Craft

Who are your clients today? The majors have certainly moved away from serious artist development. There are a lot of managers trying to get their artists a first hit, and streaming playlists have become an aspiration. Publishers have been more active in putting producers and professional writers together with artists — I probably have a fairly good success rate on that because I’m not just writing a song — hoping that some producer will come along later to comp the vocal and make a good demo. I go from my writing session to what sounds like a complete production: ‘this is what it could be like’.

Your production room is absolutely crammed with keyboards and vinyl! I’m a ‘maker’ rather than a mixer. I’ve never set up a room just to sit and mix. The environment is more for me and a musician to be in, to create something. I’m not going to give up a quarter of my room space to put some bass traps in!

Yet you’re mixing in here today, and the monitors sound great: is that down to the Trinnov ST2-Pro Room Correction system? I first encountered the Trinnov at the Miloco open day — of all their lovely rooms, they had it set up with a big pair of Augspurgers in their kitchen! But it was an efective demonstration, suddenly you were hearing the mix diferently. I could hear the interaction between Richard X instruments and EQ in a room that was no way designed to be used as a mixing environment. Since I set the Trinnov ST2-Pro up in my Behind every song is a secret genius… NIGEL JOPSON production room, it hasn’t been switched of. If I bypass it, it seems like something has gone meets a music maestro who’s equally at home driving very wrong — firstly with your brain, because Pro Tools as he is at the keys of his Prophet 6 all the phase relationships are un-corrected — and secondly you start to doubt you could ever have really listened without it! The ichard X (Philips to his mum) first you know how certain production decisions disclaimer is that when you first set the Trinnov lasered onto pop music’s radar when help a song get on the BBC Radio 2 playlist, up, for the very best result be prepared to he was part of the mashup movement Spotify playlists tend to lean towards a ‘middle- make minor adjustments to where your Rat the turn of the Millennium — a ground’ consensus music, although they may loudspeakers are positioned. captain of the production crew forcing pop deny it! divas from completely diferent genres to co-exist in sound. Richard X became a hit- What type of songs are pop artists maker when his Girls On Top welding-together looking for? of Gary Numan and Adina Howard was re- Over the last couple of years a massive purposed into a No. 1 for Sugababes Freak Like demand for ‘homeless a capellas’ has Me, (2002). Since then, the X-man has developed. Songs that were maybe written for produced, mixed and written a panoply of chart one artist or project — which never got used hits for artists including Pet Shop Boys, Saint — but which might fit into one of the various Etienne, Will Young, Erasure, Lana Del Rey, dance genres: from tropical or downtempo, to Little Boots, Kylie, New Order and M.I.A. 120bpm piano-house. Several hits have actually started out as toplines for completely diferent How has remixing changed over the last songs. There’s a whole world out there of decade? young artists who don’t write songs, and a The culture of what remixing means and what world of people with dance instrumentals who people want it to do has changed considerably. are looking for toplines. This is why there seem At the moment people are filling up formats to be so many “random featurings” currently. — the Spotify world — remixes to fill that niche. Even something like the MK tune 17 (2017) Last year ‘New Music Friday’ was becoming — which I love — started life as a songwriting something of a holy grail for artists to aim for, to demo. What you send out, somebody else will plug towards, to try and tailor a sound to. think is finished. I’ve got an Italian dance hit Depending which ‘sound’ you make, it could be based on some of my writing: all they did was a bit of a poisoned chalice! In the same way as stick a few handclaps over the stems! / For a few patchcords more…

