Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff | Hacker News Reader

Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

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The producer here is clearly talented, but the fact remains that notwithstanding Liam Howlett's setup in the late nineties, today's most basic music production software is a country mile more powerful than that which produced some of the most memorable music of the last twenty years.

I often think that there exists a clear analogy between electronic music and video games. The computer games of the 80s and early 90s possessed a simplicity and level of fun - often characterised as playability - which was to a certain extent lost when the exponentially-increasing power of hardware in the late 90s led to programmers to concentrate on all encompassing 3D effects at the expense of simple fun.

Likewise, I feel that many musicians today get too caught up in the neverending technical possibilities offered by their software (and digital hardware) at the expense of good, simple music which hits a spot close to the heart.

All the gear, but no idea - to coin a phrase.

I'm not sure what you'd call the musical equivalent of playability, but I think more musicians should bear it in mind. :)

"All the gear, but no idea - to coin a phrase."

Love it. I think this is a universal rule. I've seen it apply to music (electric guitarists with their pedals), graphic design (with Adobe CS), renovations (shiny tools) and conversation (superlative vocabulary).

Totally agree.

I'm not as pessimistic. I really hold to the belief that the proportion of unimaginative 'workmen' in a field is constant. Lowering the cost of hardware allows more people to enter the field.and increases the amount of mediocre stuff but also increases the amount of excellent work produced.

That's not to say I don't agree with a lot of what you've said.

Simplicity and purity of idea maybe? I make Drum and Bass, and it seems that the whole genre has gone through a period in the last seven years whereby the opportunities afforded by sequencers and plugins have led to music which was often technically proficient, but uninspired, and more importantly, uninspiring.

Now, there's a resurgence of minimalism which I'm absolutely loving. When there aren't a thousand things going on in a tune, the choices you've made are laid bare for all to see. We had to go through some pretty ridiculous stuff to finally get here, though.

I completely agree with the analogy between 8 (and to some extent 16) bit video games, and the current generation. Limiting your scope makes it much easier to flesh out your ideas... it forces you to go for depth, because your breadth is more or less predetermined. Some of the best music humankind has ever seen was written for one person sitting at one musical instrument, capable of making a fixed range of sounds.

Each artist needs their best constraints.

As a fan, I prefer a good layered number of tracks that drop down to simple and ramp back up to complex melodies/harmonics. It's hard to find the perfect song, but I've listened to thousands of near misses ;)

Glad to hear things are leaning out, hope that doesn't always mean less tracks.

In the end, you have to make music you want to make... that you like, that pushes where you want to push ... and then if other people like it great. If you try to please the crowd, but that doesn't motivate you ....

Frank Zappa pops into mind as an example. Eric Satie another. They just did their thing. It's an important decision: If pop sounds are your thing ... which might be called 'musicality' ... it's a much easier road. But most ear candy is soon forgotten. And the 'deep' stuff takes time to find an audience.

Hundreds of thousands of people have access to the technology, so sounding modern but standing out from the crowd is really hard. Luckily, the tech has also provided the means to reach an audience you could never reach before. So whatever you do can find an audience.

I think that the standard when making electronic music has to be, does what I have created bear repetition, without any effects?

In other words, if I distill this down to the simple melody, harmony and rhythm that is present in my music, can it stand on its own?

You can always tell the difference between a musician and a technician.

I think we still see innovation in games, but what's happened is there are also more clones. So every year we get a bunch of first person shooters, that are more or less the same type of game but with different storylines, graphics, and environments. So this drowning by copycat games makes it seem as if innovative new games are not being produced as much anymore.

It has always been this way (at least as far as I can remember, I've had a PC since '86), you just don't remember the 1,000,000th space invader/pacman/tetris clone.

Sometimes clones work. I really enjoy some Super Mario World romhacks, for example, because they took a winning formula and did it well. Here's my favorite one:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/48/

(To get it working, you need an emulator and a SMW ROM, which I won't link to here.)

"""I'm not sure what you'd call the musical equivalent of playability, but I think more musicians should bear it in mind. :) """

still "playability", I think

Musicality

I once thought Prodigy used mod trackers (those in-game chip tunes), but I found out they just use loads of Roland equipment.

