Billie Eilish - Ocean Eyes (Official Session) Breakdown

what's up guys welcome back to my studio i'm manny from lost in a memory please excuse the mess in the back uh but today i wanted to make a video i got something really cool right here i got my hands on the actual studio session uh the actual file i should say for the session for ocean eyes by billy eilish produced by her brother producer phineus this is what it sounds like check this out so today i want to do something cool and i want to break down the production of the song um really see what techniques they use to record it and uh find some of the verses for example and take a look at all the instruments everything so yeah let's let's get right into it um so check this out so first you'll notice that well here's a fun fact so this is logic pro x uh this is the same software that vinnie has uses to to make his music uh it's not very expensive it's very similar to garageband for those who don't know so this song basically just goes to show that you can make this in your home studio in fact that's what they did they they made this in uh phineas bedroom i think or her bedroom one of their bedrooms right so you don't need fancy stuff in fact there's a lot of things right here in the recordings that i was noticing earlier that uh well it's it's not the most professional recording but it sounds freaking beautiful so let's let's let's get right into it the first thing is that you'll notice that it's it looks like it's pretty bare bones not a lot of buses right here not a lot of tracks apparently but the tracks are hiding right here under track stack so these are vocals but it's a vocal stack so there's actually five vocals hidden underneath and 12 more right here so let's actually get right into it um the first thing you'll notice let's let's jump right into the intro um so it sounds like this so instrumentally there's not not a lot going on the only thing playing is this dark pad here's what the settings look like but the vocals that's where it's interesting there's 12 vocals playing these vocal layers so they're basically harmonies what i notice is the first four vocals are the same tones but she just recorded it four times and if you look they're all panned differently so that's panned hard left hard right this one this one's middle left middle right and so on and so forth with the next ones so these ones are the same thing this is where the harmonies come in [Music] more harmonies down here so if you solo a few of them you get really interesting harmonies [Music] and right here um well uh the what's really interesting is there are different takes to these uh these vocal tracks so right here um well with this section they just pretty much copied and pasted it throughout the whole song so that vocal uh those vocal harmonies and textures played throughout the entire song non-stop so that's that's really cool uh let's jump into the first verse it's just these three uh tracks an afrin kick african kid a drum machine and a clap they're just processed really well so it's nothing too intricate and of course we got this keyboard playing in the background the vocal textures of course but let's let's focus on the verse vocal so here's the i think this is one of the most fascinating things about this song so if we look right here this is a comp but what that is it's basically a uh what is i don't even know what com stands for compilation composition whatever uh basically it's a bunch of takes right and you can tell okay so there's take three four um you can tell they deleted a bunch of takes so probably stuff that they didn't want us to hear but okay so what you see right here each of these is different vocals vocal recording so it took 38 takes for them to finally zero in on the sound that they wanted and of course you can mix and match so let's say the first part of the verse right here uh this is something i noticed while while listening to it earlier if you look what's highlighted in blue is what they actually used for the final uh comp right to for the final recording she doesn't use auto tune so basically uh if she doesn't get it right she'll record it until she does let's listen to take number three which i consider like a demo version if you look even the the waveforms look a lot smaller actually no they look about the same but listen to this how different this take is versus the final one can't stop staring at those ocean eyes and if you notice they don't use any noise gates uh which is very interesting because uh throughout like uh the song once the beat comes in you can hear the beat bleeding out so bleeding from the headphones onto the microphone so it means that they didn't use very good headphones just saying that you don't need fancy stuff to make something it's an alchemy bass it's it's a really cool sound and i think i think i'm gonna borrow that one okay so let's break down the vocals right here um there is five vocal tracks um what's cool about this is that the first three vocals are actually singing the same thing this is the lead which is the most processed track right here on the chorus is billy eilish seeing that same part just uh panning it to the left and the right so it gives you that chorus effect and here's the harmonies same thing one left one right [Music] so that's really pretty i i really like that that note that she hits [Music] well i was probably out of key trying to sing along but yeah really really really she has a really pretty voice um you can tell right here that they come a few takes so let's listen to take number two and see how different that sounds i'm scared so not too much of a difference so you can tell they had that nailed since uh yeah they didn't need a lot of takes for that one the vocal textures of course they they still play right there um and then uh instrumentally um it's it's very interesting it's still very bare bones uh less than ten instruments right here the dark pad plays throughout the whole song then there's a piano underneath that it's really quiet then we get these nice textures and underneath that if you listen on the left speaker or headphone you hear this uh string synth right here you hear more traditional synthesizer moonlight arc on the right side of course you got your bass line which is complemented very well by those drums or the other way around okay verse two let's get into the vocal processing this is where it gets really interesting so uh verse two [Music] can you notice the sounds bleeding in the background so that's where a good pair of headphones can prevent that but they mix it so well that you can't hear that so it looks like they use take 11. do you hear that so that comp was very harsh there's a clip