'Beep'
Writers: Will Adams, Kara DioGuardi, Jeff Lynne
Producer: will.i.am
Additional production, vocal production, arrangement: Ron Fair
David Pensado: "If you asked the average listener what was in that song, they would probably say vocals, drums and that obnoxious little beep sound. Ron found that tone, and I ran it through the board and cranked up the gain so that it distorted like crazy, to increase the harmonic content and obnoxify the sound... I'm using the word obnoxious in the positive sense, as something that will lodge in your brain and even though you do find it obnoxious, it makes you go out and buy the song.
'Beep' lead vocal effects were provided by Waves' Supertap delay, Waves' Doubler and Sound Toys' Pitch Blender.
"Will.i.am [of Black Eyed Peas] co-wrote and produced that song, and he paints musical pictures better than anyone else, because he has such a broad musical vocabulary. The other thing that Will does better than anybody is provide a little bit of comic relief in tragedy, in the Shakespearean sense, like that clown figure in Macbeth, the porter. The beep makes you not take the track entirely seriously, and I tried to preserve that.
"With 'Beep' I was handed the backing tracks on the first day of mixing, and I worked one and a half days on making the rhythmic foundation of the song simultaneously rhythmic and relentless, as in the old funk saying 'Like a horse you can't get off of.' Building on that foundation, I had kept a really nice spot for the other instruments, which I received the next day. Apart from the bass, they are supporting characters in the middle range, things that indicate the chord changes, and also that allowed me to keep the interest. On the third day I was given the vocals, and because I now had a track that sounded huge, my challenge was to make the vocals sound bigger than life."
Nicole Scherzinger's lead vocal EQs: Waves Linear Phase EQ into McDSP Filter Bank EQ
"On both 'Beep' and 'Buttons' I didn't want any warmth in the vocals. I wanted both songs to sound aggressive. At one stage I had a Neve 1073 on Nicole's vocal, and it just sounded too much like all the other vocals I've heard. So I started experimenting, and when I put it through Linear Phase EQ [above] it suddenly jumped out of the speaker in a neat way. I usually like to use a combination of analogue outboard gear and plug-ins, because it gives me the best of both worlds, but on these two songs, even though I did try, it never gave me what I was looking for, so I ended up with about 70 percent plug-ins. I wanted Nicole to sound as if she was in control, and give her a harder sound, and it worked by using Linear Phase to get the shape of the sound, and that signal went into the McDSP EQ [top, right], which I used for the colour of the sound. Linear Phase gave me a broader brush stroke, but in some instances I have reversed it and used the McDSP first.
"I think you get more by not trying to get everything out of one EQ. Every EQ is good for certain things. Even the cheapest EQ has a use. Don't judge gear by its cost or inherent quality; judge it on its uniqueness. One of my favorite pieces of gear is the Ibanez SRV1000, which was a little reverb unit made for guitars. I get them for $50 at eBay and they're all over the percussion on lots of things I do, as well as on vocals — I use them on everything. There's a little Boss unit called the EH50 [stereo enhancer]. It has four buttons on it: just punch button four and throw it on the background vocals, and it makes them come alive. I also get those for $50. Then you use something like Linear Phase, which is like the Rolls Royce of EQs, to give you clarity and breathiness in certain parts of the frequency range."
Lead vocal effects: Waves Supertap delay into Waves Doubler into Sound Toys Pitch Blender
The lead vocal reverb for 'Beep' came from Digidesign's Revibe.
"I used these three [right] on Nicole's vocals because I wanted to give it width, as well as a mechanical quality. Whenever I hear really tight delays on vocals, I always think of tape slap. The delays on Supertap are all very short, and what it also allowed me to do is spread the vocal wide across the stereo spectrum. In other words, instead of occupying a small spot in the middle of the mix, I could fill the whole spectrum between the speakers. The 149, 298 and 587 ms are 16th, eighth and half-note delays, and they spread and get louder from left to right. Supertap allowed me to run the vocal half a dB lower than would otherwise be required, which gave me the benefit of making the track sound more powerful without overpowering her.
"Doubler has four delays that also help to make the vocal sound bigger, wider and more powerful. I personally don't like to use a lot of reverb, and this reduced my need for it. The combination of delays and reverb in 'Buttons' and 'Beep' really helped create the image for those songs. You can see on Doubler that part of the direct sound is coming through, and Supertap and Doubler together probably created lots of delays.
