. By May, there were no drafts left, so the tracks had to be made from scratch: a problem at first, but soon overcome. Around the halfway point he noticed the biggest leap forward in terms of quality of output. The project peaked in the final quarter of the year, with the release of the track Ray.

The challenge saw its demise from then on, in a way. His focus moved from the present to the future; completing the project and compiling the results.

“The end was the worst. I started concentrating on remastering all the tracks.”

Nevertheless, Kami-O completed the challenge successfully, without missing out a single week of 2015. On top of that, in the middle of year he started a monthly clubnight Lightworks. The event features local DJs handpicked by Kami-O based on a common theme.

Finally, I asked for two key takeaways from the one-track-a-week for-a-year challenge. Here is what he said:

1. It is hard, but possible,

and

2. EQ is important.

Kami-O is releasing his debut EP on 31^st March via deathcamp. Here’s a teaser:

Click here to find out more about the next Lightworks, taking place on 18 February at Broadcast.

Follow Kami-O on Facebook / Soundcloud / Instagram / Twitter.

 

Lessons from Soundcloud: (Re)Detect Your Niche

Soundcloud could save itself a lot of trouble if it embraced its unique selling points. In fact, the users are already doing that – it wouldn’t hurt Soundcloud to listen.

(Pun intended.)

Soundcloud has been having problems lately. Yet its traffic is at an all time high.

Kanye West selected the platform to publish a couple of his “new” tracks, following Miley Cyrus who released a whole album on Soundcloud a few months back. And then Justin Bieber dropped his cover of ‘Hotline Bling‘ on Soundcloud.

These are by no means releases meant for their massive fanbases. They are these superstars’ passion projects contrived outside of their labels.

The labels know these releases don’t cater to the bulk of these artists’ audiences. But that’s why we have the Internet, paradise of the Long Tail.

Photo by Marc Wathieu, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Users instinctively head to Soundcloud for more “alternative/underground” releases – the ones that are not available on iTunes or Spotify. These online music stores maintain the traditions of the physical record store, where everything that has reached the shelves had gone through countless phases of checks and balances.

Soundcloud, like other social media platforms, has the appeal of immediacy that the “official” channels of distribution don’t. Its design encourages sharing B-sides, outtakes, bloopers, demos – content for the passionate music fans, not the bulk of “casual listeners”. Heck, Bieber’s Hotline Bling cover was (allegedly) recorded on a phone (it sounds like it was, anyway).

But Soundcloud keeps fighting its users. It is competing with other streaming services and thereby forsaking the advantages their product has over the rest of the music streaming market.

So, here are some steps I feel Soundcloud should consider:

1. Discourage posting of copyrighted music.

Everyone is going to have a streaming subscription soon – it’s the most efficient method of music distribution. All the “official releases” are going to be published that way (at least until Imogen Heap saves the music industry with blockchain technology).

There is no point in fighting Spotify/Apple Music/etc. in this way.

Avoid legal action that could kill your whole company.

2. Enable artists to make money from Soundcloud.

I don’t mean (just) advertising. People want to give money to artists.

Enable artists to sell their music on Soundcloud (so they don’t resort to Bandcamp, as most do now).

Implement a “tip jar” – like Youtube has done.

3. Enable fans to support artists they like.

Make specialized fans accounts. Music, like all art, is a two-way street: an equal relationship between the creator and the recipient.

Not everyone wants to upload sounds – a lot more people just want to support what the artists (who are, by nature, a minority) do. Facilitate that, don’t fight it.

4. Establish a partnerships with other (social) media platforms.

At the moment, Soundcloud merely supports links to other social media profiles and links in descriptions.

Soundcloud can by all means reman “the audio platform”, but synnergy with other forms of media is not only natural, but necessary these days. Users crave it. Don’t send them off to Instagram and Youtube: find a way to embed them on your own platform. It will benefit all.

Cover photo by Matas Petrikas, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Lessons from Cherry Bomb: Traditional Mixing and Creative Control

It crossed my mind to write this post in all caps, but that would have made it very hard to read. And that’s what this post is about.

Whether you’re a person who pays attention to the sonic qualities of music or not, if you listened to Tyler, the Creator’s latest release Cherry Bomb, it is very likely something about it struck you as strange. Tyler confirmed it himself:

WONT GET NOMINATED. NOT MIXED TRADITIONALLY, NOT MANY PEOPLE FUCK WITH IT AND NOT CATCHY ENOUGH LETS BE HONEST https://t.co/G3XgQHIlkm

— T (@tylerthecreator) May 6, 2015

Traditional Standards

“Not mixed traditionally.” What Tyler meant to say here (I only presume, of course) is that the relative balances of the songs’ elements are not what you would expect. To put it bluntly, the vocal often gets obscured by other instruments and some sounds get overbearing at times.

