Technical Sound Design and Final Advice

Hello, welcome to Take Notes and our new episode with the Incredible Fred again. We were so lucky. Fred invited us into his house once more to dig into several of the tracks from USB, and it was absolutely amazing to be back there catching up in his liv.ing room We filmed the whole interview, so if you'd like to watch the full video episode, which of course includes screen capture from Fred's logic sessions, then head over to Patreon.com forward slash tapenotes. Fred was brilliant as ever. We've spoken to him a couple of times before about the actual life records and there's something about his approach to music that is absolutely fascinating. And each time we've talked to him, he's kind of illustrated another side of that. And it was great to be back there again in his living room to find out how he made USB and the tracks on it. Fred of course has just completed that huge run of shows, the USB tour from last year and then finishing last weekend at Ali Pali in London, fo eventurs at Ali Pally, bringing all sorts of people together. Mike Skinner and JME, Ezra Collective, Thomas from Darth Punk, LaRue and Scream, Jamie T, all these different friends of Fred, drawn from different genres and different scenes, all brought together for the USB experience. Thank you so much once more, Fred, for letting us into your world. We had loads of questions come in from patron subscribers to put to Fred, we tried to cover as many as possible , but I think we would have needed quite a few more hours to cover them all. There were quite a few overlaps within our chat anyway, but many have also remained just in the full video episode on the Tape Notes Patreon as well. So that is our brand new episode. Fred again. Take three. I think you're gonna enjoy it. A couple of other quick announcements. This month's brand new gear giveaway on our extended players premium Patreon tier is a plug-in bundle from D16. One winner will be able to pick five plugins from their incredible range that includes Decimort, Space Rec, Devastator, Tor averb, and many more. All the details are at Patreon.com forward slash take notes. A big thanks as well to our partners at Tapeit, the iPhone recording app for musicians. Make sure to check them out. It really is a brilliant tool for music makers, a game changer for anyone who records voice notes, ideas, or anything with their iPhone. They've got a new plugin announcement coming very soon, a VST version of their D noiser. We've had a play with it already and it sounds really good, so keep an ear out for more on that. But now without further ado, let's get started. Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music. Every episode we'll be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio. So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath Hello, I'm John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Take Notes is Fred Again to talk about how he wrote, recorded, and produced the album USB. Fred Gibson, better known as Fred again, is a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. One of the biggest artists and producers in the industry today, Fred's career began in earnest when aged 16 he joined an a cappella group organized by producer Brian Eno. Impressed by Fred's skills, Brian offered to be his mentor, with the two working closely over the coming years. Venturing further into the world of production, Fred went on to work with artists including Charlie XXX and George Ezra. By 2019 he had collaborated with Ed Sheeran, Stormsey and BTS and in 2020 became the youngest ever Brit Award winner for Producer of the Year, having earned credits on 30% of the UK's number one singles. In 2021, Fred launched his actual live trilogy, a run of deeply personal sample-driven records that connected powerfully during the pandemic and expanded his audience worldwide, as explored in Take Notes episodes 75 and 105. After a viral boiler room set accelerated his rise, Actual Life 3 went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Electronic Dance Album. He has since remained prolific, releasing the Grammy winning collaboration Rumble with Skrillex and Flowdown in 2023, followed by his fourth solo album Ten Days in 2024. Alongside his studio output, Fred's live shows have become global events from Glastonbury to arena scale collaborations, notably alongside Fortet and Skrillex. While his evolving USB project culminated in sold-out international performances and four homecoming shows at London's Alexandria Palace in 202 6. Today I joined Fred at his house in South London. And what better way to start than by hearing something from USB? Featuring Jamie T, this is Lightsburn Dimmer. Remember that night of the hippodrome? Never knew that look when you look at me. Nervous as hell, so I didn't win a lot. You the salt on the lemon on the top Heart cooking, south of the river, mouthful of vinyl, sitting, cats full of liquor Street light flickers, feel it in my blood Anywish way I turn out the lights, but I'm demo enough Hart cooking, south for the river, mouthful of vinyl, sitting, cats for the li gun, threefe figures, feeling the more blood Anywish way, turn analyze my demo, analyze my demo, analyze my demo, analyze price, demo, analyze price, demo, analyze, price, demo, analyze, nice, demo, and all swear I turn out a nice blind Hal cooking south for the river, mouth and the Vinny sea, cast for the liquor Street life for feeling in my blood. Anywhere turn out a life blind , half cooking, south for the river, mouth from the vice and cats for the legs, three life figures, feeling in my blood, anyways where turn on the lights first It is Fred again and Jamie T with Lightsburn Dimmer from the USB album or project. What is it? We're back in Fred's place, south of the river. Hello Fred. Hey John, how's it going? Very good, thank you. Thanks for allowing us back in to your home. Um it's great to be here. And and I thought that would be an appropriate one because we are just south of the river. Yes sir. Uh which is very nice. And um how did that track come about? That track came about because I heard Jamie's record Hippodrome, I've always loved his writing and yeah, I mean I make a like as you know from we've hung out here before, but like I make a lot of ideas and so I don't uh often know which ones are gonna sort of stay with me. But his words there and the way it felt. That was one of those ones that came together quite quickly. Like you'll you'll see like the previous times, like some of the tunes we'll talk about today, I think like went through a million different shapes. That one was pretty like half an hour in or an hour in, it was kind of roughly what you're hearing. If you know what I mean, I just then honed the sounds a lot. Yeah. Um And did you just go and like take the vocals through Hippodrome? Did you have to isolate them in some way? I think I found a live performance where they were more easy to isolate, and then I reached out to Jamie and then I chopped them into different bits, and then Jamie was making me laugh the other day, being like, he's like, it's fucking mental that you've made me learn this version of my song where you've reordered all of the verse lines. He's like, it's a total head fuck having to like go in and learn a song that he knows back to front and wrote. And but then I've like switched every line around so it goes in a different order. But yeah, roughly like that. Yeah. Well it's fascinating because it it's a good illustration of the process that we're gonna explore today in that now you start with one thing and end up with a another thing. Yeah. And and that's the Fred again thing is that your brain re analyses things and and reimagines them in in such an exciting way. And you're as you constantly are. So this is the third time we've got to speak to you on take notes, Fred. And each time it seems that you're questioning our understanding of how we share music, how we release music, and USB is another example of this, I think, because it keeps expanding, it keeps changing and mutating. So so even within two weeks you put out USB, the album finished, but then there's a second version only a two weeks later or something which has Lightsburn Dimmer at the start of it. Yeah. And then there's all these remixes and then there are further remixes to come . So can you explain the the ideas behind it? Yeah, basically the idea we had with the USB stuff is for it to just be an infinite record that is kind of free from any of the restrictions I would impose on an album I would make. It's not an I mean it's an album by definition on the like streaming things I guess, but it's more of just like an infinitely rolling mixtape or folder. Like I think of it as like a USB folder. Like and so yeah, if I make like a actual life album or like another record, like I see them as being needing to feel really like honed statements and like diary entries and to have narrative and cohesion and all of these things. But with USB , the cohesion is just like it's for my USB. It's like things I want to hear in rooms with people and it does it and it's liberating to not have any more things to worry about than that. So yeah, I hope one day it will have like a hundred songs on it. I don't know, once we've done all the remixes from this, there'll probably be like forty on it already. So like it and w it's just very free-feeling. Like I'll just I can even through to things that are more kind of like bootleggy, like the edit we did of the Joy Orbison track with Yoti and Cardi like adding things that are kind of for SoundCloud but just onto the ever-rolling playlist if you see what I mean. But yeah, Light Span Dimmer will be the last one for a minute 'cause after this Friday I'm going to go to bed. Well that seems like a a fair enough thing to do. Uh amazing. I mean you've been so crazily busy, but it has been really exciting. And so I guess it means that you're kind of constantly creating and we'll find that out today because we're going to look at a few songs. Maybe we should dive straight in then. So the first one we're going to look at is solo . Nice. Um so maybe we'll have a blast of that, Master, and find out how you created it. Okay . Rainy days been game me damp. This song never had no stamp. Bright nor bright, no tell me I'm blank Brian no bright no me I'm dram Brian no bright no baby I'm solo How do you love me when I don't love me? It was all side by side in a vic Brian no bright no baby I'm blank They constant next to me Life goes on on my life goes on in my life goes on in my head, I'm solo Stand off the rain, you remember the weather, shoot that shot, we're aiming together We're aiming together, we're aiming together. Life goes on on my half, goes on in my life, goes on in my head, I'm solo