FEATURE When it comes to succeeding in the US R&B scene, nationality is no barrier. Just ask Norwegian songwriters Mikkel S. Eriksen and Tor E. Hermansen, members of Stargate. Text: Paul Tingen Stargate are a Norwegian songwriting and and have also joined forces with the rapper in a production duo that have been storming publishing company and record label called StarRoc. charts around the world since 2006, particularly in Stargate’s ascendancy to the top of the American the US where they’ve enjoyed a staggering 21 top 10 music scene in 2006 may sound too meteoric to hits in the last four years. !e duo have been so be true, and it indeed turns out that Eriksen and successful at beating the Americans at their own Hermansen spent many years cutting their teeth in R&B game, in fact, that the New York Times, not the Norwegian and British music scenes between normally known for going out of its way to cover 1999 and 2004. Stargate – at the time a trio with behind-the-scenes songwriters and producers, wrote third member, Hallgeir Rustan – enjoyed 40 top 10 an extensive interview with them recently, where it hits in the UK alone, before deciding to risk all and was noted that Stargate’s hugely impressive set o$ across the Atlantic. achievements seemed a little incongruous given that its two members, Mikkel S. Eriksen and Tor E. Eriksen and Hermansen set up shop in a room Hermansen, are “wholesome-looking, milk- at Sony Music studios in the beginning of 2005, complexioned Norwegians… both shiny of scalp and initially met with little success, until a chance and beanstalk thin.” !is isn’t exactly what one has meeting with Ne-Yo in the corridors of the studio in mind when one imagines people working in the later on in the year. So Sick changed everything American urban music genre, and the story goes for Stargate and Ne-Yo, and together they wrote a that when singer, songwriter and occasional rapper further three songs for his debut album. In 2006, Ne-Yo "rst met the duo in 2005, he refused to they were responsible for two more international believe they worked in R&B. Luckily Ne-Yo looked monster hits: Rihanna’s Unfaithful and Beyoncé’s beyond appearances, and soon a#erwards the Irreplaceable. !e following year Stargate co-wrote Norwegian duo and the American singer co-wrote and co-produced worldwide hits like Beyoncé and the single So Sick, which went on to become a US Shakira’s Beautiful Liar, Rihanna’s Don’t Stop !e and UK #1. Music, and Chris Brown’s With You. !e following year they had major success with Rihanna’s Take Since then Stargate have become "rst-call A Bow, and Ne-Yo’s Grammy-winning Miss songwriters and producers for American R&B Independent. In the last two years the tsunami and pop acts like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lionel Richie, of Stargate hits has given way to a slightly more Chris Brown, Jennifer Hudson, Flo Rida, Mary J surfable wave (which would still be the envy of most Blige, and many others. !eir e$orts earned them songwriters), with hits like Flo Rida’s Be On You, a Grammy in 2008 for Best R&B Song for Ne-Yo’s Beyoncé’s Broken-Hearted Girl, and early this year Miss Independent, and several other nominations, Mary J Blige’s I Am. including this year, in the Album Of !e Year category, for their work on Beyoncé’s I Am… Sasha CHORDS & MELODY Fierce. (!e duo co-wrote and co-produced two It’d be hard to point to a signature Stargate style. songs on the album, including the single, Broken- !ere is, however, a common thread that unities Hearted Girl.) Stargate now have a studio in Jay-Z’s the duo’s songs. Rather than a focus on beats, prestigious Roc-!e-Mic studio in New York, sonic experimentation or attitude, their songs AT ! AT ! tend to succeed on the more old-fashioned singers to come up with their own melodies, eventually made more sense to work on just one qualities of melody, chord progression, and which we can then edit. platform, and ProTools was the more convenient emotion. In addition, their productions are of the two. In the end it doesn’t really matter “#e other thing we discovered with So Sick always wholly supportive of the song, many of what you use. It’s all about ideas now, not the is how simple a good song can be. You don’t which are minor key ballads or medium-tempo equipment. Anyone with a laptop and a small have to have loads of vocal harmonies and numbers that allow the singer space to shine. keyboard can create records that sound just as overlapping lines in the background. #e most It’s understandable that all this makes Stargate good as the ones on the radio. important thing is to have one great lead vocal popular with singers. What’s more, Hermansen throughout the song. You can sprinkle it with “Tor and I both play keyboards, and we have and Eriksen also almost always co-write their all sorts of stu$ but you try to keep it focussed all the di$erent Yamaha Motifs: the ES, the hits with fellow songwriters, and o!en with the on the lead vocal and make sure the melody and EXS, and so on. #e Motif ES is my master singer, which gives the latter even greater scope lyrics are great.” keyboard. We also have the Roland Fantom to make the song his or her own, not to mention and Fantom-G, and several older modules, like that it also allows for a share in the royalties. GEAR AT THE GATE the Roland JV and Proteus 2000, but we rarely Eriksen appears proud of Stargate’s non-ego Like more and more hit makers these days, use them any more. #ese days we mainly use approach, and explains that it’s the result of the Stargate weave their magic on a state-of-the-art so!-samplers and so!-synths, the main ones epiphany that lay at the heart of the creative ProTools system, and little else. Says Eriksen, “As being Digidesign’s Structure and Access Virus outburst that followed meeting Ne-Yo in 2005. you know, everything is moving towards smaller Indigo. We also use XPand! a lot and the new Eriksen: “So Sick was de"nitely an eye-opener production facilities these days. You don’t really Transfuser so!ware, which allows us to chop for us in that it really worked to have the singer need big consoles or lots of outboard anymore up and mess with the sounds. We have pretty write the lyrics. When we lived in Europe we to make a good sounding record. We have a much every so!-synth on the market, and used to write most of the lyrics ourselves. We’d G-Series SSL at Roc-#e-Mic, but we only use several symphonic sample and drum libraries. hum melodies into a dictaphone and I used to four channels of it: two for ProTools and two for Actually, it’s a real danger, having too much sing on our early demos, which taught us about the iPod. We do everything in the box and the stu$ and too many possibilities, which is why what makes a good vocal melody. #ese days desk is just there to make our room look like a we o!en go back to our own sample libraries. we really enjoy working with American lyricists real studio (laughs). Back in the days in Norway But to be honest, we don’t really care whether and top writers. #ey’re on another level we used quite a bit of outboard, but now it’s all we use a preset or our own sound. O!en we lyrically, and this gives us the space to focus about plug-ins. I think we were one of the "rst start with a preset and modify it; at other times on writing and recording, which is the part to move to ProTools for song writing… that was we create a sound from scratch. We don’t focus we love the most. We put a lot of instrumental 10 years ago now. Before that we’d been using too much on the sounds – more on the ideas melodies in our music that singers and lyricists Cubase for the previous 10. Cubase was much and the song writing.” can use and adapt. Our goal is also to inspire better for MIDI at the time, but because we were doing the vocal recording in ProTools, it THE STARGATE TOUCH: Mikkel Eriksen on writing some of the Norwegian duo’s greatest hits. Amund and Espen, and happened, until Beyoncé song, because we find it melody so various writers we arranged them and heard it. She loved it and hard writing a great song had a stab at finishing added bass and drums, recorded it, but it didn’t on just one chord. But if the song. The first two or strings and melodies, and seem to fit on the album you do it right, you can three attempts weren’t everything else. The chords she was doing at the time, make it work, and this good enough, and then he were leaning towards B’Day, which was supposed song is a good example had the idea of putting us country, so we had fun to be a hard-hitting club of one that works.