To put it even more bluntly:

https://twitter.com/AB_Kilo/status/591799076963880961

And AB_Kilo has a point.

My first listen of the album was at the gym, on the (notoriously bass-heavy) Apple EarPods. When a song from Cherry Bomb came on shuffle, I kept turning the volume up in order to be able to hear anything – the excessive low end was preventing the main body of the tracks to come out, which I didn’t even realize until I listened again in a quieter environment. In fact, Tyler did say that’s what we should do:

LISTEN FROM START TO FINISH. DONT TWEET OR NOTHING. JUST LISTEN. LOUD. IN YOUR ROOM OR CAR RIDE.

— T (@tylerthecreator) April 13, 2015

Creative Freedom = Creative Control?

That really might be the only way to ‘enjoy’ this album. As noted above, listening to it in transit on your little earphones just doesn’t work – Tyler made sure of that. He was probably aware that such a move might cost him the number of listen(er)s; but then again, he did explicitly state “fuck streaming“ which undoubtedly limits the number of people wanting to check out his work.

Maximising his potential audience isn’t really Tyler’s priority. Source: Golf Wang Tumblr.

And that’s perfectly fine. It’s his work, his choice. If you want to listen to Cherry Bomb, you have to do it on Tyler’s terms. He decides where you buy it from. He decides how you listen to it. You decide if you want to bother with all that, or spend your time on somebody else’s music.

Start (and Stop) at the Fan Base

Obviously, I did bother with it for a while, and I’m writing this, so I’d consider his tactics successful – this time. If his next album follows the same script, I won’t bother. Admittedly, I’m not a dedicated fan of Tyler’s work, but he seems to have plenty already: certainly enough to be able to do this. The Needle Drop summarized this well.

What it all comes down to, then, is the age old question of who is art for: the artist or the audience (?) Of course, the answer is: for both, equally. However, the artist has the option to intentionally limit his/her audience in a number of ways – the mix/master being one of them.

Is that… Post-hipsterianism? Source: Golf Wang Tumblr.

Many top mixing engineers talk about the emotional impact of the mix, when in most cases all their pupils want to hear is which plugin to use and what gear to invest in. Cherry Bomb definitely made me feel something (even if it’s mostly frustration and ear pain). 

So, did you like Cherry Bomb?

Are you willing to comply with an artist’s ‘Terms of use’ or is the listening experience something you like keeping under control?

Is Tyler saving The Album? 

VCA Compressor Plugins Comparison

The third and final in a series of parallel tests of compressor plugins is a comparison of VCA compressors.

Many claim VCA compressors are the most universal compressors, fit for any and all purposes an engineer might need in her or his quest for the perfect sound. I have to admit I can’t seem to agree with those claims – I’m not a fan of their sound. It might be that I am doing something wrong, but to me they don’t produce pleasing results.

That being said, I still decided to go through with this test and note my observations in the same way I previously did with optical and FET compressor plugins. The plugins being compared are:

• Apple Logic Pro Compressor in Studio VCA, Vintage VCA and Classic VCA modes
• Native Instruments VC 160
• Waves SSL G-Master Bus Compressor

Here are the audio files so you can listen and judge for yourself.

I recommend downloading the files, as Soundcloud transcodes to 128 kbps mp3 for streaming playback, which isn't sufficient for this purpose. Just click on the download icon on Soundcloud and you'll get a full quality .wav file. Alternatively, click here to download all the files as a zip archive.

For this test I intentionally used extreme settings in order to get the most obviously audible results and differences between the different models.

My observations:

• Logic Vintage VCA and Waves SSL produced similar results. However, with the SSL the drum kit sounds ‘bigger’ (and, consequentially, further away), while the Logic’s Vintage VCA is more present or ‘in your face’.
• Logic Classic VCA and NI VC 160 also mimic the same hardware unit and sound similar: both are crushing the kit quite heavily, letting the initial transients through. However, I prefer Logic’s compressor.
• They all color the sound quite a bit, but Logic Studio VCA seems to do that to a lesser extent.
• As in previous tests, I’ve found that Waves saturate the body of the cymbals whereas Logic’s saturation is higher up the frequency spectrum.

Settings Used:

Logic Compressor ‘Studio VCA’

Logic Compressor ‘Vintage VCA’

Logic Compressor ‘Classic VCA’

Native Instruments VC 160

Waves SSL G-Master Bus Compressor

If you liked this, check out my previous posts from the Compressor Tests series: Opto Compressor Plugins Comparison and FET Compressor Plugins Comparison.

