http://soundcloud.com/cactu/remix-tricky-portishead-1
Remix Tricky Portishead 1 by Cactu
Friday, 8 April 2011
Producer Profile
Portishead
Portishead are a down-tempo, experimental / trip-hop band compromised of Geoff Barrow (Percussion, DJ, Keyboards), Beth Gibbons (Vocals) and Adrian Utley (Guitar, Bass, Keyboards). The name Portishead comes from a nearby town in Somerset
the bands début album "Dummy" was very well received internationally and essentially spawned the mainstream popularity of trip-hop as a genre in 1994 along with fellow Bristol based band Massive Attack who Geoff Barrow had worked with previously.
Portishead have a very distinct sound using lots of tremolo and very dynamic effects giving the lead sounds lots of interesting rhythmic movement which creates a lot of space for Beth's often whisper like vocals. this coupled with a lot of slow downbeat and droney bass give a lot of songs on "Dummy" a very 'underwater' feel.
Portishead are a very secretive band and haven't done very many press interviews nor detailed the set of processes they go through in producing music. this makes it very difficult for me to get down into actual production style through given infomation. However going off the knowlage I have of the album and being able to indentify production technquies via ear I belive I should come out with a remix that is very identifyable as a 'in the style of'.
Processes
Initially I was going to use the source material from 'Be Free' and started to make selections in Cubase as to what parts to use. However when the other source material was available I pleasently suprised to find 'Tricky' to be perfectly suited to what I wanted to do.
Drums:
When setting out on 'Tricky' and having a session loaded with all the source files, I went about taking out the desk sends and main drum parts as I wanted to use samples to give the percussion some more power, since the original drum parts are very weak. As I seached for samples to try out I noticed that the original track actually falls out of time towards the last 3rd of the song. This made it a little tricky trying to find a drum sample but within Loopmasters Lounge Chillout pack, I found a set of drum patterns that had the same pattern as the original tracking, along with some added hand percussion/congas which I thought gave a good touch.
When I added these to the project, alone they were not powerful or intresting enough, so to reinforce them I added a kick and a snare sample from Danny Byrds Loopmasters sample pack. I chose these becuase the snare and kick samples are big becuase they are used in Drum and Bass which is all about power in the drums. I added these to the project and matched up every main kick hit and every main snare hit, then soloing the drum parts as a whole and flipping the phase between the two to see which was more effective, which was in phase.
the additional kick and snare samples where mixed in with the pattern loop at a low level just to try and bring some more dynamics to the drums.
Addionally the lounge chillout pattern came with heavly effected versions as well, in particular 'RMX3' when added in under the kit, really brought out the snare and created some movement inbetween each kick and snare.
In hindsight the kick sample I chose didn't enhance in the way I wanted to, and sounds quite flat, I could have eaither turned it down a little in the mix / have used a little more reverb to smooth out the initial attack, or chosen a better sample more suited to the effect I wanted.
Bass:
I used the original bass tracking, however they were throughout the whole process very hard to reign in, some parts are very low, some parts are really high in volume and some parts had a really high resonance towards 120-200 Hz. that band contains the bassy drone that I wanted, as is alot of the tracks on 'Dummy' to have that drone style bass underpinning the rest of the parts. As I set about trying to control the dynamics via compression, it was really bringing out some of the finger slides and high frequency content that I didnt want, and using a low pass filter didnt 'sound' right. instead what I decided to do was set up paralell compression, with really heavy compression and mix the compression in with the original, and using the low pass filter on the compressed signal rather than the original.
it still provides problems in the level balance in the song, but when the breakdowns happen it sits very well.
Keys:
The Keys are, aside from the vocals, the main focus of 'Tricky', there was already a small amount of tremello on them originally, but they needed more movement to be more in tune with Portishead. I used logics tremello as a send effect becuase i was going to mix in a heavly effected set with the oringials however it didnt work so well and i actually just ended up using the full wet signal and pulling the original faders down. when all the parts of the song come in the effect sits really well, but when it breaks down into just the keys and the bass, the effect is too much and overwhelms it a bit. I sat down over around three days on this remix, I think I was focusing on other parts like the arrangement and drums/bass for too long and tired my ears out before realising just how effected I had made the breakdowns.
Vocals:
Vocals where the least challanging aspect when considering processing and editing. upon listening to the whole part there are some sections I cut out due to the singer going for 'vocal gymnastics' and creating power that sometimes went a little out of key, I removed these becuase they didnt fit with the downtempo style i was trying to focus on. Other than that, applying reverb and level balance.