After years of using soft samplers and synths, I recently moved into a bigger house and set aside a whole room for my music studio. With that much space, I now have:

+2 Akai S950 samplers (with enough memory for about 16 drums)

+3 mixing desks (2 vintage, one newer - the Yamaha vintage makes everything sound great

+Already had an Oberheim Xpander and a Bit 1, and a Crumar Toccata organ

+2 outboard compressors, UC200 chorus pedal

+Laptop with 192khz soundcard to master and sequence MIDI

My basic tactic is to make the entire track sequenced - recording only vocals and the non-MIDI Crumar Toccata - and then record it straight from the desk. A hardware mixer mixes better than Cubase can mix.

So overall, the older equipment was harder to use, but to my ears, sounded more 'real' than computer instruments. But I'm not in any way saying a music setup is 'better', just different, and sometimes different is what you want.

Will forward these comments to my brother. He's a long time digital producer although I'd be hard pressed to get him to mix together ambient/electronic/d&b/whateverIlove.

Sounds like a pretty sick and expensive setup. Nice job putting it all together.

Actually, I bought the mixer after I couldn't split about 10 signals to the soundcard any more! I had splitters going into splitters and it was a mess.

Then the mixer I bought had FX inputs, so I bought the outboard FX units. Then I read about the S950 and bought 2 . They have 8 outputs which you can run through a mixing desk and EQ, adjust gain and volume, and even put an FX unit on a drum.

The great thing is all this equipment was bought on eBay in just a couple of months.

I put together a spreadsheet of the costs. The Akai's, mixers and effects units came to about £1000. The Xpander wasn't cheap, but I bought that in 2004. The organ was about £200 including postage.

But the point is, you can build a retro studio quite cheaply and experiment.

I'm impressed that you still use hardware samplers. It's pretty much the first thing that I would think of replacing with a computer (quasi unlimited sampling memory, unlimited storage, etc). I have a S2000 somewhere, gathering dust...

That was amazing to watch. I have often wondered how awesome it would be to see great hackers at work in a similar way. I've had the luck to watch one or two sit next to me and work (during school), and it's mind-blowing how fast they are, and how they go about fleshing out a quick skeleton into a full piece of work.

Now with software like Etherpad, I wonder if soon we'll have screencasts of the making of great code.

So much passion, focus and energy get's funneled into one life of the legends.

Humbling to watch epic artists at work. There's nothing in my life that has ever held a candle to the master level creators. It doesn't stop me from trying though.

http://terminalcast.com/

I am curious how he found the original songs whose samples are mixed into the song. I guess in an interview the authors told about it, but hard to believe that he recognized those pieces by ear.

In the sleeves of most CDs you can find a list of credits for every track, which include people that took part in the production, as well as other songs that were sampled in the track. There are also databases online which show what song samples what.

Thanks, now that you are saying I remember what a CD looked like :) Seriously, it was so long I had a CD in my hand I didnt't think about that.

I am curious how does this work business wise? Since there are quite a lot of samples from other artists/songs, who gets paid how and how much in order to release something like this to the market?

Rights-clearing in electronic music and hip hop is usually quite complicated. Taking a beat or riff from a song is fair game, as it could not in any way be claimed to serve as a replacement for the original work. Often though, big named folks like Kanye West or Daft Punk will clear their samples before releasing, just in case.

I believe the payment is a flat rate, through rights clearing houses and the artists' agents.

Do you have any more info on this perhaps? I know when I'm working on a TV show or basically anything that will get screen time I have to work out through sheets of paperwork where I list every single sound item in the video, including main background track(s), background noise tracks (imagine a distant bg music from a radio down the street) etc. I have to list Name of the track, artist that played it (since it doesn't have to be an original author - I guess they somehow settle that on tier 2 then), basically any music that is longer than 8 beats - but common dogma is to include those also, just in case. It's very tedious process and I hate it, since when I shoot some scene where I don't have a total control over environment I basically have to know which song is playing by whom from a few seconds byte. Sometimes I just don't use great footage because I couldn't identify the song playing in the bg.

As I understand (I have to check it) those sheets are then handled by legal dpt. in production company that sends that sheet to the authors union of sorts in whichever country this show is played in and they send the bill either to the TV house or production house, or sometimes both based on total songs played in that month or something like that. It's hell. It gets even more complicated when the product is to be standalone (as in a movie or show that gets sold around).

I also vaguely remember legal dpt. used/uses some sort of online database with all possible songs/authors from various distributors where they can pay and clear rights via them. I'm not sure if this still exists, if not - there's a great startup idea nudgenudge* for someone here.

That sounds like a system in SERIOUS need of hacking to improve usability.

You are correct. Moreover, from talking to people who work therein, I get the impression that broadcast production is full of such systems, with overengineered unhelpful software if any.

