As some of you know, I'm just about finished co-writing a book with Ken Scott that covers his career in the music business. Ken was one of the 5 engineers for The Beatles as well as producer of David Bowie, Supertramp, Devo, Kansas, Missing Persons and many others.
The book will be called "From Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust" and will be available in April, and will cover all of Ken's time with the Fab Four. In the meantime, enjoy this video where you hear about their early recording process from The Beatles and producer George Martin themselves. There's some great vintage video to look at as well.
Dr. Luke is one of the hottest producers around today, with hits under his belt from such big-sellers as Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Ke$ha ("Tik Tok" was the longest running #1 by a female artist since 1977), Kelly Clarkson, Pink and Flo Rida. You may think that some of the music he makes is very pop and commercial, but he's great at what he does and his work is very well crafted.
Dr. Luke's is insight is definitely worth checking out. Here he shows how he layers sounds to come up with a kick sound right for the track, and how he places it on the grid of the song.
Reader Marcello Kato requested a song analysis of a big hit by Yes from 1983 - "Owner Of A Lonely Heart." The song is still the biggest selling single ever by Yes and was off their extremely successful comeback album 90125. This was the first album with guitarist/singer/writer Trevor Rabin in the band and continued an amazing string of hits by producer Trevor Horn. As with all song analysis, we'll look at the song form, the arrangement, the sound, and the production.
The Song
"Owner Of A Lonely Heart"is a rather simple song that's made interesting more by the arrangement and performances than anything else. The interludes, verses and choruses all revolve around the same rhythm section pattern with only the bridges using different chord changes. The form looks like this:
The Arrangement
The coolest thing about this song is the way it's arranged. Every time a section repeats, there's something a little different that happens, usually because of the fills between the vocal phrases. The interludes are comprised of song parts that are featured just a little differently from when they were used in the verse or chorus.
* The Foundation: The bass and drums. The bass is doubled with a normal or baritone guitar. The snare is doubled with a tambourine in the bridge.
* The Rhythm: Mostly comes from the high-hat as there are no dedicated rhythm instrument parts.
* The Pad: Synths and strings in the choruses and bridges
* The Lead: The vocal and guitar solo
* The Fills: Electric and acoustic guitars, bass, synths, samples, background vocals. If there's a spot open, there's a fill.
As most hits do, "Lonely Heart" develops as it goes along. The second verse gets bigger with a distorted guitar doubling the bass line, and a series of stereo fills between the vocal phrases. The 3rd guitar solo verse goes back to sparse then builds to a bigger out-chorus and bridge. It's all tension and release, and development.
The Sound
Trevor Horn-produced records are always state of the art sound-wise, more because of the sonic layering of the mix than anything else. In "Lonely Heart," the layers really show. The drums are rather small and mixed in mono (!) with a very light gated reverb on the snare. The vocals have a very long time-delayed reverb that give it that sense of space. The guitars are pretty much up front and in your face with only a very short room reverb.
The guitar solo is interesting in that it sounds like a guitar synth but is just a regular electric guitar compresses very heavily, according to Trevor Rabin. Interesting sound nonetheless.
The Production
Like all of Trevor Horn's records, the production is outstanding. The big things count, but it's the little things that really make it. Listen to the second verse and note the fills between the vocal phrases. They're all in stereo in some way so there's always some movement from right to left. The way parts are layered, like the fill line in the chorus with a guitar and keyboard, is also very cool.
Perhaps my favorite part from the first time I ever heard this song is one of the smallest. The bass part never changes in the verse or chorus of the song except for one time. That's in between the first and second outro chorus where the second half of the phrase is changed only slightly, and is then answered with a distant bell-like synth. Then in the outro, a note is intentionally left out of the bass and kick drum part leaving a very obvious, but musical, hole. Very cool!
Many things are unfair in life. The 99% work harder than the 1%, but get compensated far less for that work. Financial engineering pays far more than real engineering. And then we have music, which isn't fair in the least.
Here's a list that comes from Buzzfeed that just about says it all.
1. Creed has sold more records in the US than Jimi Hendrix.
2. Led Zeppelin, REM, and Depeche Mode have never had a number one single, Rihanna has 10.
3. Ke$ha's “Tik-Tok” sold more copies than ANY Beatles single.
4. Flo Rida's “Low” has sold 8 million copies – the same as The Beatles' “Hey Jude.”
5. The Black Eyed Peas' “I Gotta Feeling” is more popular than any Elvis or Simon & Garfunkel song.
6. Celine Dion's “Falling Into You” sold more copies than any Queen, Nirvana, or Bruce Springsteen record.
As I stated in a post the other day, one of the cool things about the new Pro Tools 10 is that it finally has a feature known as clip-based gain. That beans that the level of each clip can be independently changed without having to resort to automation. PT competitors have had this for years, but Avid/Digidesign is only getting this out to their user base now.
Here's a video that explains just how useful clip-based gain can be.
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