Arrangement and Additional:
The Arrangement changes are fairly simple, where the original drum parts carried on throughout the whole track, when the keys and bass fell into what they did at the very start of the song, I dropped out the drums to create a breakdown. the key change is that I did a fade out at the end of the second chorus becuase to me thats where it felt the song should end, along with the added problem that after that section the drums start going out of time, presumably becuase the band didnt play to a click.
another thing I did was use my referance track 'Roads'. Opening up the match EQ, I took the settings from Roads and in a very small amount applied them to my remix. I was only going to do this to see what effect it had towards the end, but actually I found the effect to be quite positive.
Drums:
When setting out on 'Tricky' and having a session loaded with all the source files, I went about taking out the desk sends and main drum parts as I wanted to use samples to give the percussion some more power, since the original drum parts are very weak. As I seached for samples to try out I noticed that the original track actually falls out of time towards the last 3rd of the song. This made it a little tricky trying to find a drum sample but within Loopmasters Lounge Chillout pack, I found a set of drum patterns that had the same pattern as the original tracking, along with some added hand percussion/congas which I thought gave a good touch.
When I added these to the project, alone they were not powerful or intresting enough, so to reinforce them I added a kick and a snare sample from Danny Byrds Loopmasters sample pack. I chose these becuase the snare and kick samples are big becuase they are used in Drum and Bass which is all about power in the drums. I added these to the project and matched up every main kick hit and every main snare hit, then soloing the drum parts as a whole and flipping the phase between the two to see which was more effective, which was in phase.
the additional kick and snare samples where mixed in with the pattern loop at a low level just to try and bring some more dynamics to the drums.
Addionally the lounge chillout pattern came with heavly effected versions as well, in particular 'RMX3' when added in under the kit, really brought out the snare and created some movement inbetween each kick and snare.
In hindsight the kick sample I chose didn't enhance in the way I wanted to, and sounds quite flat, I could have eaither turned it down a little in the mix / have used a little more reverb to smooth out the initial attack, or chosen a better sample more suited to the effect I wanted.
Bass:
I used the original bass tracking, however they were throughout the whole process very hard to reign in, some parts are very low, some parts are really high in volume and some parts had a really high resonance towards 120-200 Hz. that band contains the bassy drone that I wanted, as is alot of the tracks on 'Dummy' to have that drone style bass underpinning the rest of the parts. As I set about trying to control the dynamics via compression, it was really bringing out some of the finger slides and high frequency content that I didnt want, and using a low pass filter didnt 'sound' right. instead what I decided to do was set up paralell compression, with really heavy compression and mix the compression in with the original, and using the low pass filter on the compressed signal rather than the original.
it still provides problems in the level balance in the song, but when the breakdowns happen it sits very well.
Keys:
The Keys are, aside from the vocals, the main focus of 'Tricky', there was already a small amount of tremello on them originally, but they needed more movement to be more in tune with Portishead. I used logics tremello as a send effect becuase i was going to mix in a heavly effected set with the oringials however it didnt work so well and i actually just ended up using the full wet signal and pulling the original faders down. when all the parts of the song come in the effect sits really well, but when it breaks down into just the keys and the bass, the effect is too much and overwhelms it a bit. I sat down over around three days on this remix, I think I was focusing on other parts like the arrangement and drums/bass for too long and tired my ears out before realising just how effected I had made the breakdowns.
Vocals:
Vocals where the least challanging aspect when considering processing and editing. upon listening to the whole part there are some sections I cut out due to the singer going for 'vocal gymnastics' and creating power that sometimes went a little out of key, I removed these becuase they didnt fit with the downtempo style i was trying to focus on. Other than that, applying reverb and level balance.
Arrangement and Additional:
The Arrangement changes are fairly simple, where the original drum parts carried on throughout the whole track, when the keys and bass fell into what they did at the very start of the song, I dropped out the drums to create a breakdown. the key change is that I did a fade out at the end of the second chorus becuase to me thats where it felt the song should end, along with the added problem that after that section the drums start going out of time, presumably becuase the band didnt play to a click.
another thing I did was use my referance track 'Roads'. Opening up the match EQ, I took the settings from Roads and in a very small amount applied them to my remix. I was only going to do this to see what effect it had towards the end, but actually I found the effect to be quite positive.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Producer choice
Placeholder
Unicorn Kid,
Artful Dodger,
Aphex Twin,
Flashblub,
DJ Sharpnel,
?????
Portishead
Portishead
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