Stummin overdrive, this jumper comin' in oversized, we'll cough medicine my soldier line, I'm solo Man and Overflow For shots when we call loan, I hit my shot and don't fall solo Rappos on the back, laugh colours on a man, laughter's on a man It is Fred again with Blanco and Solo from USB and it's great just sitting here with you Fred because your fingers are moving all the time like you're playing it on the laptop and also the other hand then reach toed the pi ano. It's great. I mean you can't help yourself, I think. Um how did this come about? This came about well, it was fun doing this because before I came here I loaded up these sessions and I learnt quite one of the reasons I love doing this podcast is because I learned a lot about stuff I just totally had erased from my memory about how things happened. So in this case I learned when I went into the session that the first one was called fifteenth of December twenty twenty four, Miami Flight Out. And um it was basically through I have all these like folders on my phone of things I'll find on online or on Instagram or on YouTube or a million other places and just this folder of ideas, a little bits of vocal, or bits of music, or someone drumming or someone playing. And one that I had was this video here which is by a visual artist called Splinter Frames who I've since met who's amazing and I'd had that say for ages. I just loved like the way he made it feel. So so that's a whole combination of images and sounds. Yeah. I didn't understand actually when I sampled it that he was a visual artist as well as a audio one. But yeah, the combo of it just gave me a nice feeling. So it went into that folder and then on the flight to Miami I must have dragged it into I mean I'm kind of guessing I'm c I'm looking at the title and doing detective work about what I did. But so I think I then dragged it in and I slowed it right down and tuned it to be like And then I put it into mel odyne here to like basically in this one you can make the Oh have you got my sc Oh no I've got your screen. Yeah, yeah we've up game. We've up to I can see what you're doing. Really nice. Yeah, so on here you can do polyphonic pitch changing. Previously you could only do this on monophonic parts. What's crazy and just magical is that you can do this now in it. So for example here that's playing chord four basically and I would I can decide to switch the harmonies and make them slide around like instead of it being that I could make it be or make it be Hold on changing the bass will be the most powerful change. I make that chord one and so what's what's so fun about this to me is that you can I used to spend so long with samples doing like the most fine-tuned EQ to try and take out individual notes to allow me to generate just like two chords from one sample. Like, you know, usually if you had like just a minor chord, I'd know that okay, I can go to four or five or one. And I can go to three, but it will sound kind of atonal and it will break the key a bit. And so yeah, this has been a really liberating tool creatively, 'cause you can retain the sonic and the magic of a sound but shape it into being the harmony that you want it to be hosting, if you know what I mean. Um which I did a little bit here, not loads, but a bit. And then basically this bit what I learned today was I uh then began the phase of just trying loads of vocal ideas including one from a friend of mine this is a song called Roy's Tune which is a message I heard by the company Which is green. Which sounds sick. I do like it. I love that vocal. I'm been I've tried a million different ideas with that. And I tried a tea real. And I none of them felt right to me, and then I tried drums . Which is okay. That with this sounds like these is a bad soil that was a message . And so these are all from a whole collection of different folders that you've got. Yeah, that part I was thinking this morning that part of the process is a very it's an impossible one to show on my screen and it's like fifty percent of it, which is just listening to records and being like that bit, that bit, this bit, this bit. And then I'll usually, like you can see there, try bits that I love over lots of different things until I find a kind of lock-in. And similarly with with the the percussion or the drums or something, you've got I did I tried it with loads of uh different like these are I often when I'll make drums when I'm not inspired and I'll just call them sample me. So at the bottom there's like eight different versions of Groove. So I can just quickly try it over like some different palettes and see what feels like it's starting to lock. The other thing that's on on the master there is a sound shifter because I find it's really helpful to just be able to really easily just change the key because you just the whole feeling is changed so drastically by like whether or not it's Like the difference in feeling between that and just like a tone like is huge and quite often we're quite into like once the record is done recording it through tape and pitching it down like half a semitone so you fall between keys, so it'd be like thirty cents lower . Or 40 higher or whatever. Um there's a lot of records I love that are in that ether. And like music in in the past, this is getting quite nerdy now, but like in the we call A for forTA, that's what we tune to. But in the time of Bach, it was like 432, I think. So his A was like a lot flatter than ours' is. So there's no like correct center. And so I'm quite interested, even though now everything in here is at four forty essentially, unless you really bully it out of it, I'm quite interested in hearing in the same way that we can agree that like this chord and this chord feel different, therefore it just stands to reason that the one that is between those two also has a different feeling. Yeah. So yeah, I'll quite at this phase I'll quite often be like just trying it all over . And then basically I realized that Blanco's tone felt beautiful on it to me. Like And you already had the Blanco I don't remember. I probably. Yeah, because I can see here there's like five in the session, so that means I'd probably been trying to find different songs. Like quite often I'll Frankenstein a few different records of one person. So I was trying different bits and then this is I had to cut my baby again was a mental vasectomy when the money gets spoken I'm active. The money doesn't matter. And that for that for me, like once his voice, just the tone he is on, like he's he's like kissing the key. He's like all my he's not singing, but he's like it's feels like he's aware of the harmony beneath him just enough. He's like almost on the D flat. It's what I used to love about the way Eminem raps is that he's like he he very intentionally like slightly locks onto the key in a way that just makes it cruise really pleasingly but still sound like rap. And I think that's probably the money does go on adaptive. But he's kind of flat. He's often here, so there's a nice tension in that chord. But in this instance, you know, Blanco's not there. Yeah managed to find the channel. Snap out of it. But but it's it's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're thinking in those terms in the in your marriage. Sort of reverse engineering it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is quite fascinating. Um and I'm sure maybe no Blanco could key in on that if he if he wanted to or was here with you. Yeah. But you you're searching for that magical harmony in a way. the the one of the reasons I think why I like working this way, I mean I work with other people all the time, so I definitely do both, is that I couldn't possibly expect anyone to sit through just the f just the last ten minutes we've talked about. That's like a few days, let alone all the other alternatives that are in here of like no one could be expected to sit here as I try all of this and then decide all the vocals are wrong and then decide just that one line and then decide it's the wrong key and then decide like I I have to be able to do that on my own. Otherwise I would yeah just piss everyone off. Yeah, yeah, totally. But uh it it seems to me that in a way, no, if we liken this to doodling. Yeah. So nice, yeah. You you whatever situation you find yourself in, you're on a train, on a plane, doing something, a moment where you know nothing's happening. So the the the laptop is your sketchpad and you you're just kind of mucking about basically, but sketching away and trying different combinations because you cannot help yourself and it's something you like doing and enjoy doing. Yeah. But you're still at the same point you're s it's like you're searching for the harmony. You're searching for for the thing that will suddenly ignite your imagination. Yes. And it's through trial and error. Um and and through obviously immense knowledge and also accumulation of these different elements, these fragments that you bring together, and then at some point it all aligns and you're happy. Yeah. Or mostly doesn't. Yeah. Right. But yeah, we're not. But it seems that on that flight, uh or maybe you were in Miami, but uh that was when these elements kind of came together. Yes, I well actually I think Was this later? This is I think now we're a week or so later. I think the chords and the different vocals was probably the flight. And then I think now we're a couple alternatives later so maybe a week or so later. Yeah. Um but yeah so once I started playing this with these are the drums I had earlier which aren't the final ones but similar. And then basically what I'll do is just listen through it over and over again in this shape and just start chopping. I mean I'll do it like funny as clothes and attractive, brought money in clothes, I captive, play this game, I'll feel like I'm practice, run by home and I slide in a back Just shot my head up again. Like that, life goes on with our life goes on on my head up again. Life goes on it to them here. And then so I'd start to like make it. And just like make them colours so they stick out and I and I like that one. Shot we'll aim it together. We'll aim it together. We'll aim it together. Like overflow. Let it overflow, let it overflow. And is this Blanco passage from something you worked with? Uh no, we had linked I think but years previously and this is from a record of his I loved already. But I didn't actually know I just liked the tone and feeling of his voice because like he says, I don't know where at some point he says we just pull it in that's polo. There we go. So that word there where he says Suicide Mission of Soro Like that combined with the life goes on. I think was the bit where I was like, okay, I understand combining this with that starts to feel like a song. Like