New Monday
New Monday #82
Happy Monday, kiddos!
The world continues to go around and wobble like a damaged Leslie cabinet.
A Killer Mashup
Pull the vocals off this, put them on that—digital and DAWs have taken mashups to another level. Some are fun, some are funny, a few are transcendent.
DJ Cummerbund makes transcendent mashups. From Long Island (shout out to the hometown), he’s made hundreds of mashups and has won awards. He produces, he tours. He's like the Elvis, The Beatles, the Bowie of mashups. And I just discovered him. And now you get to discover him, if you haven’t already.
This came across my feed a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it on loop, as well as exploring his other offerings. It won a Webby for best mashup in 2020.
https://youtu.be/tcUB-3lud60?si=c0cRkRsgTUGCBer7
The legal machinations behind these I’ve not looked into. I suppose much of the appropriation of music and images is covered by Fair Use. But some of these seem to go beyond into something else. Hmmmm... Check out this one:
https://youtu.be/c8Upzye9Ctw?si=8_ds4uZrh46vwseK
A look at the credits on YouTube reveals links to the source recordings as well as a link for a streaming version. Interesting. But a search on Spotify of the title reveals links to the Rob Zombie source song, while searching DJ Cummerbund turns up a 'Love Shack' remix.
Clearly, deals were signed and handshakes made. But this strange stretching of Fair Use and the depositing of Streaming Royalties all over the place makes what’s happening to Rick Beato even harder to understand.
Beating Down Rick Beato
We all know Rick Beato for his wonderful interviews and videos on music. He has 5 million followers and rightly so. He asks great questions. He gets artists to open up. He knows his music theory, his audio engineering and his history. He has a kid-in-a-candy-store enthusiasm for what he does. There’s a reason he’s the top online music journalist. And he liked my sweater at NAMM last year.
But Universal Music Group isn’t happy with him and appears to have declared war on him, issuing a Copyright Strike against him on YouTube. Three strikes and his channel is shut down forever.
This is the kind of thing you need to know about, as it will become more of a problem in all our lives as AI muddies the line between creation and theft, record companies search for cigarette butts of revenue as they lose their empires to small creatives, everyone sues everyone else and no one makes money.
A good overview of Mr Beato’s situation, by Ted Gioia, is here. A quick read.
Ted Gioia, by the way, is a great guy to follow.
The Death of a Turtle
Mark Volman died on Sept. 5th. He was a member of The Turtles, was the "Flo" in "Flo and Eddie," sang on countless records. He was a big guy with frizzy hair and irresistible energy. Later in his life, he earned a degree in screenwriting and taught music business at Belmont College. By all accounts, he was a wonderful fellow.
How did he get the name Flo?
He and his partner in The Turtles, and friend/comrade for life, Howard Kaylan (Eddie), were signed as The Turtles to White Whale Records. It was such an utterly shitty record deal that when The Turtles broke up, Volman and Kaylan couldn't even use their real names commercially. Ya gotta love record companies.
The Turtles made a clutch of great records for White Whale, including perhaps the ultimate pop tune, 'Happy Together'.
More interesting to me, for New Monday purposes, is this: She's My Girl, from their 1968 The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands album.
Listen for spectacular vocals from Howard Kaylan, and listen for the compression kicking in on his vocals when he gets louder. Also dig the insane production on this: pianos, reverb, vocals, congas, a break with an orchestra! Mariachi trumpets! Tons of saturation as they overload the tape and the console! Utterly incredible.
The Turtles were innovative. The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, a concept album, is a loopy piece of psychedelia that's really worth a listen. These guys are way way underrated. One of the most innovative pop bands of the 60s.
Also this is worth a listen, not just for the production, which has heavily overdubbed drums and an out-of-nowhere ending, but again for the vocals, and really, just the quality of the song: We Ain't Gonna Party No More. What a fabulous song.
The Turtles eventually got the last laugh. White Whale went bankrupt—The Turtles were their only act that made money and the label couldn't milk them forever.
Flo and Eddie bought the rights to all of their own music.
Rest in peace, Flo.
A Reverb Lesson
The Turtles records used reverb and ambience very thoughtfully. Not everything was wet. There was space not only from left to right but from front to back.
Back in those days, a studio might only have one reverb to use, a vastly different situation than we have now, where you can slap a different reverb on every channel.