"What I wanted to do with Pitch Blender was to make some of the delays a few cents flat and sharp, and continuously alter the amount of pitch change. It's a neat thing, because it messes with your ears on a subconscious level. You hear something that might for a microsecond sound a little bit off, but it moves so quickly that your brain never gets to interpret it. Your ear is nevertheless drawn towards it.
The Aphex Aural Exciter plug-in contributed to the string sound.
"I'd like to add that rather than copy these ideas, I would prefer if readers use the concept of not being afraid to put effect into effect into effect. I had a specific problem in my mind for this track that I tried to resolve in this way, which was to achieve bigness without using much reverb, and I probably spent 30 minutes trying different combinations of plug-ins until I got that. So experiment until you get the sound you want. I've gone six deep in chaining effects."
Lead vocal reverb: Digidesign Revibe
"Revibe [top] is really cool. I like the way it creates space differently than some of the other reverbs; it uses samples of actual spaces in its emulation process. I modified the Large Natural Plate reverb and I dipped it at 8k because it sounded a little bit too expensive.
Waves' Maxx Bass made the most of the track's bass and 808 kick drum.
"My all-time favourite hardware reverb is probably the Eventide 2016. I love its darkness. I have both old and new versions, and I manage to sneak them in on almost every mix. I use the stereo room preset, and I tend to use a pretty long, 16th or 32nd note, pre-delay. I roll off the top end around 5k, sometimes 4k, plus I roll off the bottom end about two numbers, starting at 300Hz. It's the reverb on those original Mariah Carey records, and I just love the sound of it."
Strings: Aphex Aural Exciter Type III
"To be honest, I've never really liked the sound of strings, which is weird because I love the violin. But strings are often a little sharp and tend to play behind the beat, and they remind me of syrupy ballads from the '40s. I will often manipulate the hell out of strings to keep them from bogging me down. A lot of the time I will put a Harmoniser on the strings and add some Sansamp distortion — whatever it takes to make them sound more like a synthesizer, rather than live strings.
"On 'Beep' there is, of course, that ELO string sample, which came in stereo, and Ron had doubled that with real strings, which allowed me to put it more 'in your face'. The strings also add harmony content, and I love Ron's arrangements. He'll use a 30-piece to 60-piece orchestra, and because he knows what he wants, he'll combine them for me, so I'll get a stereo room, stereo violins, stereo violas, stereo celli, and if there's a double bass, stereo that. For the 'Beep' track, I added the Exciter, because it made the strings sound a little bit less expensive. The Null Fill setting adds a little bit of depth to the track. I like the Harmonics and Timbre knobs in the odd side for strings, and on the even side for guitars. When things are on the even side I feel more pleasant, and when they're on the odd side I feel more edgy.
"There's also an electric violin on the track, which I wanted to sound haunting, non-traditional, as if some young cat in blue jeans was playing it in a sweaty jazz club in New York. The electric violin was just one stereo track, which I put through a new Waves plug-in called Amp. I set it to a Marshall head with Marshall 4 x 12 cabinet setting, and mixed that with the original sound."
Bass and 808 kick: Waves Maxx Bass
Waves' Trans-X Multi was used to add more transient attack to the 'Buttons' drum loop."I felt that with 'Beep' all my credibility was from 200 cycles down, all the energy and meaning and power of the song were between 200Hz and 3kHz, and all my poppiness was above 3kHz. If you listen to these three sections alone, you'll understand how each contributed to the feeling and emotion you get from the song. Many people want the bass to be really loud, but if it's too loud, the apparent level of your mix will be lower on the radio. If you put in too much bass, every time the 808 hits the vocal level sounds like it's dropping by 3dB. Over the course of time I have found ways of tricking the radio compressor to make it sound as if there's more low end than there actually is. It took me 15 years to figure out, and is not something you explain in one sentence, but I've basically tried to do this with the two settings on Maxx Bass, one for the 808 and the other for the bass [screens on previous page]. Think of it as a room in your house and you want to fill it all with music, but nothing can be louder than the ceiling. In 'Beep' I wanted to have the 808 and the bass and the vocals all near the ceiling, and Maxx Bass allowed me to do that.
"I have to say that I never liked compression. I started out playing in little dives and honky tonks in the South, and one major weapon we had at our disposal to keep the audience interested was dynamics. This has always stayed with me in terms of mixing. I've always liked dynamics and I love expanding and exaggerating the dynamics on my mixes. I get criticised by my peers sometimes, but to me it's the way it should be. If you listen to some of my Christina Aguilera mixes, I allow her to get loud. Because when a compressor trips these notes, it makes changes to the pitch, to the timbre, and so you lose the power of those great singers."
