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Inside Tracks

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My job during this stage is to get everything into Pro Tools, and I'll be making extensive notes and I'll also be polishing the sounds in the box, using EQ and compression and so on. Many of the sounds needs some massaging to get the blends right. I generally use a Neumann M49 on Justin, and if we don't have one, a U87, going into a Neve 1073 mic pre and then a Tube-Tech CL1B compressor, going straight into Pro Tools, which was running at 44.1/24. We don't do vocal comps, because Justin knows what he wants. He listens to himself, and when he wants to touch something up, we punch him in and we move on. We don't end up with five takes of the same vocal. This makes working with him very fast and very easy.

Based in Los Angeles, where he has his own studio, Bainz has been working for Young Thug and his YSL Records since 2017. One of his first credits with YSL was as engineer on the label’s Slime Language compilation album, released in 2018, and he engineered and mixed much of Young Thug’s debut album, So Much Fun (2019), which went to number one in the US. In writing and producing material for his latest album, Abel [Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd] and I were in so many different studios and locations, and we were travelling so much, that I did not have a solid reference point. Sometimes I was sitting on a sofa with headphones on, sometimes I’d be in a studio working on NS10s, sometimes I’d be in Abel’s spare room using whatever speakers were there. In every place we used different mics, different mic pres, different monitors, and while it may have appeared like a nightmare to bring all that together, the technology makes it easy to do that. This is exactly the course I was looking for. I don’t use Logic and I am not a huge fan of Tech House. But Jono explains music production and mixing techniques in such a way that it really dosent matter the type of genre or the DAW you are using. He explains why he is using a certain plugin, why he is making the changes etc The art of music production lies in serving the song — and working with James Taylor, Dave O’Donnell felt that modern production trends would hinder his aim of capturing emotive performances. Ski’ was written by three producers, Wheezy, Outtatown and BabyWave, and rappers Young Thug and Gunna.“Hell yeah,” agrees Bainz, “that’s often my biggest thing! Some rappers get so married to the demo, knowing every sound, that there’s not much you can do. Thug spends a lot of time making sure that everything is the way it was when he was working with the roughs. So my job is to clean things up and make the beat sound better. But in some cases I may change things or clean something up too much and the rapper doesn’t like it.Deep in the middle of 2020 and of the pandemic, YSL hatched a plan for another Slime Language album. The concept of the Slime Language compilations is to showcase YSL’s artists, as well as a large collection of guest artists and Thug’s close friends. And so Slime Language 2, which also became a Billboard number one, features the likes of Travis Scott, Drake, Lil Baby, Lil Uzi Vert, Big Sean, Skepta, Future, Kid Cudi, Meek Mill and many others, as well as Young Thug and Gunna, of course.

There has been a 13–year hiatus since Taylor’s previous album of new material, 2002’s October Road, punctuated only by an album of covers called, well, Covers (2008), a few live albums and a Christmas album. In interviews, Taylor indicated that modern life was simply too busy for him to take the time off he needs to write. The other major challenge for any older artist is to come up with something that’s not only relevant today in terms of music and lyrics, but that can also compete in today’s sonic landscape. Thug or the other rappers work out their rap in the control room, which usually is full of people, because it adds to the vibe,” Bainz explains. “No words get written down or entered into a phone ever, by anyone. You will be surprised at how fast the rappers move! Sometimes the entire vocal is laid down in less than an hour. It’s about the energy in that moment. Our job is to capture that, maintain sonic integrity and make the end result sound as amazing as possible. According to Bainz, working on the album made little difference to his daily rhythm, apart from the complications of the epidemic. “Since I started to work for YSL, I have barely had any days off. I am Thug’s and YSL’s full‑time engineer, and they are in the studio every day. Because YSL is such a big camp, as a team and as a label, somebody is always working. They operate like a big family. I do mixes for others as well, sometimes, but I am on call all the time as an engineer. The only reason I can do so many mixes is because I have my room in the same facility, right down the hallway, so I can just walk over to help with recording when needed.I had some plug–ins over the stereo bus, even though I have driven myself crazy over the years with many different stereo bus plug–ins, and in the end found that it doesn’t matter. You can get to the same point using different plug–ins. On this song I used the Slate Digital VTM virtual tape machine, which gives you the flexibility to decide how much you want to push the bass in the Settings tab, and which has very realistic hiss noise. On History Of Man I actually used tape, to hear what it would do to my sounds, and when I used the VTM, I found that they dialled that sound in spot on. I also used the Pro–MB, very subtly, just to glue everything together in the song. O’Donnell recorded all the material for Before This World to Pro Tools at 24–bit, 96kHz: “I was never a big fan of 44.1, and I feel that 96k is definitely better for acoustic music. With 24/96 I thought for the first time that digital sounded good.” Be Prepared He thoroughly covers all the major aspects of music production that our students are constantly asking about. How do you get inspired to start an idea? How do you fully develop an idea and how do you mix and master that idea to a fully polished idea that is done?! All done in a fresh new way.