We are also trying to figure out licensing for this genre for Mugasha (http://mugasha.com). It has been a big PITA so far.

The flat rate is pretty high though, and discourages innovation.

I dunno about fair game, The Verve would probably disagree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony

Basically, they sampled the "orchestral riff" from Rolling Stones, and in the end got sued and were forced to pay all royalties for this song to the Rolling Stones, even though the lyrics and music was new.

There's quite a bit of information on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28music%29

Oh, I should have checked out wikipedia first. Thanks!

Probably hearing it, filtering it, and researching it. The mind is capable of amazing filtering.

Back when Prodigy did this in the late 1990's they must have used tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment... samplers, synths, sequencers, filters, etc...

Today, the entire thing can be done in a single piece of software.

Wow.

Even in the late 1990s they had powerful audio editing software. The first version of ProTools came out in 1991 and there were a ton of cheaper tools as well.

I'm not saying they didn't do this on thousands of dollars of equipment but in 1997 there's nothing you saw on this video that couldn't be done on a single piece of software (ok maybe two) even then. It wasn't the dark ages.

And get off my lawn.

You still couldn't chop audio nearly this easily, or move it around visually like you can in Ableton. Most of the manipulations were probably done in the sampler, so they all had to be done by ear, and sequenced out using MIDI. I think the big time-saver now is the "elastic" audio capability built into modern sequencers, allowing you to easily realign transients within the audio.

Yes you could, both Cubase and SoundForge we're ~$500 products that would allow you to do multitrack editing like this on a PC.

Very true. Between Rewire and Cubase you had almost a complete music studio as early as 1996.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCycle_%28software%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubase#Cubase_VST3.0_Macintosh

Actually he uses a lot of software. There's ableton + several vst plugins like ozone izotope, waves L2, waves GTR : it still costs thousands of dollars...

I have an Ableton driven studio with oodles of softsynths. I'd say the difference is a factor of 10 at the least even with higher end software. What you do end up spending on is some of the hardware you can't avoid (quality audio interfaces, reverb units, controllers).

The initial demo was all done with a Roland W30, and I suspect that most of the first album was just that but properly mastered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy#Beginnings_into_fun...

early prodigy is not what you think it is

This article goes into a bit of detail on some of the gear and a few pictures of the setups used by Liam Howlett, post 'Fat of the Land' at least.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Oct04/articles/prodigy.htm

Liam Howlett used Reason (among other things) to make Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. I'm not sure what was used for their latest work, Invaders Must Die, but it's likely similar software given their live setups for the last few years have been powered by several Macbook Pro's (along with other equipment).

Truly a master at his craft though. Here's a hacker who started making professional electronic music mostly the old way in the early 1990's, and has successfully transitioned into the digital age. If you've listened to Prodigy long enough, you end up coming across music they sampled in the most unlikely of places. It's like an endless easter egg hunt. I can't even begin to imagine how dynamic Liam's record library is.

BTW, if you've never seen them live before, you don't know what you're missing. Seen them three times already and they easily outshine NIN, Manson, and Rob Zombie in terms of live energy. The type of crowd they attract is energetic and intense. But bring a pair of earplugs if you don't want to go deaf. ;)

Edit: Check out Nekosite if you want to know more about the band: http://nekosite.co.uk/

Most of the names mentioned here are brand name, well known musicians. However, thousands of people use Pro Tools and Ableton to create amazing music.Problem is you do not know about them. Only the heavyweights get the big marketing.

As mentioned, the same can be said for the gaming industry, or any other industry. Technology has pushed the cost lower and created opportunity for the lowest common denominator.

The problem with "audio" in general is that it is taken for granted. MP3's on ipods sound terrible. CD's have replaced vinyl character. High end speakers have been replaced with Bose. Deflation in audio, like many other industries.

Using Pro Tool and/or Ableton is not easy and takes a lifetime to master.

As a career, like most others industries, the bids are going to lowest bidder with mediocre experience.

Audio is so important and often neglected.

Happy Holidays to All!

Damn kids get off my lawn! The problem with "audio" is all this recorded music stuff. Real music is played by musicians. Why do people think that a shiny little disc or (even worse) bits on a hard-drive could ever replace that.

Props for this link. These guys were true pioneers that pretty much started the whole 'rave scene' back in the 90's. I saw them live in Toronto once, fantastic show.

I'm by no means an expert on rave but you're definitely wrong about them starting the whole scene.

