The new episode of Sound Field explores the current debate in classical music of how much recordings should be edited. It explores why do classic musicians edit at all, how it differs from pop music, how it affects musicians, and what the future brings.
“I think Rick has created something really special. From what I’ve gathered, he’s really serious about communicating an energy and creating a space for people” Ron the Jewels' El-P says to Complex about Rick Rubin's Shangri La studio situated in his home in Malibu, California. “That’s all based on his ethos. That’s all based on his experience of what makes a good record. So everyone there is really focused on making sure everybody is comfortable and there’s a creative energy. It’s an empty palette you can really just fill with new energy" - El-P adds. The versatile producer "would come by, barefoot, cross his legs, close his eyes and just listen and really take it in and really give feedback".
"That an African American man played a massive and pivotal role in three seminal musical forms seemingly dominated by Caucasian artists – folk rock, prog rock, and proto-punk – is one of the most tragically untold stories in popular music’s history" - Tape Op writes introducing Tom Wilson, the man who produced albums, among many others, by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Velvet Underground, Sun Ra, Frank Zappa, The Animals, Gil Scott-Herron...
Popular digital audio workstations like Ableton, FL Studio, Logic, and Cubase were built primarily to facilitate music-making in a Western mode, according to the principles of European classical music. Recently, Khyam Allami, an Iraqi born in Syria and living in London, introduced Leimma and Apotome, two pieces of free software that aim to offer possibilities outside the Europan music canon. Leimma allows users to explore tuning systems from around the world or create their own, while Apotome offers generative music creation using these diverse tuning systems. They intend to give musicians a blank musical slate, rather than nudging them towards any specific musical tradition. Pitchfork presents both.
"Fundamentally WhoSampled is a music discovery service... The idea being that, if you came to the site and you’re a fan of say, Michael Jackson, for example, you’re only a few steps away from discovering Quincy Jones and then hip-hop records that sampled Quincy Jones" - WhoSampled's Chris Read says in Berklee Online interview. WhoSampled is the leading destination for sample-based music, covers, and remixes, housing the world’s most comprehensive database of music with more than 730,000 samples spanning more than 1,000 years.
“The beat box…was running fast, which means when you played the tape back, it came out slow. And that had an enormous amount to do with the sound of 'Nebraska'" - Bruce Springsteen said on his Apple Music radio series 'Letter to You Radio' talking to Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl about the beginning of their music careers, CoS reports. He explained - "'Nebraska' in its entirety is slowed down from its actual recording pitch. When I brought the pitch up to where it should actually be, it brightened a record up and took away a lot of its mysteriousness. So 'Nebraska' was this totally haphazard, happy accident that occurred over a few weeks with just whatever equipment we had laying around and the whole record cost us, including the price of the tape, it cost us about a thousand dollars to make”. Springsteen releases his new album 'Letter To You' this week.
Berlin-based vocalist and producer Lyra Pramuk released her debut album 'Fountain' of "futuristic folk music" this year, made entirely with her own voice. Fact Magazine visited her in her studio to see how she does it.
Igor Cavalera is best known as a founding member and drummer of Sepultura, but in recent years he’s been an electronic producer and DJ under the alias Mixhell. Fact Magazine published a 13-minutes video of Cavalera from his home studio where he records an improvised modular synth performance and shares the story behind his custom setup. It's kinda funny to see the metalhead being so serious, but it is creative work so it does demand full focus.
Citizen DJ is an open-source hip-hop sample tool launched by the US The Library of Congress, where users will have access to a massive audio collection that dates back over a hundred years. A preview is currently available, and the full service will launch this summer. There will be three ways to access these sound files: an interface for searching by sound and metadata; a simple music-creation app that easily allows the collection to be remixed with hip-hop beats; and various “sample packs” full of thousands of clips from particular collections. It is LOC's Brain Foo’s intention to bring back the golden age of hip-hop sampling, but Citizen DJ will be available for use in other musical genres.
In recent years, melody loops - snippets of original music that might serve as the instrumental hook of a song - and the musicians who create them, have become a fundamental part of the way rap music is made. For up-and-comers, supplying well-connected producers with packs of pre-made melodies has become the most effective method to get a foot in the industry’s door. And for producers working with prolific rappers, outsourcing the time-consuming work of writing a melody to a pool of dedicated loopmakers is the most efficient way to keep making hits - Pitchfork reports on the fundamentals of music production in hip-hop today.
Fact Magazine has started a great new segment How To Make a Track, showing how the world’s best producers make their music in their studios. In the latest episode, Fact visited the Berlin studio of Hayden Payne aka Phase Fatale, a Berghain resident with a love of ’80s post-punk, industrial and EBM, who showed his fascination with the effects of different sonic frequencies.
Andrew Weatherall was producer and remixer of tracks by the likes of Happy Mondays, New Order, Björk, The Orb, The Future Sound of London, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, among others. Guardian made a selection of 10 of his greatest tracks, from Primal Scream and Saint Etienne to Ricardo Villalobos and Fuck Buttons. Listen to the 10 gems by the recently deceased musician here.
The producer's job is largely "getting the best out of an artist" by "making them feel special" - Stephen Street, the producer of records by The Smiths, Blur, The Cranberries, who is about to receive Music Producers Guild Awards, told the BBC about the essence of his job. He says how recording music is a lot about dealing with egos - "I have definitely been sent some slightly difficult people to work with", but sometimes "you do have to put your foot down but hopefully you're doing it in such a way that you're not making enemies... And there's other points where you just sit back and let them get on with it, because a good band will always sort out their natural balance".
MIDI 1.0 was released 37 years ago, and it had a big influence on music as a tool for manipulating and transferring sound. Now, it has finally received a major update - MIDI 2.0 is expanded from 7-bit values to 32-bit values (like going from the resolution of a 1980s television to the high-def TVs of today). It means that instead of 128 steps for features like volume, there will now be billions. With more memory, this should mean music played on MIDI 2.0 instruments will feel more analog, and make it possible for non-keyboard instruments to work better with MIDI.
The latest guest in Fact Magazine's segment Against The Clock is Birmingham’s grime and garage producer Preditah. In ATC a musician, or a band, needs to make a song in no more than 10 minutes. Preditah has been making beats for MCs since he was a teenager, so he was done really fast, and the […]
With an endless sea of aftermarket components and apps, as well as extra space and faster processors, the tablet has truly become the modern musician’s multi-tool, Rolling Stone writes, and chooses five best tablets for music production.
