Bobby Owsinski's Big Picture Music Production Blog: Roland Jupiter 8

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Duran Duran "Hungry Like The Wolf" Isolated Keyboards

It's time for another isolated track video. This time we'll listen to the isolated keyboards and vocals from Duran Duran's big 1982 hit "Hungry Like The Wolf." The song launched the band into superstardom more for the music video than anything else, but like most hits, it's quite useful to listen inside the song to hear what's going on.

In this post we'll just concentrate on the keys. For more on the isolated vocals, check out this post.

1. The keyboard part mostly consists of an arpeggiated synth, which has been successfully used as a key song element from as far back as The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" (check out this post to hear the isolated track) to today. This not only fills a sonic space in the mix, but also adds motion to the song, effectively doing the same job as percussion.

2. Keyboard pads (a Roland Jupiter 8) are added on the choruses. Take notice to the synth swell on the last "Hungry like the wolf" lyric at the end of each chorus.

3. Both the synth and vocal have a nice short delayed reverb that provides the major ambience and glue to the track.

4. Listen through to the end to hear the ending (or lack of one) that never made the final record.

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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Duran Duran "Hungry Like The Wolf" Isolated Vocals

It's always interesting to go back and listen to the song that set an artist or band off on a career, so today we'll look at the isolated vocal track from Duran Duran's first big hit "Hungry Like The Wolf." The song was written in only day around a backing track from a Roland TR-808 drum machine (you can find the samples here) and Jupiter 8 keyboard (samples here). Although the first recording was finished by the time the band went home for the night, all of the parts except for the backing track were re-recorded again at London's AIR Studios a few months later. The song was released on the band's Rio album to much fanfare in 1982.

Here are some things to listen for in the song (the vocals begin at around 10 seconds):

1. The lead vocal has an interesting modulation effect supplied by an Eventide 949 Harmonizer. It's a trick we used to use on a vocalist with pitch problems where you tune one channel up a few cents and the other down a few cents. That spreads the vocals out a bit across the stereo spectrum, gives the impression of a double, and makes you forget all about any pitch problems that might be occurring. Listen - it works!

2. Theres a nice delayed reverb on the vocal tracks that has most of the top and bottom end filtered out so it blends into the mix better. When you listen to the the vocal in the track with the rest of the instruments, it has a nice sheen on it without actually hearing the reverb, but it's pretty apparent when you just listen to the isolated vocals.

You can read more about how the hit songs that you love were create in Deconstructed Hits.