(Be warned, this video is frightening, but 12 million YouTube plays can’t be wrong…Despite not being an official video or featuring the actual band members.) There are a few key elements to the composition of “Kids” which give it a pop maturity.  The instrumentation of the tune plus the likely limitations of the performers themselves have informed the compositional parameters of the song. One of the predominant elements of the song is that each instrument is monophonic—virtually no instrumental track plays two notes at the same time (with exceptions being the synth pad, which is barely audible, and the occasional two-note stab on the “answer” synth). Why? It may be a result of limitations: some vintage synthesizers like the MiniMoog actually limit the number of notes you can play simultaneously. Or it could be a product of musicians who don’t have the classical training to handle multiple notes at once, forcing them to use the hunt-and-peck... Read More →

Sonic Deconstruction is a monthly feature where we spend an entire week analyzing one song from every possible angle: personnel, instrumentation, composition, recording, mixing/mastering, and production. Check back every day this week for the next installment!   Perhaps the joke is on us. According to their interview on caughtinthecrossfire.com, it wasn’t until Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden began writing pop songs as a joke that they started to realize their music-making potential. Writing under the name “The Management,” even their moniker was a part of the gag—a jab at corporate manufactured pop with the end-game to “sell out as quickly as possible.” We’ve all heard that same tired construct a thousand times in half-baked collegiate pseudo-comedy so even though they don’t get points for back-story originality, they do take home the prize for execution as their efforts have snowballed into genuine pop glory. Somewhere along the way the Brooklyn duo, now... Read More →

Not exactly breaking news, but humor me: scan the Billboard Hip Hop chart and you’ll see that it is hard to find a rap song with a snare drum on the back beat. Why? Let’s go back to the late 90s for a moment. From groups like OutKast, No Limit Soldiers (Master P, Mystikal), and Cash Money Millionaires (Juvenile, Birdman) sprung a new era of southern music which began to seep into America’s collective consciousness. Still, with artists like Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and 50 Cent (and production teams like Neptunes and Timbaland), it would be another half a decade or so before the South virtually became Top 40 rap. Growing up in Atlanta, I had a somewhat distorted view of the influence of southern rap. In fact, just the other day I was discussing this very topic with a well-known East Coast rap mixer and discovered that songs like “Back That Azz Up” didn’t have the nearly the impact on the national level that they did in Georgia. In fact, he said that... Read More →

In 2006, The Knife’s Silent Shout was received with near universal acclaim. Pitchfork, who honored the Swedish duo with the title Album of the Year, recently hyperbolized that the siblings had created a masterwork that “arguably sounded like nothing before it.”  Indie rock critics’ penchant for overstatement aside, the group does have a distinct sound—one that peculiarly hasn’t been co-opted by imitators at large.    Perhaps it speaks to the reverence hipsters have for their perceived groundbreakers, or maybe it just means that the gear they use is too obscure to reproduce.  If voice transformers were as ubiquitous as Auto-Tune, would we be hearing The Knife pull a T-Pain on MTV complaining that they had been swagga-jacked?  Well in honor of the release of Karin Dreijer Andersson’s new solo project, Fever Ray, I’ll demystify some of her and her brother’s sonic magic.   Very rarely is a band’s unique sonic character defined by a single effect but honestly, all... Read More →

When it comes to audio, there are two types of compression and both are widely misunderstood, sometimes even by audio engineers. To briefly sum it up: Data compression is used to reduced the size of computer files. Sound compression is used to affect the apparent loudness, energy level, or impact of sounds. This post is Part 1 of 2 from Data Compression vs. Sound Compression. Today I’ll be explaining data compression and its two different subcategories. To learn about sound compression, stay tuned for Part 2. Two Types of Data Compression As written above, data compression (also known as file compression) means the size of the original audio file gets reduced. Depending on the type of data compression, though, sound quality may also be reduced. When sending final mixdowns of a Fix Your Mix project, clients receive a .zip file and an MP3. Both of these files utilize data compression, however .zip format is lossless (temporarily compressed) while .mp3 format is lossy (permanently... Read More →