36 / June/July 2018 Did you manage to get a flat frequency Which interfaces are at the heart of your response, despite the small room? set-up? Because I am probably writing music more I’ve got an HDX system in my production room, of the time than I am mixing, for me there’s I also have a Native interface which travels that balance of keeping it vibey. Nevertheless, between here and my Miloco room at Leroy the setting I’ve ended up with is pretty much Street, Elephant & Castle. I’ve switched my as flat as it can be, frequency-response wise. interfaces at both rooms to an Antelope Orion I immediately found I was making very 32 HD. I previously had two Auroras, which I still diferent balance decisions. Before I bought own, and an Avid HD I/O. The Avid, combined the Trinnov I used a sub, I think I was with one of the Auroras, provided me with 32 compensating: the upper bass around outputs: now I have all that in a 1u rack with the 120Hz was previously missing — more than Antelope. The Orion is brilliant, you can run 10dB down — so I was trying to get that Logic and Pro Tools HDX together on the feeling back. Antelope, accessing the same ins and outs with There’s a Drake song called Controlla, the two DAWs. The USB connection seems to have sub-bass part goes through an octave range, lower latency than the Native port for me. You in any normal room you’ll hear a big resonance can route between diferent applications on at least one of the notes — yet it doesn’t — your internal driver can be on the Orion USB, have that on the track — if you listen on good and Pro Tools can be on the HDX digiport — the headphones there’s no evidence of an first time you see it, it seems unusual because extended E note for no particular reason! there’s another layer of interface between Pro When I heard that tune at my mix position, on Tools and your outputs, it goes through their / Keyboard arsenal in sliding drawers the Neumann KH310As and NS10s, I was sold virtual mixer. on the Trinnov. As a musician, I play into it all handled by the Ferrofish. The Inward the time, and I haven’t found latency to be a You seem to be using a lot of analogue gear, Connections Vac Rac and other analogue gear problem. The thing the Trinnov does is to give have you got it all on multiple A-D/D-A ins are all on inserts: as soon as you start paralleling you a ‘new room’; most producers would and outs? something like that internally in Pro Tools, benefit far more from improving their In my production room I’m running 32 analogue something will change, maybe instantiating monitoring than spending their money on yet ins and outs, and there’s a MADI connection to another plug-in somewhere will shift the latency another analogue EQ or something! The main a Ferrofish which provides a further 32 ins and and the phase changes. ‘proof of the pudding’ for the ST2 is the outs. I’m using a lot of analogue insert points But now I have the SSL Sigma routing translation on other systems. with guitar pedals and so on, which are all everything to analogue, there’s no problem

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sending the drum buss to One and Two, plus a the session you have a plug-in which saves all been fun: I’ve been using some Strymon guitar send via the Vac Rac to Sigma 15 and 16: the your settings. Finally, SSL have implemented a pedals on my synths — it feels like I’m adding phase coherence is maintained. So the Sigma similar arrangement with Sigma, with a plug-in something diferent — but from within the has given all my outboard a second lease of life, controlling — and automating — the analogue band’s sonic palette, being part of their world. it’s so straightforward to use. My master-bus side of the signal from within Pro Tools. I’ve also just been working with an indie girl chain has evolved: currently I’m using a Custom duo called Gurr, which was production and mix Audio HDE250 EQ, Kush Clariphonic MS and a What are you working on at the moment? on their new single which grew out of the last Manley Vari Mu Compressor. I’ve always used a I’ve been producing Band of Skulls, with my two hours of our writing session together. master-bus chain, it’s a sort of hybrid of what long-term collaborator Pete Hofmann (Miloco) Recently I did a session with Bright Light Bright you might have for mastering, on a mix. The mixing with me — they’ve been experimenting Light [stage name of singer Rod Thomas] …and Bettermaker EQ’s are brilliant, it has a Pultec- with a diferent approach to making a record. today I’m comping some vocals from style section and a couple of more modern- Although I’m mostly known for the electronic Dragonette’s Martina Sorbara, making a new sounding EQ controls, fully recall-able, so within sound, I have worked on similar music before. It’s track out of the recording I did with her.

/ Before and after Trinnov optimization

You master-minded a great return for Swedish duo The Sound of Arrows at the end of last year. Stefan Storm is a very talented songwriter, we’ve collaborated on other tunes outside of Sound of Arrows, we did a track for Annie [of Russian Kiss fame] called Cara Mia. I put that out independently — that’s probably what I like doing most — when you’ve written it, recorded it, helped with the sleeve, released it. We did limited-edition CDs with special inserts, it was released on my imprint Pleasure Masters via SRD [the indie distributor]. Kudos Distribution handle digital distribution for my labels — they will plug and PR their indie labels — try and get digital shop-front for the releases and so on. If you want to make music, don’t actually run a record label, it takes over your life! Everyone has a ‘somewhere’ they come from, and my place was always making a record — as much of that process as possible — even down to what the physical product looks like.

What is a ‘producer’ these days? When I was making records for Virgin, when I had my own solo deal, I was a rarity because I was doing everything myself as a Pro Tools production. There were only a very few writer-producers like myself at that time who wrote, played and recorded the songs themselves. Today… this sort of multi-skilled musician has become the model for what a ‘producer’ is. Producers and DJs making a record that people want to dance to: that’s the new valuable skill. www.blackmelody.com #richardxbm

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