4 Best Sounding Hip Hop Albums

If you want to be a hip hop producer, here are your reference materials. Add these five albums to your playlist, sit down and educate your ears.

The albums on this list were selected for their sonic qualities and not for the musical and/or lyrical content, how influential they were etc. – hence ‘best sounding hip hop albums’.

What I look for is clarity throughout the audio frequency spectrum:

• good sound separation
• balanced low end
• clear midrange (present vocals sitting nicely along instrumentation)
• not overly dull nor overly saturated top end.

Notes:

My listening setup is:

- Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 audio interface
- Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (80Ω version) headphones
- files are all 320kbps MP3s.

Not the best of setups, but not the worst either.

Here we go, in chronological order:

Nas – Illmatic (1994)

Pitchfork’s Hartley Goldstein called it “a meticulously crafted essence of everything that makes hip-hop music great; it’s practically a sonic strand of the genre’s DNA”. In his review of the reissue from 2012, Jeff Weiss writes:

The alembic of soul jazz samples, SP-1200s, broken nose breaks, and raw rap distilled the Henny, no chaser ideal of boom-bap.

Eminem – Slim Shady LP (1999)

LA Times says the “only thing hindering the album is a sometimes flat production that takes away from the power of Eminem’s verbal mayhem”, but that’s what I like about it. Sparse beats, arrangements that breathe.

Dr Dre – The Chronic 2001 (1999)

Not to be outdone by his protege, Dre released his sophomore record the same year as the Slim Shady LP dropped. While The Chronic from 1992 is often considered as one of the most influential hip hop albums, sonically The Chronic 2001 is far superior.

Dead Prez – Let’s Get Free (2000)

Heavy political messages neatly packaged into a smooth hip hop gem.

Honorable mentions:

Kanye West – The College Dropout (2004)

Pimp C – Pimpalation (2006)

Of course, this is only my opinion. Do you agree with my selection? Let me know in the comments below.

Cover photo by Scott Schiller, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Interview: Filip Šćekić

Croatian techno/house with a twist.

Along with its crystal clear sea, lots of sun, amazing food and (not so) recent armed conflict, Croatia hopefully evokes associations of an exciting destination for electronic music lovers.

The number of music festivals grows year-on-year thanks to international recognition and impressive attendance figures. While Dimensions and Outlook Festival continue to bring some of the biggest names in house and techno to the Istrian peninsula, it also offers exports of its own.

From the ancient town of Rovinj in the north Adriatic Sea comes Filip Šćekić, 21-year-old producer/DJ/radio host. Currently based in Zagreb, Filip’s been honing his craft relentlessly for the past year, resulting in over 20 original tracks on Soundcloud, a release for a publishing label, winning a DJing competition, several DJ performances in different cities and his own radio show.

Filip performing as winner of Illectricity Festival‘s Nucomer competition. Photo by Doris Fatur.

I wanted to capture the madness of the city because I was told that Osijek is a hard techno city. They want a relentless beat, no backing down.

Recently he’s started including original productions into his DJ sets. For his last couple of performances Filip produced tracks specifically for the venues they were played in, like this one from Osijek.

When it comes to production, Filip describes his approach as ‘70% samples and 30% analog synthesis’. Heavily processed samples coupled with the Roland TR-8 as the rhythm backbone make up the majority of Filip’s tracks.

I think my work ethic is basically non-existent, but my workflow is pretty solid.

Filip Šćekić live at Kino Grič. Photo by Doris Fatur.

An album is still in the far future, Filip says, as he is still polishing his signature sound. Stylistically his tracks are a unique blend of hip hop and break beat influences atop of a classic techno/house foundation.

Hear the full interview:

Lessons from Kanye West x Paul McCartney

The recent collaboration between the two industry veterans raised some eyebrows. Mine also assumed an elevated position as I was trying to get my head around Only One and FourFiveSeconds.

Surely I wasn’t the only one who found the two songs a bit unusual (?) No synths and no drums, Kanye singing throughout: it took me a while to adjust. I must admit, I didn’t like the songs at first listen. Or second. However, they did make me think about the production choices made by the team behind the songs.

Focus on the Important

Both tracks have very simple arrangements.

Only One features only a soft electric organ (played by McCartney) and autotuned vocals from Kanye. There are multipart harmony vocals in a few places added for emphasis with some of them overdriven, making them sound like an electric guitar.