I used to use three reverbs when mixing, and I wrote about how to do that. It leads to an overall cleaner recording, and if you're new to mixing, this will give you a foundation for your thinking and process.
A Listening Session
Last week I tossed a recording of 'Lips Like Sugar' by Echo and the Bunnymen to listen to and ponder. It fits into the loose theme of, “Show us where the record company hurt you on the doll.” This week: an extended look and listen. You’ll never hear this recording the same way again.
And that is it for today, Monday September 8th. The magic of the fall is upon us.
Warm regards,
Luke
New Monday #81
Happy New Monday, or... Happy Labor Day.
As long as we’re laboring, about a year ago I wrote this: https://korneffaudio.com/new-monday-28/.
It covered Marvin Gaye and there was a chart on EQ’ing ideas. We’re kinda bumping into that EQ’ing thing this Episode.
Sinners
Sinners is a horror flick set in the American Deep South in 1933—the time of lynchings, the KKK, and, evidently, vampires that play bluegrass. And it’s kind of a musical! Definitely worth a watch, and definitely the soundtrack is worth a listen.
Composed by Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson, and cut with a mixture of musicians and actors in a converted church in New Orleans, the music is rooted in delta blues but grows tendrils everywhere, into hip hop, R&B, with strange, dissonant string pads and keyboards, and rhythms pulled from Africa to Ireland.
Watch this scene. Aside from being a visual stunner, it’s a journey down the highway of black music in America. This is SPLENDID composing and filmmaking.
More Listening
The band hates this song and its production—lead singer Ian McCulloch said, "It [still] sounds crap.”
I dunno... I love it. It’s a bit lightweight as a song, but as a production, ay caramba! Amazing.
Lips Like Sugar
If we’re going to seriously listen to things, I want to find the best possible source. To my ears, nothing is beating Apple Music but Amazon Music is a close #2. They have the least signal compression and loudness compensation. This particular song is full of little production tidbits. They’re best heard on Apple or Amazon. Spotify and Tidal both sound overly compressed and bass-heavy. I can’t decide which one is more awful, and I am disappointed by Tidal. YouTube... eh.
ANYWAY, this one is mind-blowing on headphones. Stuff zinging around everywhere. Listen this week, I’ll tear it apart next week.
A Lesson
Some of you might have noticed that we’re putting out tips and tricks for our plug-ins on Instagram. Here, for instance.
This particular trick is on getting more presence out of bass and low-end sounds so they translate better to small speakers.
But in addition to the IG reel, I also wrote more on this particular trick, and you can find it by clicking here.
Short Stuff
Andy and Stewart are suing Sting for a share of the spoils from the royalties for 'Every Breath You Take'. Evidently, the Stingster makes $700,000 a year just from that one song, and the story is the band was going to chuck the song out when Sting said, “Andy, go do a guitar part.” The Andster popped into the studio and did the guitar part in one take, saving the song, and making Sting $700,000 a year. Not sure why Stewart is involved. Read more here.
Bang a gong? No! Rub it with a flumi! Get weird, voice-like sounds. Very cool. I might have to look into the physics of this.
Did you answer your survey yet and get 50% off of everything? No? What are you waiting for?
Have a great week.
Warm regards,
Luke
New Monday #80
Happy Monday -
Hopefully for you, not for me! My trusty Mac mini seems kinda dead this morning. I have it backed up, but locked inside it is today’s New Monday. Damnit. Usually I write them on a cloud app; this one was written in Apple Notes, and evidently the note didn’t get saved to the cloud.
Ah, well. Accidents will happen. I will reconstruct what I can.
This is all about listening, and things to listen to that will light up your ears in a good way.
Want to hear more? Listen with an open notebook. Write stuff down, draw pictures.
Accidents Will Happen
I gave you this song to listen to last week. Here are links to it:
This was recorded at Eden, which was a major studio in London until the mid-2000s. 24 tracks with a console designed and built by the staff, which included Roger Becherian, who engineered 'Armed Forces', Elvis Costello's third album.