Artist: Sol Seppy Album: The Bells of 1 2 Released: 2006 Sound: Dreamy Indie Rock For Fans Of: Sneaker Pimps, The Cardigans, Radiohead Recommended Tracks: “Slo Fuzz,” “Enter One” The Bells of 1 2 is among the greatest indie rock albums you’ve never heard. I have yet to meet a Sol Seppy fan here in the states, though based on her Myspace play count it is safe to say she has a fanbase somewhere out there. Former Sparklehorse member Sol Seppy (Sophie Michalitsianos) is a classically trained Australian living in the UK who writes, sings and performs all of her own music. To top it off, she recorded her incredible-sounding debut herself in her home studio (though mixing is credited to both Paul Antonel and herself). I hesitate to call this album “rock” because half the songs feature only piano and vocals. I hesitate to label it “singer/songwriter” because it is so beautifully orchestrated, layered and produced into something enormous.... Read More →

Pop minimalism is one of the most interesting and distinct music trends of this decade. Particularly over the last four years, much of rap and Top 40 dance music has had no chord progression at all, only a repeating riff (“ostinato”) and/or a single note bass line. The following club anthems are extreme examples of pop minimalism. They all are comprised almost entirely of rhythmic components, but all of them have at least some melodic content somewhere, including tuned 808s which usually will not be audible except in a night club or car stereo. 5) “Wait (Whisper Song)” by Ying Yang Twins (NSFW video) When top producers make music today, they are imagining how a crowd will react to it in a night club environment, but even more specifically they’re thinking about strip clubs. Getting your single in rotation at strip clubs is a right of passage in the rap world and “Wait” is a perfect example of a song written explicitly for that purpose. ... Read More →

Angus Young is a dangerous musician to talk about in this column—there is a wealth of knowledge out there on Angus’s setup and for no one else has so much been written about so little (check out this crazy little diagram of his standard set-up). SG, cable, Marshall stack with the output all the way up. Can it get any simpler? No pedals, no effects, no muss, no fuss. Still, the questions keep coming so clearly there is something else that people are missing when trying to replicate his sound. Did you know that there are actually TWO guitar players in this picture?? Well the first thing we have to do is make sure that we separate the Brothers Young. AC/DC is a band known for its stark simplicity and so the casual listener who likes the face-melting loudness of the band and can name only one band member (and maybe that one guy who died) may not realize that a lot of the big ballsy hooks that we remember and associate with Angus, like the opening to “TNT,” are actually played by... Read More →

Whether you’ve researched production and engineering in magazines (we recommend Tape Op) or on the web, you’re well aware of the ongoing debate between the virtues of analog and digital recording. Eventually, Phil and I will discuss the merits and limitations of both, but for now I will define the two terms in order to lay the foundation for future articles including next week’s Producer Speak: “Bit Depth, Bit Rate, and Sample Rate.” Digital audio relies on a series of points (called samples) and works similarly to film. A reel of film is comprised of a series of still photos which, when projected at high speed, gives the illusion of fluid motion to the naked eye. Your brain “connects the dots” from one image to the next. Digital audio works like film in that sound is captured via a series of samples (which could be thought of as snapshots of sound pressure levels). These dots are then connected to form waveforms: The scale is very different,... Read More →

Note: Though this article refers to live drum performances, all information below can be applied to MIDI sequencing and quantization. The music blogosphere is abuzz this month with talk of an informal survey which compares tempo deviations on drum performances of popular rock groups. The following graph shows tempo deviations in the drum performance by John Bonham* on Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”: The tempo graphs show little deviation for pop acts like Nickelback, Britney Spears, and late-era Green Day. Some say this exactness contributes to a rigid or lifeless quality of radio rock. On the other end of the spectrum, the tempos of iconic rock bands like the Beatles, Metallica, and Weezer deviate considerably within songs. The above plays into the notion that the 60s and 70s were the golden age of music—the “what ever happened to all the great rock n’ roll bands???” mentality—the idea that musicianship has been replaced by convenience,... Read More →