In FourFiveSeconds the only instruments accompanying the lead vocals are an acoustic guitar, again from McCartney, and a bass guitar barely audible on smaller listening systems. An electric guitar makes a subtle appearance around the choruses, but that’s pretty much it.

By opting for stripped-down arrangements, the production teams made us focus on the most important elements: the song and the performance. Many critics have pointed out that FourFiveSeconds might be the best vocal performance from Rihanna to date and complimented her phrasing and timbre – how often do we think about these aspects of a pop song anymore? 

FourFiveSeconds is the first time we’ve heard Kanye sing with his vocals slightly-less-obviously autotuned. McCartney’s guitar sounds kind of sloppy, like it was recorded on the first take. The bass line is also nonchalant. These were all conscious production choices.

The music videos for both tracks follow the same aesthetic principles. Despite being unconstrained by budgetary concerns, the videos are dead simple. The Only One video looks like it was shot on an iPhone 4 (there’s even no 1080p option).

It seems that the keyword for these two projects was ‘raw.’

The Lesson

We all-in-one songwriters/producers/engineers get so caught up in the audio side of things we forget the music side of things. No amount of professional grade plugins or mixing skills is going to save a bad song or a lacking performance. By pointing this out I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel as I’m sure everyone knows these things, but I think it’s worth a reminder.

Music is about emotion. Emotion is conveyed through the musical content of the song and enhanced by production and post-production. Make your production serve the song, not the other way around. If a track from a hip hop artist doesn’t call for drums, don’t put drums on it. Leave that sick synth patch for another track if it’s taking away all the impact from a great vocal.

https://twitter.com/WhatTheFFacts/status/572077871591776258

It all starts at the source. Good songwriting and a convincing performance are producers’ main building blocks – everything else is just icing on the cake.

Make songs, not audio files.

Also, check out Nick Jonas’ version of Only One. Do you feel that the autotune in the original takes away from Kanye’s performance and the message of the song or does it enhance it?

Cover photo by Timothy Tsui, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

3 Basic Tips for Producing Professional-Sounding Tracks

What’s the difference between a professional and an amateur sounding track nowadays? It all comes down to the basics.

It’s hard to define what a “professional track” sounds like. ‘Sound quality’ isn’t really the breaking point anymore; pretty much everyone can work in 24bit/44.1kHz and have access to the highest quality samples. But you can definitely tell when something just sounds amateur.

So what is it? And more importantly, what can you do to avoid it?

Regardless of the genre you’re producing, keeping these three things in check will help your track sound professional.

1. Source the sounds carefully.

Photo by John Salvador, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Whether you’re working with prerecorded samples or recording your own tracks/samples, it all starts at the source.

If you mainly use samples, be mindful with your choices. No two kicks sound the same. Does this track need a snare or would a clap fit better, or maybe a finger snap? When recording, place your mics deliberately. Capture the best performance. Is that pad creating the right atmosphere? Also: the better your selection, the less you need to do in the mixing phase.

Meticulous sound selection is key. Then,

2. Vary your arrangement.

The most obvious giveaway of amateur production is the lack of variety. It’s tempting to drag out those loops in Ableton and go crazy with copy/pasting. That process has its purpose in laying out the arrangement and developing the structure of the song, but leaving things loop for the entire duration of the song sounds amateur.

These come in handy for punching in automation, but you can also write it with a mouse – no excuses! Photo by John Athayde, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I’ve purposely avoided saying it sounds “robotic” because there are genres that benefit from a robotic sound. But even the most robotic-sounding of tracks have variety in their arrangement. That variety includes:

• changing note patterns at the ends of phrases
• volume and effect rides
• adding and removing sounds in various sections of the arrangement

Add an extra hi-hat at the end of the fourth bar. Mute those strings on the bridge. Ride up the guitar as the verses progress. It makes all the difference.

Well, not all. Because you also need to:

3. Balance, balance, balance.

Physical or virtual, befriend your faders. Photo by Chris Metcalf, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Music (like life!) is about balance. In amateur tracks you struggle to hear the vocal, or it’s sticking out too much. The kick doesn’t hit hard enough, or it kills the bass. Again, sound selection (step 1) helps a lot.

Balance seems like the most straightforward step in mixing, and it is. But it’s also terribly easy to get wrong, leaving your track sounding unprofessional. The same applies to effects: nothing says ‘amateur’ like drowning your mix in reverb!

You can have the most expensive equipment in the world and the best songwriters and performers, but not delivering on these three points will still make your track sound amateur.

Did I leave something out?

Interview: Wuh Oh

Glasgow’s renowned music scene recently got a new addition: his name is Wuh Oh and his music doesn’t sound like anything else coming from Glasgow.