James wanted to have a sense of what he had,” recalled O’Donnell, “which was many musical ideas, including melodies, but only a few lyrics. Steve has worked with James since 2000, and Jimmy since 1991, so they are familiar with James’s music and approach, and part of James’s vision was to have these guys play his stuff. Basically he comes in, plays us what he has and they listen and then start to join in. In 2010 we tried a lot of arrangement ideas, and laid them down, after which James went off and wrote lyrics and more music.” In The Barn My process is difficult to talk about, because I do everything at once,” explains the producer. “The moment I receive files, I am composing and treating things. I then record Abel raw, without EQ or compressors. His singing is extremely dynamic, based on feeling and emotion, and that is the take. We don’t go in again to try to recut a softer section or get something technically better. Everything is 32–bit, so the only thing I do is make sure he’s never clipping. Immediately after recording Abel, I am throwing on gated reverbs and delays and filters, and more, and arranging and adding things. Writing, producing, mixing is all one fluid process for me. There’s no separation between any of the things that I do.” Tasked with helping the five–time Grammy–winning Taylor in making sure that Before This World could hold its own in 2015 was the album’s engineer, mixer and producer, Dave O‘Donnell. From his Studio D, an hour’s drive north of New York City, O’Donnell gives a detailed account of the making of the album, which began in January 2010, continued four years later, and involved recording sessions in Taylor’s wooden barn, hotel rooms and various studios across America. At the end of this process, during the final mixdown, O’Donnell found that he was making a slightly different record than he had in mind... From comparing the amount of money placed on a horse versus the total on the race you can tell if a horse is overweighted in the market or underweighted. Two massive hit albums in a year was a pretty good return on 20 days' work for Justin Timberlake, producer Timbaland — and engineer Chris Godbey.The music: iZotope Ozone, Cable Guys Volume Shaper, UAD MXR Flanger, API 560, EP34, Brainworx BX_solo, API Vision, EL7 Fatso, AMS RMX16, Pultec EQ & API 560, SoundToys Decapitator & MicroShift, Waves Renaissance Bass, L1, L2 & Reel ADT, FabFilter Volcano, Pro–Q2, Pro–G & Pro–MB, Audio Ease Altiverb, Sugar Bytes Artillery 2. With more than 15 years of Betfair trading experience, the founder of InsideTraxs has made over 100 VIDEOS. These form the Betfair Trading Academy, which is now considered an invaluable resource to many traders whether Newbies or Experienced. Because of the way James’s schedule went, we ended up mixing everything at his and my place, on my Yamaha DM2000 desk. It has four banks of 24 channels, and 48 channels at 96k, plus some very good internal EQs and effects, like reverbs. For me it’s great to be able to work with faders, and although we went digital through the DM2000, I think it did sound better than just staying in the box. In general, going out of the box will give you a wider image, with more depth, and the Yamaha will also do that. Particularly for a project like this, going through a mixer sounds much better. I plugged analogue outboard into the Yamaha console inserts, and also connected outboard to the Pro Tools hardware inserts. Some of the hardware included my Vertigo VSC2 compressor, which I love, and the TC Electronic 4000 as my main digital reverb.” In The Mix Blast Off built another room — I got to see how studios were built — which became my room. I worked with Wiz Khalifa there, and a whole bunch of Atlantic artists. Soon after that I met up with Michael Brian, and we started our own studio in SoHo. We got bigger and bigger and after eight years, in 2016, we decided to move the studios to LA. A year later I did my first session with Young Thug.”

