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10 questions with The Young Punx
He played on Eric Prydz' classic 'Call On Me', he's fighting for a fair deal for musicians in the digital age, and he REALLY HATES over-mastered mixes. The latest Hotseat incumbant is production guru, philosopher and instrumental whizz, Hal Ritson from The Young Punx
This week's Sounds/To/Sample interview comes courtesy of genre-bending mashpoppers The Young Punx, one of the most creatively outlandish bands to hit our playlists in years. The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Hal Ritson, the Punx feature on four tracks from the new Dizzee Rascal album 'Tongue 'n Cheek' and formed the core band for his BBC Electric Proms live show. As DJs, they have enjoyed residencies at Tiesto's 'In Search of Sunrise' event at the world's largest club, Privilege, in Ibiza and alongside Eric Morillo at Subliminal, Pacha. Hal has performed on or produced more than 200 dance records over the years, including numerous chart hits, with credits as diverse as keyboards on 'Call On Me' by Eric Prydz and violin on 'No Can Do' by the Sugababes. Other CV highlights include work with David Guetta, Black Eyed Peas, Lethal Bizzle, Estelle, Steve Angello and Taio Cruz to name a few. We head to his studio in Peter Waterman's old 'Hit Factory' complex to shoot the hyperbolic shizzle. (And as if an exclusive interview wasn't enough, we also have a host of absolutely free Young Punx tracks to give away exclusively to S2S visitors. See here for more.)
What is the key ingredient for a track? Breakdown? Style of production? Bassline?
The answer has to be MUSIC! TUNES! HOOKS! IDEAS! A trawl through Beatport uncovers a depressing vat of uninspired, idea-free dirges. They probably have somethign about them - a production style, a breakdown, a bassline - but they are all samey nonsense with no creativity. Who buys this stuff? Over the past decade the music industry has opened up immensely: in the past to get a record released you needed major money, usually from a record company, to pay for the costs of recording and manufacturing a record. These days anyone can make a quality record on a home computer and distribute it digitally worldwide. This is a good thing in and of itself, but the downside is that there is no longer any meaningful filter forcing people to raise their game musically. In the past, if you submitted a derivative idea-free track to the A&R man, it was their job to tell you to go away and make it better. These days that filter isn't there, and it makes for a massive wash of B-league rubbish.
At the end of the day you have to try and make something that will stick in people's heads, and hopefully something that hasn't been heard before. This is just as relevant if you are making minimal, bassline-driven music as if you're writing a symphony. It can't just be 'a bassline' - it has to be 'THE bassline' and hopefully "THE bassline the like of which you have never heard before". You have to raise your game and take on the responsibility offered by the new digital music economy.
Do you mainly use analogue or digital soft synth sources? Do you think analogue really makes a difference?
I have been a fan of soft synths for a long time. They are so much more convenient - to bring up a track from two years back and find all the patches straight away is great. They take up so much less space in a small studio, too. And they enable you to own £50,000 of vintage gear for just £500. That said, I am slowly creeping back to analogue. I bought a Minimoog Voyager this year and it really is incredible. All the sounds are ultra simple, but so present, so 'right there', so mixable, so easy to play, so creative. It's a real instrument and it always sounds right first time. So there you have it: analogue is better. It really is. But it's only 10 per cent better, and it has a lot of down sides. It just depends how much you really care about that 10 per cent.
Any arrangement secrets you wish to share with us?
Let me show you some of them in more detail. Watch this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttX6MsZFqg
Who's currently rocking your world as a producer, and why?
It's all about Phonat really. He's got the dream combination of electric experimentation and true musicality - real underground sounds that everyone can respond to. His debut LP is out now via our Mofo Hifi label, and he's just remixed your man Sharooz's new track 'Adrenalize' too!
How do you see the dance music industry developing over the next two to three years?
More power will move to the artist. The major labels will become a vehicle for a certain niche of commercial music. At the same time, more and more musicians with a bit of business sense will start running their own labels and controlling their own destiny, seeing a conventional record deal as 'debt and loss of control' rather than 'hitting the big time'. I am a director of an industry body called the Featured Artists Coalition - a new group of musicians, including the likes of Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Dave Rowntree from Blur, Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, Billy Bragg and many more, who are trying to represent the interests of artists in this changing landscape where the label no longer rules.