Wuh Oh aka Peter Ferguson is a 22-year-old producer from Glasgow. His eponymous debut EP came out in November of 2014 and it is available as a free download on Bandcamp or for streaming on Soundcloud. We had a chat about his first release: how he did it and why he’s giving it away for free.

The EP consists of five tracks, with the average duration of 2 minutes per track.

It took six months to make and it’s about 12 minutes of music.

– Wuh Oh

What I like about Peter’s music is that it doesn’t equivocate. All the tracks on the EP go straight to the point: they are concise musical statements. Another thing that drew me in is the warmth that they convey, making it almost inconceivable that their birthplace is the city of Glasgow.

But the EP really is a product of Glasgow. For the artwork Peter sought the help of Robert Hunter, a graduate of the Glasgow School of Art. Mastering was done by Alex Cameron aka Arm Watches Fingers, a Glaswegian producer.

While the main reason for the EP’s warm sound remains its melodic material and Peter’s arrangements, he admits to ‘aggressive use’ of the Vintage Warmer plugin in the final stages of postproduction. The majority of the tracks rely on carefully selected samples ranging from snippets of a Marvin Gaye song to a voiceover of a tutorial on playing drums.

I discovered Addictive Drums in the final stages of putting the EP together. It slotted into each track really well and helped to unify the sound of the EP.

The EP is available on Bandcamp as a ‘pay what you want’ release. While that doesn’t necessarily translate to “free”, Peter isn’t bothered by people choosing to not pay for his music.

I just wanted to make sure it could spread as naturally as it could. Plus, I really don’t like paying for music so I wouldn’t expect anyone else to. As long as I can get away with that, I imagine I probably will continue to put things out for free.

Listen to the whole interview here:

FET Compressor Plugins Comparison

The second in a series of parallel tests of compressor plugins is a comparison of FET compressors.

As with optos, in the world of field effect transistor compressors there’s leaders and there’s followers [I’m not gonna let you finish that here, Kanye]. The epitome of FET compressors is widely considered to be the UREI 1176 Peak Limiter, and obtaining one is simply a matter of handing over $2,355/£1530 or, if you’re especially handy, winging it yourself. Of course, there are software solutions:

• Waves CLA-76 Compressor/Limiter
• Native Instruments VC 76
• Apple Logic Pro Compressor in Vintage FET and Studio FET mode
• Universal Audio 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-In Collection
• Antress Seventh Sign [freeware; Windows-only]

The 1176 has had a number of revisions since its launch in 1967. The first ones had a silver/blue look (‘Bluestripe’), while the later ones came in an all-black box (‘Blackface’). The various software incarnations mimic that distinction:

• Universal Audio offers the Rev A “Bluestripe” and Rev E “Blackface” (including a rare 1176AE 40th Anniversary Edition).
• Logic Compressor’s Vintage FET mode has a silver design and the Studio FET is black.
• Waves’ CLA-76 features a ‘Bluey’ and a ‘Blacky’ mode.

The silver units are generally said to produce higher levels of distortion (hence ‘vintage’). The black ones have the suffix ‘LN’, signifying their ‘low noise’ character. Let’s test this. I have compared the Logic’s Compressor in Vintage and Studio FET modes and Waves’ CLA-76 in Blacky and Bluey mode.

I recommend downloading the files, as Soundcloud transcodes to 128 kbps mp3 for streaming playback which isn't sufficient for this purpose. Just click on the download icon on Soundcloud and you'll get a full quality .wav file. Alternatively, click here to download all the files as a zip archive.

From the waveforms we see that the Vintage FET/Bluey modes in Logic/Waves do bring out the ambience due to the higher levels of distortion. Studio FET/Bluey smooths out the transients without bringing out the ambience.

 My observations:

• Waves Bluey saturates the fundamental of the hihat (~5kHz) and squeezes the ambience of the kick (a byproduct of saturation/distortion).
• Waves Blacky controls the transients and adds subtle saturation around the 5k area.
• Logic seems to lightly saturate the area around 10kHz. That doesn’t contribute much to the sound, especially on lower quality listening systems and/or bitrates. In Studio FET mode there’s some rattle from the kick.

To me the Waves CLA-76 Blacky sounds the best in this example. Which one do you prefer?

Test Notes:

Rather than typing out all the settings, here are the screenshots of the four plugins in which you can see the values I used. 
The drum loop is from Mike Reed/Mike the Drummer.

Logic Compressor ‘Vintage FET’

Logic Compressor ‘Studio FET’

Waves CLA-76 ‘Bluey’

Waves CLA-76 ‘Blacky’