Bainz has an impressive credit list. In addition to the artists already mentioned, he has worked with Juice WRLD, Sia, Mac Miller, Quavo, Machine Gun Kelly, Prateek Kuhad and many others. When asked why he thinks he managed to be so successful in a relatively short space of time, he reflects: “I guess I’m really fast on Pro Tools, but also, I’m very adaptable. When I met Young Thug, I really immersed myself in his culture. This is really important. When you work with an artist every day, you have to know where they’re coming from, and how they move. You need to know the technical stuff as well, and if you communicate that with them, it’s the best marriage.” YSL Studio Engineer and mixer Evan LaRay explains its appeal thus: “With ‘Bodak Yellow’ it is Cardi’s vocal performance that really takes the record to the next level. I don’t think anybody else could get on that beat the way she does, and then there’s what she wrote and raps about. The vocals are what makes it a great record, and the beat and the vocals together control the song. It’s a simple beat, really just the main synth, the 808s and the hi-hats. The producer, J White, put in some amazing drum sounds and 808 textures, with a lot of energy. The second 808 sound almost functions like a bass. When you hear that part in a club or in a car, it moves you. And as a mixer, I had to make sure to enhance everything and make sure that it translates.” Fight To Flight This view of the Pro Tools Edit window shows some of the beats, which were programmed in some cases by cutting and pasting audio clips rather than using MIDI. Although the vertical waveform zoom level has been raised to make the contents of each clip visible, Pro Tools’ Clip Gain feature has been used to reduce most of them in level by up to 15dB. The Barn is a property built about 15 years ago on James’s land,” explains O‘Donnell, “about 300 feet away from his home. It’s a very functional, modular kind of space, which he uses for rehearsals and recordings. The main room is just a great acoustic space, not so large as to be too reverberant but also not so small that you get a lot of early reflections. It’s a great–sounding room, and inside it we have a couple of makeshift rooms. We use one as the control room and another as a booth for James to be in, plus there’s a small room with the piano. Nothing is 100 percent isolated, either between rooms or from the outside, but it’s out in the woods so it’s relatively quiet. With no permanent control room or recording gear available at the Barn, Dave O’Donnell set up a temporary working area to house a selection of his own equipment and rental gear. The album was eventually mixed on this Yamaha DM2000 digital desk.Born in New Delhi, India, Bainz got to his position as chief engineer and mixer at YSL in Los Angeles via Australia, Florida and New York. He recalls, “I never played an instrument, but got into DJ’ing and I was into electronic music. I went to Melbourne to do a bachelor degree in something, I can’t remember what it was, but I hated it. I dropped out and then enrolled in the School of Audio Engineering Institute in Melbourne. I was always into the technicalities behind music and there I realised I wanted to be an engineer. Now 28, Carlo ‘Illangelo’ Montagnese takes the modern approach to making music to an extreme, with every significant move done in software. Unsurprisingly, Montagnese also learnt his skills in typically 21st-century fashion: he’s self–taught, and the Internet is his main source of information. Not much. What I use is this: a MacBook Pro, in my studio together with a PCI chassis with two UAD Octo Cards, and the Metric Halo ULN8 soundcard. When I’m travelling I use the same laptop with a UAD Apollo Twin soundcard. I have two sets of headphones, but frankly, I don’t mind which I use. I’m also happy to work with anything for monitors. I used to use Genelecs, and I really like the Yamaha NS10s. But it does not matter.” Justin Timberlake's album release schedule appears to be inspired by the proverbial English buses: you wait ages and then several come along at once. Before 2013, the singer had released only two albums in a decade: his 2002 debut Justified, and the follow-up Futuresex/LoveSounds in 2006. After that Timberlake became preoccupied with his acting career, though he remained an active chart presence by guesting on other people's hits, such as Madonna's '4 Minutes', TI's 'Dead And Gone', Timbaland's 'Carry Out', and Jamie Foxx's 'Winner'. Traditionally educated in the art of recording, Bainz has had to adapt to Atlanta rap’s studio culture. Here, he talks us through his mix of Young Thug and Gunna’s hit single, ‘Ski’.

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