There are so many issues of importance here. How long does copyright apply to your work? Should filesharers be treated as criminals or as fans building an artist's reputation? Who gets the money, and how much when your track is played on Youtube or Spotify? Musicians need to stand up and fight their own corner in these debates, understanding that artists are the core of these new businesses, not just pawns in the system. If you're a featured artist use the online form on our website to give your support.
Any advice on monitoring? Quiet? Loud? Do you prefer flat and boring speakers, headphones or big, phat and chunky monitors?
When spending your budget, the one thing you should never skimp on is good monitoring. Always get the best monitors you can possibly afford, rather than getting hundreds of synths and plug-ins. You can make a hit record on one instrument, even a toy instrument, as long as you can hear clearly what you are doing. And the best gear in the world will still be mixed like shit if you don't know EXACTLY what you're hearing. Sure, it's a boring purchase, but it's an ultra important one.
Volume is a quandary. If you're monitoring loud - loud enough that you have to shout a bit to talk to the person with you in the room - you can be sure your ears are modifying the sound and you're not truly hearing what is going on. You need to monitor at a moderate level.
That said, if you are working on a new track, and you really need to get a vibe going, that can require a bit of welly.
My own set up features a pair of main monitors that never go too loud alongside a PA system, which plays up to club volume. Typically we monitor at a moderate level, then every hour or so, smash it onto the the superloud PA. This gives a second perspective on the sound - showing which parts get lost at higher volumes, and which can therefore be muted. The simpler the track is, the better it sounds loud. All the shakers and hi-hats get removed at this stage!
Finally, we do a really quiet listen using a pair of £5 walkman speakers we have. If you've mixed your record correctly you will be able to hear every element, both when your mix is really loud and really quiet.
Headphones are a bad idea, unless you simply can't make any noise. You'll crank them up in the first 15 minutes and then your sense of bass and treble will be lost for the next hour.
How important do you think it is to have your music mastered commercially? Can you do it yourself as effectively and what tools would you recommend?
When I started out, the logic was that you could do everything on a track yourself apart from the mastering, where you needed to hire an expert. The thinking was that however good your studio, hardly any of us had the quality of analogue mastering equipment used by pro mastering studios. Secondly, you weren't just paying for the gear, you were paying for the experience and 'ears' of the engineer, who really know what they were doing.
However, as styles have developed, the effects on the master mix (compression / limiting) have become such an integral part of the overall sound that it is now pretty much impossible to tell where mixing / producing ends and where mastering begins.
If you are sensible and skilled when creating your master mix, you can end up with a track that needs very little mastering - the mastering is essentially done as you go along. That said, there will still be occasions when a good mastering job will get a little more volume from the master.
The thing to remember at all times, though, is that you should avoid slamming your master mix hard against a limiter through some random plugin to make it 'loud'. You will make it loud and it will sound like shit. This 'race to be loud' has become a blight on the whole music industry, and the commercial mastering houses are as guilty of doing it as bedroom producers.
Here's how you get round this: master your tracks more subtly and then (are you ready for the technical tip?) turn tunes up louder when you are playing them out. Your records will sound so much better. Here's why. Imagine you have a snare drum with a snappy bite on the beginning. Picture its waveform. Now imagine you limit your track heavily. All you have done is removed that nice snappy snare attack and replaced it with a flat line. Your track will kick less ass. Back off that limiter by 2db. Don't ask your mastering engineer to"just make it loud". Ask him to make it sound good, and leave it to the Funktion One PA to make it loud later!
Have you got any advice for aspiring young producers out there?
Read the above paragraph.
Describe your typical workflow on a track.
I tend to start with an idea in my head. In fact, I may have the track finished in my head before I even start recording it. The challenge is making the recorded version sound like the version I have in my head. Sometime this can take 10 minutes. Sometimes it takes two years.
What's your opinion on processing the mix bus? Leave it alone or drive it to the extreme?
See question 7. Your mix bus should have an EQ, a multiband compressor and a limiter on it. But set them sensibly and don't drive stuff too hard. I like to have something 'vintagey' on the master out, like the PSP audio Vintage Warmer, to give a bit of tape/valve character to the sound: so it doesn't sound too much a like a load of ones and zeros off your hard drive.
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More from The Young Punx: www.theyoungpunx.com
(c) 2009 Sounds/To/Sample