Actually, it's pretty fair to presume that they were pioneers of rave. True they weren't big at the same time as the Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, or Westbam, but they were releasing tracks as early as '91:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy

And unlike their predecessors, their production is far more in line with the rave sound and iconography that any other group of that era.

They were around from the beginning but they had a lot of contemporaries too. Like I said, I'm not an expert but rave culture arguably got going in 89 with the rising popularity of house and then techno (this still sounds fresh from 89 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6musPMSe24Q)

Around 90 and 91 it moved to a focus on more hardcore techno and breakbeat. Mr Kirk's Nightmare by 4Hero was around 1990, which sounds quite primitive now but quickly spawned records like those produced by NRG, Prodigy and G Double E. Prodigy were part of a much wider scene but had the talent and music to go mainstream.

Apologies to anyone if I've got this wrong. I was about 10 back then but I have plenty of friends who lived through it (and indeed were DJs back then!) so I've picked up a lot.

Here are some tracks from 91 and 92 that I can recall as being representative of the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCoCTkC0oL0&feature=fvw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRIW4ZHHCg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS2w6o2llHQ

No worries. I was actually producing my first underground events back in '90 in San Diego. Obviously I wasn't in the middle of the makers, but I was moderately aware of what was going on.

We didn't really have "techno" & "breakbeat" until '91, but there were hints of it. Meat Beat Manifesto were doing industrial breaks using the drum samples that came into popularity later on. I don't have time to go into history, but there's also the US techno influences that came into play in '90.

I can share one story: back in '89 hanging on in a tiny record shop in San Diego known for industrial, new beat, and dance music. They got in some domestic imports. We gave them a listen and thought "these are really great, but where are the lyrics?"

It would have been great to see those early events in San Diego. I'm very envious! One thing we did have back in the early 90s here in Manchester was a great radio station called Sunset (it quickly became a commercial mainstream station, alas). Some shows can be found here: http://durftal.com/music/bonus1/index.html

Great song, I have seen these guys live more than once. I never realized that it was mixed like this. Very interesting post. The mixer is a very talented guy indeed.

It could to without those people popping up all over the place. Other than that, awesome reconstruction of an awesome song.

"Those that love law or sausage shouldn't watch either being made"...but in this case, extremely fascinating.

But how much of this technology existed in 1997? How did Prodigy really make the track?

Mostly hardware rack samplers. I think Liam used (uses?) Akai S1100 or a similar model. You play in chunks of audio to them, trim the waveform to the part you need, optionally build a keyboard-split/layered patch with it, and then play it via MIDI. They also have some envelopes for pitch modulation and other stuff you can use.

You can do this with sounds you make yourself (The Prodigy frequently samples their own synthesizers) or to anything you play in.

The sequencing would have been done with a hardware sequencer (unlikely) or a PC tracker or MIDI sequencer (more likely.) Record the outputs onto tape for mixing at the studio.

Exactly my point. This stuff was way harder without all these nice comfy ProTools and ACID GUIs. The keyboards never had interfaces that were easy to use when doing things like trimming waveforms. Must have been hella tedious.

You can do a lot of it by ear on an Akai or the like...

Especially back when most CPUs were about 200MHz tops, drives were much smaller, and turning on a single reverb brought everything to a screaming halt. (Freezing trax was not an option.)

One of the better DAWs at the time was Opcode's Vision (still is, tho they went out of business back then)(Live didn't exist, Pro Tools didn't have MIDI worth mentioning) and the first decent plug-ins were just being released... nothing worked together and crashes were frequent.

Very tedious ... not to dis this production which is madly skilled. I'm still not convinced that Prodigy did all that in software.

Here's Herbie Hancock demonstrating a Fairlight CMI synth/sampler on Sesame Street in '84-ish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKoisNv1ftw&feature=relat...

Yeah, the Akai's were pretty powerful samplers back then. Depeche Mode did everything on E-mu Emulators. For the rest of us it was the Ensoniqs...

Think of it as sound "hacking". Before samplers all we had were tape loops and synths. Samplers were a ton of fun because suddenly you could play any sound, including people's voices. It was a revolutionary new approach in the late 80s & early 90s...

I'm an ooooold geri-raver...

I'm sure the algorithms for time stretching and the effects have been tweaked over the years, but the core principles of snipping wav files, sequencing on multiple tracks and adding parametrized effects are the same.

I'd love to see someone reconstruct some other tracks (like Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet", 1989) with readily available consumer software like Apple's GarageBand.

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