that then became a framing line that recontextualized all the other lines in a way that I understood better when it was like life goes on and life goes on in my head, but I'm solo . And then all the other lyrics, once that line kept happening again and again, started to feel like this collage of memories of these different moments, like when he then says like overflow. Let it overflow. Let it overflow. Like it feels like all these memories of him being with all these people and then it just keeps coming back to him being on his ones. And then I really was excited because then the feeling of it I just really felt close to or something like then I that yeah that from that point I was like this is a song I will a hundred percent do whatever hundreds of hours it takes to finish it because I know that I care enough about the bones of it if you know what I mean. Well, you've created a a really powerful sentiment and and you've in a way written a lyric using his own lyrics, you know, that has uh a lot of meaning and depth to it, which is really interesting. And so then that next phase could take you hours or days, or it could be Yes. And you just work until you feel it's ready. How do you know when it's ready? Yeah, I do I I remem I think you I probably asked that. Yeah. Well no, I think it's it's is a good thing to think about and it can be helpful. Sometimes I feel like mm no, I don't think you do. I think it just comes out and you for one reason or another the things align in a way that you feel sufficiently good enough to put it out but it's not like I'd be lying if I said like everything I put out I felt like yes stamp hundred percent finished song done. Like it's just not. Somimetes I feel great about it and then on the day of release, I'm like, not this. And sometimes I feel not a hundred percent, but I've worked on this so much and I know that I did feel this way about it when I made it a year ago. And so I want to honor that feeling and still put it out. And then a year after it comes out, I love it. Like it's not a linear journey. But yes. But then maybe sometimes you can get so lost in this that that could put you off something in a way. Yeah. That the har that that's the real to me, like producing I think maybe more than songwriting in some respects. Producing, I think one of the hardest things is retaining your perspective while still like diving deep enough in the thing to like really trying to explore the ideas and make them sound as good as they can sound. Songwriting, I think, often is best trying to get as close to your instinct as possible and treat it a little bit more sort of romantically maybe, whereas production it's more of a like a sort of quest to like find the alignment of the Rubik's cube that honors the feeling of the song the most, if you see what I mean. But yeah See what it feels like then. And just listen to it in lots of different structures, you know, found um this beer. I think I found a head from somewhere else. Um it's interesting that you're making that distinction between production and songwriting because in many ways watching you do this it seems like songwriting to me. Yeah, they're definitely blurry. Yeah. They're definitely blurry. And clearly also the things that really motivate you are feeling and emotion. You're looking for feeling and emotion in everything you're doing. Yeah, I think maybe the bit that's sort of coming, I think now I feel like I'm probably entering into a more production mindset. Like now I'm like, okay, I understand the bones, I know the harmony and the lyric that is the key and the emotion that is guiding it. And so then I think now it starts to feel like like now I tried for example all these different drum beats um like this still I'm in over job this one's oversized it's free for free I'm in overtime book medicine I'm a sword and line these are all just ones I've made that I can just drag in or I think that might even be like the jumper coming in oversizes free for free And there was this polo Stummin over drive this jumper coming in oversizes free for free I'm in overtime Put cost medicine on my soldier line Learn it overflow Do love these drums . I think I made those with uh Dijon . Because it says electron and I think we did that on that. Wait . Still I'm in the over drive, the jumper coming. All of these felt too um playful to me. Much too playful. So from that I think I probably learned I didn't like anything fall to the floor on it and that I liked it when the brake beat felt a little bit a little bit played in its rhythm like the And then I remade them on sounds that felt better and knocked a bit more just knocked a bit more, I think. And that was like the core bones of it which is with these rain you remember the weather shoot that show we're aiming together we're aiming together we're aiming together life goes on a mah laugh goes on a mah laugh goes on on my head, I'm solo Still I'm in overdrive, this jumper coming in oversized, but cough medicine and my soldier line, I'm solo . Lane it over Yeah, for that was Oh actually look let me show you this because this is this was the idea that um really helped find its like final form which, was that like I kind of got to halfway or something. And I it was like I don't know, a minute thirty or something, and and I was like and I kept just wanting to play it again, but I didn't know I couldn't find like ha what the structure should be that would keep it going. And so then basically you had this idea of it being like re you like kind of it's like a kind of a pull-up, but it's like a recontextualized pull-up, so instead of just being pulling it up and just playing the song twice in one song, it's like at the halfway point, it stops and goes like Yeah man that's it for me man tired as fuck and then it's like the same idea but reharmonized and so the idea was like, because this is by coincidence I found this other video by Kirks and he's this sick Aussie producer . And I was like, oh that reminds me of the feeling of the other sample. And so then I pit I tr tweak the chords that it would be the same sonic but in this world. And then I like I was like, okay, what would be cool is if he like has changed his perspective on what he was talking about in the first half. And obviously as you say, he's not there, Fred. So so I was like, so the idea then was to have him doing the same lines, but some of him is pitched up so it sounds like him younger talking to himself. Because like the chords have a slightly more brighter innocence to them. And so now it's like uh Rainy days been getting me damp. This song never had no stamp. Bright nor bright no tell me I'm black. Bright no bright no memory I'm And he's going like back and forth between like how do you love me when I don't love me? It was all side by side in a vip, bright no bright no baby, I'm black between like sort of young pitched up Blanco and now modern day Blanco and I liked the way that kind of made it even feel more and more like a collage but like he was approaching it from a like he'd slightly shifted his perspective on how he felt about it if you know what I mean. And then at the end, I think with that in mind it just says it just says let go, let go, let go million, million, million, million, million, million times. And brings it home. Lacos on a mass on the mas k was on a head and full So yeah. Really interesting. Is this a good example to look at how you create the those drums and those percuss ion sections? No and and what the choices involved are um it would be I think this is something that my brother had started working on these like all these different pip snares . I like how it sounds like they're kind of like they're They're sort of fanning around the main rim . But yeah, for me really like the drums were more of a pattern journey than a sonic one. I don't think like uh like there's definitely songs with more striking drum tones, but the quest for me was to just like it was mainly just finding it's kind of like a super tightened version of like a jungle break slowed down but without all the ghost notes instead of It's just overflow for shot. Which I guess is why I like having the feeling of these Of these A many snares in there that sort of nod to that era and genre but just just let you they only just poke through on a few occasions. And are these real sounds, are they synthetic sounds? Are they Um combination of a whole different thing? Yeah, I wouldn't be able to remember totally I think they'll be generally the start point is often something real. Like usually I'll make like hits from just like that and that. Like that's just like to me the best sound ever. Just the sound of things hitting wood. And like a pen of glass and all of these sounds I just I don't know. We talk quite a lot in the studio about things that feel like like they're like primal that we like them. Like wondering there are some sounds that I think we are primally drawn to. And I think that is one. But then like similarly, I think that's kind of why things like rolling fall to the floors are nice. I think there's something tribally it could be rubbish, it could be not that at all. But I kind of like thinking about like why is that just like innately pleasing to me more than another Yeah. And I think it might be because those are just sounds that we've just evolved to just find like community in and stuff. Yeah. So you mean you will often assemble some sounds and how will you record them just straight into the laptop or then um and then you create you change sculpt them? Yeah, I mean in this case, like a like a thing like a kick, I'll that's just like a really simple kind of hip hop style kick. Um that's a that's a sample from the Amen break I think to that guy 'cause I wanted it to have the sonic of that exact snare like tickles something in a certain corner of nostalgia. Like that's a reference. So that to me is uh that still has the primal feeling, but only in the last thirty years. To anyone who was raised on that jungle. But it's interesting now with well, it's not just now, but that that subliminal understanding that we all have are certain sounds that we don't even need to articulate that that connects us to what you could say is the the fundamental force yeah uh of of that whole genre. But we kind of understand it instinctively because we've been exposed and exposed and exposed again almost like a a liturgy that's in past generations would have understood religiously. Yeah, it's interesting to me how how important it is to understand those things, or how unimportant it may be to understand those things. Because like a lot of people, I'm sure, if I played this record to my dad, I don't know, he wouldn't think, Oh, is that the snare from the AMN break? That reminds me of my jungle days. So like, but