'Armed Forces' was a very live-in-the-studio affair. Drums in the middle, everyone in a circle around it, everything cut live, including a guide vocal, which often became the lead vocal of choice. Producer Nick Lowe went for vibe not accuracy or perfection. The vocals were cut with a really cheap mic, a Beyer M400, also called a Soundstar 2. It's basically a German SM58. Becherian tried to use a U87 but Costello delivered his snarling vocals with so much spit the mic would short out. Really, the vocal sound is kind of awful—way compressed and midrange heavy, but it works and gives everything a spitty, in your face energy.
I made a map of what I'm hearing:
Drums
The drums seem to drift from hihat slightly right on the verses to slightly left on the choruses. On the verses, the snare is doubled with a rack tom hit. Because the hihat doesn't interrupt for that, I think the toms are an overdub and that Becherian moved the kit around in the chorus. On this other recording from the album, you get a better idea of the drums. And I found a picture from the session:
Note the tom out in front—more evidence of an overdub? Or it could be they removed drums that weren't used on a particular song to keep kit resonance down. Also note, only one crash cymbal! Pete Thomas is a hell of a player. He always seems ahead of the beat to me, which gives many Elvis Costello recordings a sense of a car going out of control down a hill.
Bass
Bruce Thomas' wonderful bass is the center of the song. Great part, very articulate sound. The choruses can be divided into four chunks, the "Accidents will happen" part and the "You used to be a victim" part, each repeated. Listen for a major change of bass sound on the fourth chunk, the last "I don't wanna hear it." It could be the way he's playing but it might also be a change in the mix. There are all sorts of subtle changes in level and parts on this recording. I think they were thinking that it should be slightly different at every moment. Another guy that thinks this way is Tchad Blake—he's always looking for something different, some little change to differentiate things.
Keys
Steve Nieve is responsible for the intricacies of this arrangement. His classically influenced keyboard parts also vary across the duration of the track. Listen for how one part is replaced by another—the verse is an organ, the 1st chunk of the chorus stabs on an organ, then a grand piano, wet and lush comes in, replacing the organ. His arrangements are things replacing rather than things layering.
Guitars
They seem almost non-existent, but they're there, played by Mr Costello, buried in the back and slightly left. Often his parts are lead lines that fit with the keyboards, not chords. The keys and guitar lines have a Beatle-esque vocal quality: two different parts that also seem harmonies, but they're not. Again, really interesting parts.
Vox
It's a very one-and-done vocal, doubled on the choruses. There is a three-part harmony that stacks up into the ending vamp. There's an interesting mix choice here. The vocals are all panned left, the reverb is mainly on the right. There's a substitution of left-to-right space for front-to-back space, which makes the vocals sound even more spacious than if the three parts were panned across left center right and the reverb then behind it. This is definitely something to experiment with on your own mixes.
On the version of this I lost, I wrote a bunch more on Costello's early recordings but that's not happening today. Schedules must be kept!
Bookmark This Video!
Check this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u2cFvLYv6s
The WDR Big Band is an amazing bunch of players in Germany. Why bookmark this video?
First of all, it is a superb recording. To pull off this level of clarity in a live situation is top flight engineering and mixing. Everything unfolds across the soundstage with such solidity. Close your eyes and you see the band. Kudos to the engineering staff.
Secondly, the video shows you exactly what mic to put where on each instrument. It's like a how-to video. Check out the interesting angling of the mics on the toms—a reason to love the small, weird shape of the AKG-C414—you can't do that with a MD 421. Ribbon mics on the trombones, condensers on the trumpets. You can see exactly what to do on just about everything other than the upright bass, the kick, and the piano.
But hang on: their YouTube channel is FULL of stuff like this, showing mic technique for everything. It's a masterclass / reference book on how to do it. Highly recommended.
Listen To This!
I watched 'Killers of the Flower Moon' Friday night and was blown away by the soundtrack. It lurks in the film like another character, perhaps the main character. It's moody and haunting, with Osage tribal rhythms, blues elements, and a rough texture that sounds like dust and decay. And it's a terrific recording.
Composed by Robbie Robertson as he was dying of cancer, played by him, along with a host of other musicians, this soundtrack is a spacious, sonic delight. Leave it on in the background while you cook dinner, or sit in front of it and drink it all in with your eyes closed. Hear it with headphones and fall asleep and have nightmares. Whatever: just listen to it.
Speaking of listening, please write in and tell me what streaming services you all use.
Phew! Done.
Warm regards,
Luke