Writers: Will Adams, Kara DioGuardi, Jeff Lynne
Producer: will.i.am
Additional production, vocal production, arrangement: Ron Fair
David Pensado: "If you asked the average listener what was in that song, they would probably say vocals, drums and that obnoxious little beep sound. Ron found that tone, and I ran it through the board and cranked up the gain so that it distorted like crazy, to increase the harmonic content and obnoxify the sound... I'm using the word obnoxious in the positive sense, as something that will lodge in your brain and even though you do find it obnoxious, it makes you go out and buy the song.
'Beep' lead vocal effects were provided by Waves' Supertap delay, Waves' Doubler and Sound Toys' Pitch Blender.
"Will.i.am [of Black Eyed Peas] co-wrote and produced that song, and he paints musical pictures better than anyone else, because he has such a broad musical vocabulary. The other thing that Will does better than anybody is provide a little bit of comic relief in tragedy, in the Shakespearean sense, like that clown figure in Macbeth, the porter. The beep makes you not take the track entirely seriously, and I tried to preserve that.
"With 'Beep' I was handed the backing tracks on the first day of mixing, and I worked one and a half days on making the rhythmic foundation of the song simultaneously rhythmic and relentless, as in the old funk saying 'Like a horse you can't get off of.' Building on that foundation, I had kept a really nice spot for the other instruments, which I received the next day. Apart from the bass, they are supporting characters in the middle range, things that indicate the chord changes, and also that allowed me to keep the interest. On the third day I was given the vocals, and because I now had a track that sounded huge, my challenge was to make the vocals sound bigger than life."
Nicole Scherzinger's lead vocal EQs: Waves Linear Phase EQ into McDSP Filter Bank EQ
"On both 'Beep' and 'Buttons' I didn't want any warmth in the vocals. I wanted both songs to sound aggressive. At one stage I had a Neve 1073 on Nicole's vocal, and it just sounded too much like all the other vocals I've heard. So I started experimenting, and when I put it through Linear Phase EQ [above] it suddenly jumped out of the speaker in a neat way. I usually like to use a combination of analogue outboard gear and plug-ins, because it gives me the best of both worlds, but on these two songs, even though I did try, it never gave me what I was looking for, so I ended up with about 70 percent plug-ins. I wanted Nicole to sound as if she was in control, and give her a harder sound, and it worked by using Linear Phase to get the shape of the sound, and that signal went into the McDSP EQ [top, right], which I used for the colour of the sound. Linear Phase gave me a broader brush stroke, but in some instances I have reversed it and used the McDSP first.
"I think you get more by not trying to get everything out of one EQ. Every EQ is good for certain things. Even the cheapest EQ has a use. Don't judge gear by its cost or inherent quality; judge it on its uniqueness. One of my favorite pieces of gear is the Ibanez SRV1000, which was a little reverb unit made for guitars. I get them for $50 at eBay and they're all over the percussion on lots of things I do, as well as on vocals — I use them on everything. There's a little Boss unit called the EH50 [stereo enhancer]. It has four buttons on it: just punch button four and throw it on the background vocals, and it makes them come alive. I also get those for $50. Then you use something like Linear Phase, which is like the Rolls Royce of EQs, to give you clarity and breathiness in certain parts of the frequency range."
Lead vocal effects: Waves Supertap delay into Waves Doubler into Sound Toys Pitch Blender
The lead vocal reverb for 'Beep' came from Digidesign's Revibe.
"I used these three [right] on Nicole's vocals because I wanted to give it width, as well as a mechanical quality. Whenever I hear really tight delays on vocals, I always think of tape slap. The delays on Supertap are all very short, and what it also allowed me to do is spread the vocal wide across the stereo spectrum. In other words, instead of occupying a small spot in the middle of the mix, I could fill the whole spectrum between the speakers. The 149, 298 and 587 ms are 16th, eighth and half-note delays, and they spread and get louder from left to right. Supertap allowed me to run the vocal half a dB lower than would otherwise be required, which gave me the benefit of making the track sound more powerful without overpowering her.
"Doubler has four delays that also help to make the vocal sound bigger, wider and more powerful. I personally don't like to use a lot of reverb, and this reduced my need for it. The combination of delays and reverb in 'Buttons' and 'Beep' really helped create the image for those songs. You can see on Doubler that part of the direct sound is coming through, and Supertap and Doubler together probably created lots of delays.