there's a click so um you can't hear in the final mix so that's cool but check this out this is where billy eilish messed up this uh note which is fine you know she doesn't sound bad but they use this note from take 8 and combine it with take 11. so here's how it sounds uh take 11. excuse me so she was a little bit out of tune right there out of key so they used take 11. let's hear what that verse sounded like take two on in the early take so let's comp that in i've been walking through a world gone blind can't stop thinking of your diamond mind so i guess she was struggling to get that note because right here she also was a little bit out of key so they had to comp that diamond mind it is a hard note because it is very low um that's a hard note to hit but let's get into the processing so over here on the left side where i'm hovering my mouse uh that's where you see the the vocal processing right here so i'm gonna play this track with no processing at all and you're gonna notice a huge difference check this out i've been walking through a world gone that's a raw track the first plugin that they used is that channel eq did you notice that difference without careful creature made so they boosted the lows and the highs to give it more body more clarity right here then um add a compressor so check this out that compresses the dynamics makes it louder makes the uh quiet parts louder and the louder parts just puts a ceiling on them and here's the secret billy eilish uh signature thing so uh a space designer which is a reverb uh turn that on and here's what it sounds like careful creation that's a secret sauce but check this out there's a delay right here so a delay is basically an echo so i'm just only gonna play with the echo you really need headphones to listen to that basically there's a delay right here quarter notes on the left eight notes on the right so it gives it a a space feeling i guess then there's a console eq and another compressor a studio vca which is crazy he threw two compressors on the on the same track and he's busting this out a bus is basically its own track that you can basically copy the sound from basically send the sound to that other track he's sending the sounds to bus five and six which in this case are other space designers but they're really quiet in the mix you'll never hear don't stop thinking [Music] and did you hear that scary sound so it's uh it's this verse harmony which it uh it's actually not a harmony so what they did right here is uh check this out so i'm gonna i'm gonna do what they did so um i'm gonna erase this uh so basically he selected the the verse vocal copied it over to this new track and then added a pitch shifter down a whole uh 12 semitones which is a whole octave so basically without that plug-in this is what it sounds like [Music] with it it sounds like this so it changes the pitch here's what it would sound like with uh five semitones twelve so it's a nice little texture a little bit random but it fits so i'm gonna go back over here so did you notice how the reverb gets louder so this is automation so this uh right here with the wet output is basically this on the space designer you got your dry which is your regular signal without any processing and then your wet signal which is processed with um you know with whatever process you're adding on in this case a reverb if i go back here do you notice how this slider right here goes up and down so it gives it a nice little transition check this out [Music] it makes that reverb louder and if you listen they kept recording so that's really really weird um i would have cut that out you know so i would have cut right there [Music] see how clean that sounds but they kept it in so that's that's very interesting um so let's go back to the second chorus um there's something interesting i found earlier okay so check this out on this beat we got this fizzy beat if you're wearing headphones you'll notice that this swirls around left and right what this actually is it's actually a high hat i think it's a hi-hat let me uh go back to it right here so this is what that sounds like without any processing right there it's a hi-hat so he threw on a phase distortion and then an auto filter and then another auto filter on top of that a panning band pass so this is what makes it sound like it's going left right left right so this is a nice little texture now listen to this vocal so these are ad-libs and you can tell there's a lot of them 45 of them actually um let's listen to some of these this is where it gets pretty interesting i'll play one of these [Music] so right there she does kind of like a harmony take 41. you can tell they experimented a lot with that let's let's see what take eight sounds like right there let's see 10. a little bit out of key right there but you know the you you got to record record record and eventually you end up with that one take that you like and that fits the song so it's really cool so let's go back to how it was so take 41 of course all right so that's a nice little uh extra vocal heavily processed [Music] all right so this is the coolest thing um and well the reason why i already know what's going on is i tried to record this video earlier it didn't quite work out so this is like my third time recording it um but check this out so what i noticed right here have you noticed all the recordings are mono right so they only have one waveform this one has two meaning that it's uh it's it's a stereo track um and of course uh one side is different and one one is different from the other so basically check this out let's play that ghostly vocals this is the coolest thing in the whole [Music] track so let's remove this uh it has a space designer which is a reverb channel eq and another delay let's remove it and hear what it sounds [Music] like [Music] so what that is um is it's the chorus backwards so let's actually uh bounce it without the extra delays and uh reverbs that they added and then we're gonna go ahead and reverse that all right and here's what we get [Music] so it's the chorus just reversed and the reason why it looks different on one side of the uh of the channel and one channel looks different than the other it's because of that delay that i mentioned earlier so if we go back to the actual chorus right here we get that delay and on the left side it's at a quarter and on the right side it's eights so they basically turn these up to 38 somewhere around that range and if you're listening on headphones check this out if you're listening on headphones you'll notice that the right and left channels sound different so they basically did that and then bounced it with the delays and then reversed it as a stereo track