then hopefully what you arrive at sort of can transcend those things, but then it is, like you're saying, it is a really core ingredient of the ingredients. So yeah, I I think quite a lot about how much it is, how much I want to value the liturgy, like you just said, of those sounds. And I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But I I think clearly you do, in that you you were trying to evoke that and it and it's a a conscious thing. But also I think the speed with which you move and create means that you're not necessarily analysing or thinking these things through, you're doing it and thinking, yeah, that's the vibe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, I'm definitely analysing more now than I would have been when I was doing it. Yeah. Yeah. The one other thing that might be interesting to say in terms of just the finishing of it is like maybe this is what I mean in terms of delineating between the songwriting and the production. And obviously it is blurred, it definitely always is, particularly for working this way. But I think what may be helpful is that like what definitely once there's like the kit the clear bones, like once there was the sample and the harmony and the blanco lyric with that chop on top of it, to me then the goal is just supporting that idea, like how can I lift that idea up in as many different ways that feel exciting as possible? So whether that's like wheeling it up and it just being the same idea but reharmonise with Blanco pitched up, like the goal to me, is to try and present an idea that feels pure in the purest possible way. I love it when things just feel like they're distilled into the essence of them and not like a million different ideas fighting. So like all the ev everything I added from that point is all just like supporting role stuff. So like for example, here, essentially it sounds like it's just a sample, but there is this guy just clarifying what the lead note is . Quite a nice expressive sound that I've used on a few things. But that's like it's just supporting and similarly here. And are you creating that on a s on a synth or yeah that's on a reactor with a few other things chopping it and making it and similarly these hey ? But they're all not new ideas to me. That's like a thing that I definitely try to like if I'm confident in the bones that are there, then the goal is not to try and have ideas that compete that, the goal is to have ideas that just enhance and support that. Yeah. And what do you use to chop them up? As an array of stuff. Sometimes I'll just use if it's a simple pattern, I'll just use like logic tramelo . Sometimes I'll do it manually and just put it into audio and just chop them so I can make them different lengths. Sometimes I'll use this logic thing, which is another kind of chopping thing, but you can do slightly more like complex patterns if you want it to be like See what I mean? It's like functions like a step sequence there. I use that quite a lot for like slotting things into different pockets and seeing how they feel. Like you know, the difference between for example this and when it's applied to a whole sample in a groove is like a seismic change and it's quite fun that you can just put this on the master and just or try it like nice making it seven notes long because then it will always go out of time with a four bar. So if you're like it's like endlessly rhythmically polyphonic . If there's seven not eight or fifteen not sixteen. So yeah. Love it. Amazing. Um maybe we should just hear a blast of the end of it and round things up with solo . Lakozanoma, la kozona mar, la kozanoma head on And when do you share that with Blanco ? Uh yeah. Uh when I'm like confident, I think probably at like phase three of where we were in those sessions, like when I'm like, okay, I understand I love these bones, and then like there was a few lines we added, so then I wanted to play it to him to ask if he could write a few bits to like fill out the story where it was missing. So yeah, maybe a few it depends. Sometimes it's months into it, sometimes I'm quite confident early doors. It's when I it's it's confidence. Right. I don't want to like hit someone up and then be like, actually sorry, I hate ya, I'm not even gonna send it. Um Yeah. I think in that case it was about a couple months after I started it. Yeah. Yeah. Plan co's the best man. Yeah, his his lyrics is like really the epicenter of it. Like the way he's able to write with so much heart, but it sound it doesn't sound like he's thinking, oh, I should apply emotion to these lines. It doesn't sound like an intentional choice, it just sounds like what he said. It just sounds like what he wrote down because it's what was true. So yeah, he's a real goat. Fantastic. Um right, we're gonna take a quick break. And the next song we're gonna look at we got a few to choose from. What do you wanna go with feisty or hard style? What do you want to go with? Yeah. Okay. Nice. This episode is supported by Cube, the world's first member studio for artists, producers, and all-round creatives. With over 80 professional studios across four London locations, Cube gives you the space, tools, and community to make great music and develop your career. And today I'm joined by Nicholas Schoniger, co-founder of Cube to tell us more. Hi Nick, what does a Cube membership do for music makers? Hey John, so look, I mean with Cube membership, you get access to a whole host of things. First of all, you get the studios. So you've got music production rooms, DJ studios, podcast studios, and content studios, all bookable through our app 24-7. You also get access to events ranging from net working to industry talks to hands-on workshops. We've got amazing co-working spaces that you can come and hang out in, bars where you can socialize and really the whole ethos is to bring like-minded creatives together and inspire each other as well as have a professional space to work. All of this happens across our four London locations in Hackney, Elephant and Castle, Canary Wharf and Acton. So if I'm a music maker and I've outgrown my bedroom studio, or maybe I'm someone who just needs access to a space with professional gear, how do I get involved? Super easy, just head over to the Cube website and apply for a membership. Application takes a couple of minutes. All we look for is a certain level of talent. You know, we're not looking at how many Instagram followers you've got, we just want to see that ser you'reious about your craft and then you know in terms of once you come into the cube community you're gonna meet a whole host of people whether it's people that are just starting out on their career but are super talented through to people that have got platinum cuts really we're about people that are always looking to up their skills and collaborate and be inspired by by people around them. And how does the membership work at Cube? What are the options? So we get that everyone's needs are different. So we have different membership tiers with varying studio hours included. It starts from 145 pounds a month. And for the tape notes audience you can double your studio time. Just use the code TAPENOTES90 when you apply in the How You Heard About Us field. Then if you release the project Wow that sounds like a great offer. Thanks, Nick. So if you're looking for professional studio space across London, head to thecube.com. That's That's the qub e.com. And don't forget to use the code TAPENOTES90. T's and C's apply. The next song we're going to talk about is feisty with beer, but before that, we have some Patreon questions I wanted to ask you, Fred. Uh the first is from Alexander J. How much does the genre matter when finding people to collaborate with? You've got songs with people like Skepta, but also The Japanese House. How does an artist pop up on your radar and what did There's just no process for me, I don't think. I d I d I d I haven't I don't really think about the sort of genre, I guess, that they come from very much. I just kind of it's more just like do I like the way the song feels do I listen to it? Is there like in the case of Skep and Amber from Japanese House like in totally different ways when they both come in on a track, I'm just like, Amber, I'm just like, oh my god, the feeling of her voice. She can sing like two notes and I'm like hypnotized forever. And Skep has such like authority in his delivery. There's it's so commanding over a beat in a way that's like and he's so tight in the pocket. So yeah, I don't think too much about kind of like genre, they could be on the same song. I think it's more just like what music has resonated with me and then that's kind of that's actually kind of the end of it really. Yeah. Our next question from Patreon is from Oitu . I hope that's how you say your name. It's O-I-T-U . And firstly they say, Cheers, brother, so thankful for how you seem to be permanently inspired. And I completely concur on that. But the question is, what is something about your creative process that has remained pretty much the same since the first time you were here? Nice. Probably what stayed the same as the feeling. The th the thing that I'm most surprised by that doesn't change is I'll still like be like writing something and be like, I hate this, I hate myself, I hate music, and then the next day be like, Oh, I quite like that bit, and then sometimes I'll be writing something and be like, I absolutely love this. This is so exciting. And then a couple of weeks later be like, ah, isn't that exciting? And like the how f fallible that journey is is just been totally unchanging in a way that I actually now find kinda calming 'cause I can just be like, Well, who cares? That's really interesting. 'Cause the frustrations, the up and down, the the mood swings involved in being creative. Yeah. And yet at the same time because you've been doing this for a while, you realize, oh no, that's that's part of the process too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm definitely wanting to get more and more and more peace with that journey. Yeah. But I think that would be it sounds like a sort of sort of weird answer, but I do think actually that's the most noticeable consistent thing. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Um we've got some more uh questions from Patreon later, but let's get into another track. So Feisty is the next one. Maybe we could have a blast of the master fred. Okay. I'm looking with no makeup on. Look at how I'm looking with no makeup on. I'm gonna repeat about money dick and all crap and it's 60 my popped up because it's like fre freakakinging nobody's Will you crank the stuff nobody's Will you ain't fuck shit? What it's like to see I said flash basty Big power push dice, push it fancy, on this turn, it's dicey, the night man is the way she pushes fancy on this turn, it's dicey , big So how how did this come about? This came about kind of differently because the core start point was like jamming with other people. Um they are there in this case. Um so this was me and the my brothers, the Parisis, who I mentioned earlier, and our friend Ben, the Nest. And basically, so it was like the goal we just spent this day in the studio in Toulouse doing all of these jams in this lovely big room in Toulouse, this big library and basically doing these long days of jams to try and find songs. And for these days we wrote um where did I put them? Yeah, we wrote these like kind of backstories. Some Brian wrote for us remotely and some we uh these are funny. So like basically this these are things that like particularly if you're jamming with new musicians and everyone's a bit like there's a there's a nervousness in the room, maybe, and people are not sure where they slot, and some people know each other really well, and some people have just met, and these things can be really helpful to just like lighten everyone into a state of play again, which is all you really want to be. And so the idea was that you give people these like backstories that is what they have to embody for that jam. So that so for example, this is one we this is one we wrote. Um this is so this day everyone was different like uh marine creatures . So one person was the pygmy right whale. It says at seventy tons and fifty two feet long, you seem at first vastly stronger and more powerful than your smaller allies, but the right whale is cursed by a r rare marine microbial infection, hindering your judgment, leaving you almost entirely obsessing over the wrong things The malady is primarily affecting your judgment of your own movements, and you are becoming increasingly incapable of holding patterns or movements that once felt so natural. You are almost apologetic in your slow and clumsy misjudgment, blindly blundering beneath the brine, seeking an ally who may make sense of your misconstructions . Wow. Essentially and we did there's one for a piglet squid that is so good. But basically what these do is they like they they live so you you can then try something silly and no one's thinking, oh what's that guy doing? He's trying something weird. Like if you suddenly go it's like, no, that's because I was playing my character. So everyone's liberated to be playful more and to just try things that could sound bad because there's a smile and a and an ease to it that lightens the sort of tone of let's all be very impressive musicians now. I do want to find the Piglet Squid one because it is so funny. Um, hold on. Also, have you ever seen a piglet squid? No. This is the this is actually the most important thing. Hold on. The piglet squid. Okay, this is brilliant. Firstly, look at the piglet squid. Amazing. Can you believe that? So this is an almost see-through prawn light. It's an extreme little guy. It's my sister's favourite animal . Um going from this to FaceT is gonna be so ridiculous The Piglet Squid. Living more than a thousand meters below the surface, you are a relic of a distant time, one of the few remaining glass squids. Your distant cries for connection only make it to the surface, fragmented and filtered forms travelling through the endless water between us. Only the luckiest divers, musicians and ocean enthusiasts will ever get the chance to see a piglet squid in the world. We are the lucky times. But basically, so for example, that would I remember the sound that Marco made when he was a bit of squid and he was he became these like ye ah things that would like come and go and they were like these big verb things and they like sounded they like he it just puts you instead of just being like, Alright, what are the ideas I usually have? You just get this like jolt into a different place and you can play and be much lighter. Here I think so basically here I just gave us a drum loop and then we just jammed for ag es . Like li I mean I literally'd have just made that in two seconds, just something to play along to. Right. And very impressed by the way you've brought us back into the song. Really love that. Yeah well the other the other context here is I obviously can't remember who was you know there was all these different marine animals. I can't remember who was what for this song. Maybe we will if we find the footage . But the point is it doesn't really matter by the time it's done, it's just liberated everyone in the moment. But the other thing that I wonder, I'll tell you now, maybe I wonder if this will be a complex thing. Basically we we're doing this thing of playing other songs or grooves until we weren't anymore, basically. So you just would choose a song at random and then we'd jam on it kind of like a wedding band and then naturally over 20 minutes everyone it just evolves into being something else. So in this case, this song, weirdly started with us playing a shit wedding band version of this . Timeless, timeless. Wow. So tough. Yeah, I mean it doesn't sound like that obviously, but like now you point out the link, you can see the link. So who's doing what in this jam session? So in this jam that we just got a drum looping and then Marco's playing bass . Ben is playing this funny little Little sound. Jack is on a mic which I've put through lots of effects. So for example I asked him to go pshh so that would become so he does that. And then I make it go . Wow. So that just becomes this nice animated shaker. Yeah. So Jack can kind of speak into the mic and they become these rhythmic things. So he can just be going like and they'll become these . So basically we just jam on this for ages. It's pretty like, you know, you can tell these are guys finding where they want to you know, it's definitely not arrived yet. And we'll this this is like 30 minutes long of us just like smang enough . One of us is on a guitar, maybe Jack's on Mike and guitar. And what what are you on? I think I might just be on nothing. I think I might be just asking people to do different things. Um Yeah, because you can see sometimes I'm going to And 's a . There we go, it's another one. So everyone's just I mean it's pretty like So for example one of the backstory descriptions here was like talking about atonality and I basically never write atonally I don't generally like that type of harmony as much but um I think what us being asked to write atonely by these things led us to doing is essentially everyone's on one or two notes. Because if it becomes like atonal but with like then it becomes just too intellectual. So I think my the version of atonal that I could handle was just two notes that happened to be chromatic just these two um so yeah we're all just kind of finding our way keeps going. Something must happen here because I've marked it . And at this point by the way, I should say we are having such a nice time. Yeah. Everyone's just having this is just a joy. Like it's just like you're just feeling out there's no pressure you're just enjoying sitting on a groove with friends like and then Ben getting his sound closer here . This sound . This this is the sound that we came bang , which is in the D That's Jack going uh So that's voice. Yeah, that's Jack just going. You can hear he's just going And then it becomes And everyone's cracking up because it's not a little And are you you're manipulating all those sounds at the at the same time? So you uh like say that Jack's voice there, are you putting a plug-in on that or uh Yeah, I'll sort of set up an a set of ingredients that I can then play with in real time. And then I noticed this morning when I load this up that at the end, I then go get like a box I'm talking to Jackie but someone chopped like in the tone that you know for that s eight minutes that we can just jam with . Like someone spraying like beer or something like that. So I think at this point I was like, okay, who could sit on this beat ? Who could sit, not stand? And Beer's voice is like just like caramel and she can really spray. So like I was thinking, like, what if we had bars, but they were going through this sort of thing. So you could kind of catch words sometimes, but it was kind of half instrument, half vocals. So we're sort of approaching, I mean we're still pretty far away at that point, but the that it's closer than it sounds, I think, because actually everyone's sounds is arriving at the place and the the groove isn't gonna change. The big things are actually more set in stone than it sounds. And so then we played along to like I changed the drums to that a little bit more sturdy. Oh and I was playing bass at this point. So th oh that's right. The idea for this then became I delayed everyone in the jam by different amounts. So I put everyone through latency, but different amounts of latency against their will. Uh but by different amounts. So the drums are locked and everyone else, myself included, is like being ha forced to play through intense latency but to different amounts. So you get this like this groove that's just like so for example the bass here, I can kind of show you what it sounds like with and without the latency on, but like The bass is delayed by 1 6 19 samples. The guitar delayed by five hundred and twenty-six samples, quite a reasonable amount. Ben's sound is delayed by 1 500 samples. Then Jackie's glass . So this is him hitting a beer bottle. Like that. And that is delayed by 1000 ninety-seven samples. So it basically just means that like, you know, if I play this. Um Um I'll play it without beer for a second so we can just feel the groove but like that I love the way that groove feels so much because it's all like just just holding together. So if I put everything back in time totally loses the feelings, it's all just a little whereas when it all becomes sloppy, it's got the funk again. Like that is that that was the idea. And then and then I was like, oh my god, we're having so much fun. We could jam on this forever because everyone was locked into these different latencies. And it was quite funny doing it that way because you know, usually when I've jammed like that in sort of tribute to people like Diller and the greats who sort of first started to move the snare forward and the hat back and these kind of things. Usually you're playing it that way. But what I quite liked about this is that no one had a choice. It wasn't it wasn't us trying to play away, it was us trying to play something else and then being forced into a different place by the latency. And they could hear the latency as they were. Yeah, they were playing into it like that. So like and so yeah then as you I kind of was we were jamming along to this vocal that I'd always been trying to do