"What I wanted to do with Pitch Blender was to make some of the delays a few cents flat and sharp, and continuously alter the amount of pitch change. It's a neat thing, because it messes with your ears on a subconscious level. You hear something that might for a microsecond sound a little bit off, but it moves so quickly that your brain never gets to interpret it. Your ear is nevertheless drawn towards it.
The Aphex Aural Exciter plug-in contributed to the string sound.
"I'd like to add that rather than copy these ideas, I would prefer if readers use the concept of not being afraid to put effect into effect into effect. I had a specific problem in my mind for this track that I tried to resolve in this way, which was to achieve bigness without using much reverb, and I probably spent 30 minutes trying different combinations of plug-ins until I got that. So experiment until you get the sound you want. I've gone six deep in chaining effects."
Lead vocal reverb: Digidesign Revibe
"Revibe [top] is really cool. I like the way it creates space differently than some of the other reverbs; it uses samples of actual spaces in its emulation process. I modified the Large Natural Plate reverb and I dipped it at 8k because it sounded a little bit too expensive.
Waves' Maxx Bass made the most of the track's bass and 808 kick drum.
"My all-time favourite hardware reverb is probably the Eventide 2016. I love its darkness. I have both old and new versions, and I manage to sneak them in on almost every mix. I use the stereo room preset, and I tend to use a pretty long, 16th or 32nd note, pre-delay. I roll off the top end around 5k, sometimes 4k, plus I roll off the bottom end about two numbers, starting at 300Hz. It's the reverb on those original Mariah Carey records, and I just love the sound of it."
Strings: Aphex Aural Exciter Type III
"To be honest, I've never really liked the sound of strings, which is weird because I love the violin. But strings are often a little sharp and tend to play behind the beat, and they remind me of syrupy ballads from the '40s. I will often manipulate the hell out of strings to keep them from bogging me down. A lot of the time I will put a Harmoniser on the strings and add some Sansamp distortion — whatever it takes to make them sound more like a synthesizer, rather than live strings.
"On 'Beep' there is, of course, that ELO string sample, which came in stereo, and Ron had doubled that with real strings, which allowed me to put it more 'in your face'. The strings also add harmony content, and I love Ron's arrangements. He'll use a 30-piece to 60-piece orchestra, and because he knows what he wants, he'll combine them for me, so I'll get a stereo room, stereo violins, stereo violas, stereo celli, and if there's a double bass, stereo that. For the 'Beep' track, I added the Exciter, because it made the strings sound a little bit less expensive. The Null Fill setting adds a little bit of depth to the track. I like the Harmonics and Timbre knobs in the odd side for strings, and on the even side for guitars. When things are on the even side I feel more pleasant, and when they're on the odd side I feel more edgy.
"There's also an electric violin on the track, which I wanted to sound haunting, non-traditional, as if some young cat in blue jeans was playing it in a sweaty jazz club in New York. The electric violin was just one stereo track, which I put through a new Waves plug-in called Amp. I set it to a Marshall head with Marshall 4 x 12 cabinet setting, and mixed that with the original sound."
Bass and 808 kick: Waves Maxx Bass
Waves' Trans-X Multi was used to add more transient attack to the 'Buttons' drum loop."I felt that with 'Beep' all my credibility was from 200 cycles down, all the energy and meaning and power of the song were between 200Hz and 3kHz, and all my poppiness was above 3kHz. If you listen to these three sections alone, you'll understand how each contributed to the feeling and emotion you get from the song. Many people want the bass to be really loud, but if it's too loud, the apparent level of your mix will be lower on the radio. If you put in too much bass, every time the 808 hits the vocal level sounds like it's dropping by 3dB. Over the course of time I have found ways of tricking the radio compressor to make it sound as if there's more low end than there actually is. It took me 15 years to figure out, and is not something you explain in one sentence, but I've basically tried to do this with the two settings on Maxx Bass, one for the 808 and the other for the bass [screens on previous page]. Think of it as a room in your house and you want to fill it all with music, but nothing can be louder than the ceiling. In 'Beep' I wanted to have the 808 and the bass and the vocals all near the ceiling, and Maxx Bass allowed me to do that.
"I have to say that I never liked compression. I started out playing in little dives and honky tonks in the South, and one major weapon we had at our disposal to keep the audience interested was dynamics. This has always stayed with me in terms of mixing. I've always liked dynamics and I love expanding and exaggerating the dynamics on my mixes. I get criticised by my peers sometimes, but to me it's the way it should be. If you listen to some of my Christina Aguilera mixes, I allow her to get loud. Because when a compressor trips these notes, it makes changes to the pitch, to the timbre, and so you lose the power of those great singers."
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