And when she asks for the multitrack, it usually arrives pretty fast! It’s much easier to record things when you have the multitrack. We may initially get a two-track MP3 of the beat, and many engineers in urban music will record vocals to that, but I almost immediately will ask for the full multitrack, on behalf of Beyoncé. “I start with my Pro Tools tracking template, which is a slightly more basic version of my mixing template, and I load the sessions given to me by the beatmakers in that. It can be tricky doing this when tracking on a laptop in tons of random places, but actually it’s good to be hearing things in real-world environments.” Headroom Is All At that point I can ask, ‘What do you think of this reverb?’, or of the sound of this vocal, or this transition, or how this bass sits against that kick, and I get immediate feedback. That’s also my mentality: let’s get it right now while it’s fresh, while we are all excited about the track, and while everybody is in the room. It’s how old-school guys used to work: they would get the right sounds there and then, and mixing was an afterthought. “Mixing as I go has always been my process, and I think it’s the best way to work. There was no ego, and sessions were at times passed back and forth all the time with everyone trying to get the best results. As a general rule, I took the sessions to a certain place and then everybody helped finish them. Leslie is Pharrell’s regular mixer, and Pharrell wanted Leslie to mix his two tracks, but Leslie refused to mix ‘Apeshit’, as he considered my mix finished. I brought in Chris as a tracking engineer in Paris, and we mixed ‘713’ together and he mixed ‘Salud!’ alone. “Tony was mixing at The Church, and I spent a lot of time at RAK, which has become my favourite studio. “I was the main tracking engineer,” reports White. Pulling TogetherĮverything Is Love was recorded and mixed in a large number of places around the world, including the U Arena stadium complex and Philippe Zdar’s Motorbass Studio, both in Paris the Church and RAK in London and, in LA, the Carters’ home studio Kingslanding West, as well as Record Plant and White’s own studio, Avenue A Studios West DTLA. Stylistically, the big break with the past is that Beyoncé raps more than she sings, and, in a nod to Atlanta rap, with a very obviously Auto-Tuned voice.īehind the scenes, the production involved renowned names like Tony Maserati, Leslie Brathwaite, Young Guru and Chris Godbey, all of whom have featured in the Inside Track series but the main unsung studio hero was Beyoncé’s regular engineer and mixer Stuart White, who recorded large parts of the album, and has a mix credit on all but two of the album’s 10 songs. Beats were supplied by the distinguished likes of Pharrell Williams, Cool & Dre, Boi-1da, Mike Dean, Nav and David Sitek, as well as many lesser well-known writers and beatmakers. The Carters: Beyoncé and Jay-Z.The album is sonically and stylistically an extension of these solo albums, particularly Beyoncé’s experimental and widely lauded Lemonade. It comes on the heels of the pair’s most recent solo albums, Beyoncé’s Lemonade (2016) and Jay-Z’s 4:44 (2017), which in part trace their well-publicised marital discord. Beyoncé and Jay-Z participated equally in its making, and it’s released under the married couple’s shared last name. There are many celebrated break-up albums, but the Carters’ Everything Is Love is perhaps the first great make-up album. Stu White was the engineer who made it possible. Beyoncé and Jay-Z topped charts worldwide with their album Everything Is Love.
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