something with from beer that I had also delayed by one thousand one hundred samples. So like bass that's like And then the bass, my bass and Marco's bass kind of became like responses like Yeah, so the butt the bones of the groove are there, the changes and stuff are all a mess because we're all changing calls at different times and we haven't decided anything. But basically then I just took this long jam and edited it into feeling like like Oh yeah, this is just the same vibe. It's just me or Jack on the mic just going right and then I just recorded loads of like this. Oh yeah, and it's this is the shaker from that first jam. What was that ? It's a good shaker . Became that. And that I a that is actually that so that's delayed by 1400. That is an idea. I would never if it wasn't for listening to the to the payback like I would never have thought okay I want to have this constant but it's a really key ingredient of the cause it gives you this cut that's delayed, the kick and the snare are on, so it gives you this constant metric of like where the groove sits that everything else slots around. And yeah, and then it goes into the kind of structuring and trying to find the bits that groove best. And then I chopped her up and so you started having like steady And then Jack on the beer bottle. I think the way we I think the way we pitched that I think he must have tilted it while he was doing it. So I don't quite know how that's happening . I don't know how we did that, but it's in the file. So something in the room we must have been Yeah. You can't have been pouring it out. So yeah, these are all plugins-wise I generally just use logic plugins and a few other things. Um but not many. There's like that as a spring verb. This little thing I wanted to add on the hook, that's the logic retro cent . Yeah, and it's really fun making a record this way because I like I like go back to the bit where I'm on my own and I've just got this like twenty minutes of us jamming with all these different expressions and ideas and groove switches and bass note choices I would never have done. I've just got this like palette of stuff to work with so that it becomes a puzzle. But yeah, really different to like the way like solo was for example. Um yeah. Really, really interesting in that um you're creating a a situation where people can do a certain thing, but also it has a fluidity and can move in lots of different directions and and to get towards something that excites an interests. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but you already had the beer vocal. That was in the That's in that other sort of area of process that I was talking about. Like the sort of amassing of samples and ideas is another sort of constant background thing that I'm just doing. I do it with my both of my brothers I work with, and then we've got a few mates who will play and send stuff to and stuff like that. And that's just sort of constantly worrying away. And then I've got these folders of ideas to sort of try in these moments. And it also means that you get to experience the the music making that you started out doing, which is playing instruments and playing together with people, you're still doing that. Yeah. So you don't get too lost in the box. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I've I've been love we've done a lot of this in the last year or two and it's been so so so fun. Yeah. Well I mean that's a great process that whole approach to to free people up and uh free yourself up. Really exciting. Um can we have a blast of the ending to to round things off for Feisty . I'm looking with no makeup . I'm looking with no makeup Paper view bigger, I could get a couple dollars for that shit. Everywhere I go, these niggas And the beer session, was that something you'd done together or was that No, that was a there was a few different records of hers. This is a hybrid of two different flows from two different songs of hers, and then we got in together and tried a few other parts that added to it. Like when she said, How I'm looking with no makeup on and a few other bits that I then added. But they're all going through like I'll show you what it sounds like without beer sort of put into the same process as everyone else because if she was like this But that's her not delayed and not put into the same chopping thing as everyone else. But she kinda becomes she's her groove becomes locked in. I mean, she how much was she today? By 1 1 49 samples. So yeah, she gets locked in, but uh what I you can kind a still catch words and the flow and the feeling and the attitude. But it doesn't feel like this clean ly vocal on top of the beat. And also what I like about that is it allows she's kind of anticipating the beat in her flow. So you get her the spirit of her anticipating it, but then she's chopped and delayed. So she's you she's simultaneously kind of ahead of it, but then in reality what's coming out through the chopping and the latency is she's kind of behind it in a way that I found quite fun. Um every track on this song has logic spring verb on it. Right. That's just interesting to see now. Yeah. Yeah.ah, yeah, ye Well, I mean I guess you presumably you have lots of options, you know, what kind of delay tool do you need? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this would be the thing I would most, most, most like advise people to do is like I've been I've spent so many thousands of hours wasted on plugins and the getting into the weeds and these things. Like, I would just say choose. I've made it so that my logic, like I've just got this one menu that just has the eight plugins I use, or whatever that is, 12 or whatever. Um and it just doesn't matter. You want you want to do the things that liberate your mind to be hearing well, not whether or not this compressor or this compressor or this distortion and this distortion. The thing that's most dangerous about getting so into that is that you'll just become you'll forget about whether or not the chorus is wrong or like whether or not the chord progression actually is not serving the feeling right. Like I really when we did I was doing I did days, a few days like kind of teaching at some munis last year, and one of the things we did that was a good way of demonstrating this is I made a session that made a few sounds a vocal, a drum and a guitar thing, like a cool sound. And I made the exact same sound in like all logic, same sound in all another set of plugins, same sound in all another one. And I played with everyone and y it was all the same. Like and it was uh good or bad, it doesn't it just depending on what your ear and judgment is, like it does it just could not matter less. Like I think there's the category of like a plug-in that's like really playful and random and like a crazy new sense that really surprises you. I think playing with things like that, like toys and other things, is a great thing to do, but in terms of like your reverb compressor, EQ, all these things, I would just say delete everything apart from just choose one, two, three, four, five. It doesn't matter what you choose, they're all great. Choose which one you like the most sound of most and just work within that and then focus on writing songs is what I would say. Yeah., very interesting But I guess you put in the hours and you you've come to that conclusion. And you I'm sure you've learned something along the way. But I think what I'd I think I would what I've learned is that it's what matters is your ear. So I think if I could go back, I mean I'm there's a lot of like writings and articles and things about hearing the difference between this one and this one, and if you can't hear that, then you really need to work on your ear and all these things. It's quite like and it's all Emperor's New Clothes. It's all I've seen people make the most incredible sounding records in every way. So therefore all that matters is the ear. Like I've seen people do it in the old tape analog SSL desk and it's incredible. And I've seen Sunny do it all in the laptop and it sounds better than in in in that way. So there's clearly then it's most important to just liberate your headspace and not be worried about A being like this, like you're a scientist and just think like okay,, does it EQ? Yes, great. Does it do I like the way it sounds? Great. Next. Yeah. I'm very passionate about that. Yeah. Fascinating. Right. We're gonna take a quick break. And then the next one we're gonna go look We're gonna take a quick break in the next song. Such a pro. We're gonna take a quick break and the next song we're gonna look at is Hardstyle 2 . This episode is being supported by Make Noise Pro Audio, the UK's go-to retailer for used studio equipment. From NEAF preamps to vintage 1176s and everything in between. Microphones, compressors, consoles, dr um machines, outboard units, make noise pro audio, cover it all. Alongside used gear, they also sell new products from established brands such as ATC, Solid State Logic, Franklin Audio, and many more, making it the one -stop shop for all your gear purchases. And if you need to free up space in your studio or fund your next purchase, make noise will buy or part exchange your old gear. With next day delivery and free UK shipping on the majority of products, you can get your hands on new studio essentials and toys in no time at all. And as a take notes exclusive, they're offering listeners a ten percent discount on all gear from Franklin Audio. So to find your next studio favourite, head over to makeknoiseproaudio.com and use the code TAPENONETES10 to access your 10% discount on all Franklin Audio products. Before we get into hard style two, I have a a few questions from Patreon again that we're gonna look at. So one is from Philip Kaminsky. Since the last time you were on tape notes, is there something that fundamentally changed in your process or, is there something you came across recently that changed your workflow or your approach to certain aspects in your creativity? Yeah, I think I'm jamming way more again. Like we used to do that a little bit, maybe like two, maybe three of us. I'm doing a lot of like five of us in a room with drums really playing together with people because to what we were saying earlier that's a thing I feel is increasingly precious. Yeah. And so I wanna value it. Yeah, totally. Zetya asks, how do you manage such a high amount of releases, both technically and creatively? Do you hold back projects that never come out or do you share most of your work? The sad truth is that I only release about probably one or two percent of what I make, but that's and I know we put we generally put out a fair amount of music, but yeah, I just make stuff every day. It's just like what I do. And that doesn't most of it's