we got more ad-libs right here [Music] let's hear the first take of that [Music] so it was a little bit more um [Music] so you can tell it's very um early in the stage of of arranging this part she was just humming [Music] right here she's hitting us with the dead it is [Music] see that's really cool let's hear this this one [Music] and of course the final one and there are no takes after this one so you can tell as soon as she hit that one they were like yo yo that's it we gotta keep that one so that's that's really cool something funny about take number 13 right here that i noticed earlier check this out uh so this is what it sounds like [Music] check out take number thirteen i can't believe i found that so that's that's that's cute um i guess they were recording and they must have cracked up so that means they were having fun while making this let's see this one she must have missed her q on that one [Music] yeah so there's a lot of these takes right here why can't i comp that okay there you go oh um what i this is really cool okay so this part where she says no fair right so all the other takes um they're more straightforward it's more like i think that's hard to do where you can go like no no i i can't do that for for but uh okay so let's see what's left here you really know how to make it goes back to the same way that it started with just oh actually instead of the dark pad it's the piano playing i'm scared notice that automation right there so that yellow line represents volume oh my bad i left in that that take what she cracks on [Music] all right so that was pretty much it uh as far as vocals go so let's get into the production so if you want to stick around for the for the rest of this video i'm going to be talking about production and how um how they mixed produced which i kind of hit on hit those points a little bit uh while we were going through these uh individual tracks but if we look right here at the mixing what's really interesting and for those uh producing at home um well this is this is an easy way to master pretty much so right here all this audio all this audio all the tracks everything they funnel to to the stereo output right down here which is uh right here if we open up our mixer it's the very last track uh right here so the stereo output is basically the oh yeah it's it's a stereo output it's it's it's what your track has to hit before it hits your speakers so right here not a lot going on just three plug-ins but they make the whole difference so it's a compressor uh let's see a vintage vca compressor and a a tube eq which is very interesting i've never used that so i'm gonna start using it from now on playing around with it and an adaptive limiter to keep everything from peaking so if we turn off all of those uh this is what the chorus you can't have that the adaptive limiter keeps that from happening so it gives it a nice uh sound usually uh my output tracks look something like this if we go to let's see lost in memory outputs here's the output for my song song of yesterday okay so that's what it looks like let's see let's see what oceanize sounds a multi-presser a channel eq to give it a little bit more body and the adapt my adaptive limiter is turned up a little bit higher than phineas's so it does sound different huh go back to the original there we go so uh let's see and as far as buses which is funny i was expecting a a ton of buses there's only five but the weird part is and i cannot figure out why they're all reverbs they're all reverb buses so if you play let's say we want to play this this is a small but a reverb for the clap but it's so low it's pointless then there's this one this one i guess it's drums and synths i don't know what this one is so this is for the vocals but the thing is each of the vocal tracks on each of the tracks has its own space designer so i mean the most efficient thing you can do right here as opposed to what was done is you can throw your reverb onto its own separate bus like this and then just bust out um you know send the tracks to that bus so you only need one reverb plug-in i'm guessing the reason why it was done the way it was done is uh they just made a track and copied it and pasted throughout because a lot of these settings look very similar just a little bit modified and so that you so that he could have uh done this this uh automation tale [Music] so it makes sense the way it was done um so let's uh yeah so that's that's pretty much it not a lot of buses just that um everything else let's see what is this reverb another reverb base a bus what the hell is that there's nothing going into this there's not a lot left to look at but yeah we pretty much dissected everything about this i mean if you really want to go in debt uh in in-depth uh you can look into the settings use for example the this base it's not just alchemy this is uh this is what's interesting obviously he threw a channel eq to make it bassier but then threw it through a 2bq and a compressor to make it even louder so that's really cool that's pretty much it my closing thoughts on this project um you know this is this was really cool to look at it shows that sometimes less is more not not nothing too overly complicated going on in this project it's a beautiful song the the performances are are freaking pretty much flawless you know they're they're top grade performances so if you want to uh create stuff like this uh you know you don't you don't really need any expensive stuff uh so that's it guys well thank you so much for joining me on this video breaking down billy eilish's ocean eyes um i want to do more of these right here i can do tutorials i mean i i mess with logic all the time when i'm making my own music so we can even take a look at those but in the meantime that's it you guys if you have any questions about the project anything else any questions about making music on logic let me know leave a comment down in the comment section down below check out some of my original music tracks i just released a music video a couple of months ago called took it for granted and i got a new song uh coming out hopefully this month if not next month i'm gonna actually record some vocals right now so thank you guys so much for joining me have a great rest of your day slash night manny from lost in memory peace

Channel: Emmanuel Morales

Views: 852,863

Keywords: Billieeilish, Finneas, ocean eyes, logicprox, tutorial, session, breakdown, behindthescenes, behindthelyrics, studiosession, musicproduction, logictutorial, howtosoundlikebillieeilish, behindthemusic, plugins, samples, backing track, multitrack, acapella, vocaltracks

Id: QD2Zad7i1KM

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020