rubbish. So yeah, the truth is it's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction. Yeah. Um Ross wants to know with USB O02 being so different from track to track, what is it you think that makes them Fred again tracks? I don't know. That's I'm that guy, so it would be best for someone who's not me to answer that. Um but I guess maybe that's asking about the question because obviously you have worked with and you continue to work with people on various different projects and obviously you get in the studio with different people and something ends up being your track and something ends up being their track. Yeah, yeah, that that is usually a bit clearer. Usually I understand quite clearly it's whether or not something's like part of the heart that I want to represent with my name and that comes down to a feeling. Yeah, I mean it's always a feeling, but like the USB songs are like we were saying earlier are kind of what's fun about it is that it's liberated from any like high concept stuff and that's I think can sometimes allow me to make that can be a good creative thing. But I think I think I think I don't know, and I think if I did know that probably would be bad. If I sort of had total clarity on what was me. G generally I can kind of feel it through and me and my brothers and Luce and people and we'll all usually it just by the time I've arrived at something if I've worked on something enough to finish it, I'm like I this is all of me is this I'm done, like this is it. Yeah. Right. We're gonna stop those questions and delve into hard style too. So if you could give us uh blast of the master, that would be great. Let me see . Oh fuck, I'm not doing that. That sound at the beginning, that was me asking Evan to sing Ketama. Yeah. Oh fuck, I'm not doing that shit. Fuck, I'm not do you that know shit? Gotcha, putcha beat, chance, love, you're not watching hard in us , gotcha, put your beat S Lo y'all working hard enough Gotcha beat Gotcha gotcha beat boss I don't feel my heart sorry Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha gotcha, beat, High Star , my snow , host ile Gotcha beat, High Star , my stall , host A little taste of heart style too with Ketima and Shady Nasty and I've got a thank you Fred because you have introduced me to Shady Nasty through that track who I was unaware of, so they're a trio from Australia. Yes. Um who had their own song, Hardstyle, a few years ago. Yeah. How did that whole connection ? That was because of Evan Ketemer, he played me a song by them and I was like, oh my god, this is absolutely incredible. And then I listened to their their album track, which is insanely, insanely good. This is the way that their original sounds They throw up game signs, they think they're right Always move quick, waiting for a king to knock me off course of course collabs line I love the it's so like clangy but like honed when I swallowed like a tack on my chest And his lyrics I just find so powerful. Like I've said this before, but like it kind of he he kind of reminds me of that what I love so much about Mike Skinner's lyrics. Like there's this like really detailed storytelling that is so specific it's like clearly only his life. And yeah, this the musicianship on the whole record is crazy beautiful. So yeah, there was that song by them and then there's also this combines two um songs by them. The other one is this. No , you're not working hard enough Get a boss same to dust . I can feel my whole body but yeah . Well I what I started with was this. Oh actually no, do you know what was first is would have been um somewhere there's a thing of listening to it with different drones. The f yeah, the first thing was just trying to find like the place that where the vocal felt most right. At this point I was making two different ideas. I was making one that samples the get buff song and one that sampled hardstar and this is like just playing his vocal over like just simple like so it could be like just that or it could be like just or it could be like just held drones to see what Harmony like framed his words in a way that felt right, I guess. Um so like this is an example of got to be To create the drones, what are you using? I remember when we were here last time you you were explaining how um instead of having a blank canvas you would often create a whole variety of different drums just as a way to maybe start the day even. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean this is I've done this in the quickest way I could do it, which is I've just dragged up a logic piano and just played. I'll make one now. Just put it it into a verb. Just's mainly about choice of harmony. You can do any sound and just put it into stretch it on like in logic and then or in this case I just put it into a big verb. That's the one I just made. So that feeling compared with this feeling. This one is to me more like longing. But like there's a positivity to it, I think. This one is like brighter, like it feels like he's got to be Prime Stone. He it feels like he's maybe feels more good about that being what he's got to be in that one maybe. This one. My stone. This is like feels like there's the ang st . It's like sitting on the minor three chord. It's kind of constantly on the B, so it's like always unresolved. This one's quite nice. This is a little bit more question marky. Got to be hard star , my star , ha star. But yeah, these are all like diatonic. I'm not even going into chromatic notes or anything. It's just different versions of like one, two, maybe three notes. And what they make his emotion feel like. And then I think what I arrived at is the notes of the of the angsty one but played on a randomizer, I think, so like this sound . So they're like these little kind of droplets that and for the whole song they just run through so like I'll show you in the record like instead of it being that kind of wool is just randomly it just picks different ones randomly each time . There's no pattern. Which means that each time you get the chord, it's slightly differently framed. So it might be that when you get the F one time you get like Because the bass notes are just like three different notes, it's very simple, but they each get like slightly differently framed in a way that I found quite pleasing. And then what happened now? Oh yeah, then I had this whole other version where I thought it should be like maybe not, maybe not . Right, so leaving in the guitar. Yeah, well I make it I've just played a new guitar. Oh right, right, right. Yeah . But yes, I sort of wanted it to sound like sometimes I like it when parts of the music feel like they're from the same sample as the vocal. And so I thought if I could write a guitar part that could still feel I do actually think there's something in that kind of idea, I don't know like this execution of it, but um family, I swallow her course when I'm And then that was like trying to become sort of like So it's interesting that I mean Ketama introduced you to the band. Yeah. We associate Ketemer with dance music and he's in involved this track. Yeah. So did that make you think in those terms as well? You know, think oh maybe we could hit the dance floor or you know with this or I think what yeah, so we I think I worked on a little sketch and then him and I got together and he made these drums . Which isn't actually quite where it ended up, but it's it's kind of the groove of where it ended up and so yeah I think we tried a few different ideas that first day. Ketima special mentioned for the him being the first person who came with a laptop which didn't have a screen that worked and so he was on Fruity Loops on that TV. We had this massive screen of Fruity Loops and he was over here just having like beers with a mouse on the on the kitchen, just controlling Fruity Loops on the other side of the room. It was a great it was a very new studio and wow. And he came up with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he'd he'd made these kind of drums and he he's got this really I love the way he does his thing. It's very kind of like frenetic and quick in a way that's fun to work with. But yeah, and then but then we ki kept working on it remotely, basically, and I kept trying different things. At this point it's still just a version of hard style. I haven't I was using the verse as well. They think they're right. And then I just kept listening to the get the other song, The Tough Love piece, and he um I realized that they were kind of to me sell it telling the same story, but they both feel like this like re pressed macho, like I've got to be this, I've got to present this, like very pressurized mind. It feels like this like claustrophobic mind, like when he then says all of this stuff love you're not working hard enough to be hard enough to be And they're in the same key, or like one semi-toneout or something. So I could make them and so then so then I was like, okay, hold on, maybe the verse is what the chorus from the other song was and the chorus is this. And then what happened? Oh yeah, these are the little plucks I was telling you about. Just these cute little piglet squids . I think there was a randomizer that on a later version which changes the octave and every now and then means you get uh And what's the synth that's creating that sound? That's logic EST . Right or waist move quick , waiting for a king shit, maybe not. Oh yeah, so here then this is the bass, which is just the default serum sound . So like when you load up serum, it just plays us all I put it into this thing that moves the filter filter fre ak . So to be honest, I'm not sure that's doing much on that . Oh yeah, it's slightly giving it movement And that vocal is Amber from Japanese House and her voice is just the best thing ever. And that was the thing. I think what I liked about that is like pairing this super macho thing with this like calming angel who's like around him. So like that was uh she's just like across the every syllable that comes out of it, I just think is I just don't know. Yeah, there's something there's magic in everything she sings. And is that from another track? Is that from another session? Yeah, that's from a vocal of something that she'd sent me. So then I just did this for about 45 minutes and just had a lovely day and the sound of her doing And she's always in this kind of tension, which I love the sound of when you've got a bass note that's like It's such a nice tension those two notes, the way it matched with the bass. And yeah, it's sort of starting to find itself now. I think Evan, me and Ketama got together So yeah, you g at this point you can see like the amber part is there, but it's it's kind of constantly random and I wanted to find a bit more of a consistent sort of line for her twitches there. Like it's a bit distracting how much there's two lead vocals there, so I wanted her to be kind of a bit more ethereal and therefore a bit more hypnotic, I think. And then the last session, I think, is then adding my friend Dan Mayo on drums, who we were jamming with in Toulouse and places and he played he says stuff sounded like this and it just gave this nice I think probably what I was trying to get from the guitar part having the feeling that it was like born from a record that was more like rocky, I think I was then like maybe trying to get from the drums instead. Um so he sent these parts that we kind of worked on that were like I've put all of his drum stems into one stem at this point because this is the finishing session, but like yeah that sounds and then at the full group So I then just chopped up this whole take of him to get different fills and grooves and he he played on the groove for like 20 minutes or whatever and just tried a million different ideas. And wha what have you done to process those? So th they would have originally been like ten different stems and I would have mainly just tried to make them as precise in their transients as possible. So I'd have just gated them and then this would be one of my eight. This is a really useful plugin. It's called ST4B or Stab, I think. It's like a transient shaper, but frequency specific. Quite useful for live sounds that you want to make tighter. Um because yeah, I wanted it to feel like you can hear like there's a human and the expression and the fills of a human playing drums, but it doesn't I didn't want it to have this big, roomy, rocky sound that took up all the space that needed to knock and have precision so I could still play it just in a club like just yeah and then yeah at the end of his take he uh went full cha os and we were just like just try something where you just totally like it needs to sound like you just have the breakdown that the shady nasty guys Kevin is singing about. Like it needs to sound like the drums just totally give in and like have a total mental breakdown, which then became this. Um look, you're not lucky higher enough I could feel my whole So yeah, and that that I yeah, shout out Dan man I think Ben's just you couldn't have nailed the brief more. It sounds like a man just like reaching the absolute, just total internal combustion. Totally. Sounds amazing. And yet somehow it is also drum and bass. You know, or it's just leaning on. Yeah, it's fun playing that in clubs because you hear the song disintegrate into like by this point hearing this in a room that is used to these clubby sections. I love how visceral the emotion of it is and I love how he pairs with the with the Like it's so Yeah, I just adore his playing there. Yeah, and do you combine it with other things at all or uh there it's just totally raw, I just mixed it very tight so that the Yeah, I mean drum mixing is uh it's a long thing. This has only got the stuff that I've got on the master because I've since bounced all the stems into one drum thing. So that I mean the master alone is doing quite a bit, which is uh that the came that . But yeah, most of it would be in inside the session that we actually recorded into, which has got lots of saturators and different gates that trigger the opening of uh it's quite a techie setup and I'm not sure that without um having the session to walk through it'd be tricky to walk through, but like it's s essentially all of the complicated things in the session are all in search of trying to get a drum sound that feels real but has tight transience and control. So like the snare still knocks like how a club snare would, and similarly with the kick. But yeah, roughly that. Yeah. What was Shady Narcy's first reaction to that? I mean at and what point did you share 'cause you obviously combined two songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's quite th they're a fascinating group in that they're kind of post rock in a way. Post rock, post punk, and yet they've got this vocal style that is more rap, I suppose. Yeah. And the drummer I think kind of comes from a jazz background which you can totally hear and how like f he he it's like sometimes it sounds like he's playing jazz ideas but on a rock mic 'd kit, like in the way that it's like we do kit like it sounds like he's doing these like brushes hits that react to the vocal lines, but it just so happens that the drum kit and the micing of it is like a rock sound. Yeah, they were like um yeah those guys are great. They came to Dublin and we played it there a few weeks ago and yeah they were sick. I mean we did another record actually with Getma with them, which is just his voc als and basically just piano . And this came after that, so we were already in touch kind of at that point, and they knew how much of a fan I was of theirs. Yeah, it's great. I mean, this USB project, it really has been a way for you to bring worlds together and have worlds collide, you know, be it Amy from Anne on the Sniffers to Shady Dusty or you know, so many different sty les, um and bring them into your world as well, which has been really exciting. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's great. Um is there anything else we need to hear from Hardstyle Two, do you think? Um let me see if there's another part of the session that I No, all good. Yeah. Excellent. Well let's round this up with um maybe a blast of the ending from Hardstyle 2. Fantastic hardstyle too with Ketama and Shady Nasty. Just a couple more questions, Fred, before we get out of your hair and out of your house. Um with regard to this record, is there one piece of kit that this record couldn't be the same without? Um I'm trying to not give an annoying answer. 'Cause like the obvious the truth is like laptop, logic, I don't know but like one bit of No? Is that a good answer? Right . It's a simple answer. So Fred, we've talked to you three times now on Take Notes and we're very grateful and thank you so much for inviting us back into the house to to hang out. Um and we've asked you this question before, but as you know, things change and life evolves. Ad vice. We always ask people for advice and whether they've received any, whether they've got any that they want to share. Yeah. At this point , what do you think? I think I think I said this before, maybe not here, but like the the thing that stays with me the most I think is taking the criticism that resonates is a useful compass sometimes, like not being uh immune to criticism but not being totally vulnerable to it. But like if you just take the criticism that resonates, that like that comment that someone says that might piss you off in the moment, but like the next day they they might say I felt like the chorus wasn't as good as the verse or I don't know, something really simple like that. And it might be like at the moment you're like, ah fuck you, you don't get it. But then like a few days later you're kind of listening and you're like, maybe the chorus isn't as like you feel this thought. Those are the criticisms that I think can be most helpful in like guiding you because they're the ones that play on your instinct. And I think that stuff is really important because if you're just totally in your own head, you just go down a rabbit hole. So that's something that my friend Roop said to me that's really stayed with me. Other than that, I would just say collaboration and other humans is always the answer. Not least just because doing it with other humans is funner than not. And I think you can get a kind of end piece, an outro piece. What what what should we go with? Um this is my where I just I can't remember any music I've ever made. I can play uh the song with Thug. This is called Scared. Scared. And who features on this? Young Thug. Oh, Young Thug, right, okay. Oh actually, you know what? Before I play this, this is a useful thing. This I will show plugins on this one sound. Because everyone asks me about this sound, and I think it demonstrates my point in a way that I'm happy to share. So this sound that comes at the end of this song, sorry, I've derailed our lovely close of this. There's this sound that comes here in this song that sounds like this . This sounds like you ever show you scared me ! So yeah, that sound loads and loads and loads of people have asked me about how I made that and I didn't know but I checked this morning and it's just logic plugins going it's just logic synth going into logic plugins. But the order of them is quite interesting because so basically it's this sound, a retrosynth saw wave, I think. But I'm automating the glide, so it's sliding at different speeds and then at some point doing a few more things than that. But the um basically it goes into this. That could be a chroma verb, it's just giving it a sense of space. But then the thing that's fun is that this flang er is basically set and automated as all these things that I've just sort of moved whilst I was playing it, the rate and the intensity and the and the uh things in the EQ are moving as well. But basically that flange sound is going into the phase distortion. And what that means is that there's just like an infinite quantity of variables of resonances that are triggering the phase distortion. If I put them the other way around and the flange comes after the phase distortion, the sound becomes much simpler again. It's just very predictably, you just hear the flanger. Whereas when those resonances are forced into the distortion before, it means that it's poking and triggering the distor tion constantly in different ways. And and then as well as that there's also like things like the decay of the room is being automated so that fundamental thing is changing all before it hits both distortions, this one and the one before . I mean that's a simpler version of the chords, but I just find that so satisfying to listen to the way it's like hitting the distortion in different resonances. And I was pleasantly surprised when I checked this morning. I was like, great, that really makes my point well because it's all logic plugins. It's plugins I've had since I was like 13 and I first got logic, but the thing that was interesting to me was the idea of how can I trigger the distortion in a way that's gonna be Phil really alive. And that was just a new idea it was the idea, not the like like having um a new thing that I think led to a sound that I was really excited by. The one other thing I should say, so I'm not selling it a little bit short, is that I did then split it into all its different monophonic notes so that I could change the speed of the glide of each note. So each note is sliding to different notes at different speeds, which is what gives it the uh feeling of like a show you scared me