How To Produce #1 HIT "Espresso" by Sabrina Carpenter

today we're going to remake espresso by Sabrina Carpenter and it's going to sound like [Music] this all right guys my name is bad habit today we're going to break down and remake espresso by Sabrina Carpenter my favorite song of 2024 so far and I knew it was going to be a hit on April 18th I posted this story right here I was feeling it inside for some reason I knew this song was going to be a hit but the question is why what's making this song so special and even though the production sounds simple I can assure you it's not the song has been produced by Julian bunetta an amazing producer amazing songwriter it did all of the major stuff from One Direction and in this one we have so many hidden layers so many little techniques that Julian used to make the song Stand Out and today we're going to go through all of them so you can use them to in your own production so you can upgrade them from average to Pro so I want to start from the drums because the song has a very nice Groove that consists basically of drums guitars and bass but to get that Groove I want to play guitars and bass when I already have good sounding drums so we're going to have to make some disco drums this song kind of reminds me a little bit of DOA cats kiss me more say so that kind of sound so I want to start from these Oliver packs and see if we can find some Loops that maybe we can use or maybe we can just chop up and use some samples from them this is cool but I need something simple like e notes this is very cool I like the snare of this one but especially the kick so if you've been following the channel you probably know already that I like to use this filter inside the simpler just to you know apply some drive that's a little bit too intense now something like that and I'm pretty happy with this kick the only thing is that it doesn't have a lot of low end so I might add one plugin that I really like to use on kicks which is the SSL Channel strip and I'm not going to use the uad one this time I'm going to use this one just to show you like another great alternative a little bit of compression which is probably going to reduce the low end of the kick even more don't worry because we're going to make up for it with this yeah there we go we can move on to the snare the snare is probably going to be a little bit tougher it sounds to me like it's a layer of multiple things I can definitely hear a little bit of clap not only like a solid snare but the note of the snare is very very well defined there are some very cool sounds in here but I might want to layer it myself you know most of these sounds that you're going to find in in the Oliver packs are already layers of like multiple snares and claps this time I might want to do it myself but none of these have like a solid note I need like something like that what about this one you can definitely hear that note like that that's the note yeah I found this one okay want to make this one a little bit more like this so similar shape short tight I want to give this Loop a little bit of real feeling and I like having um some samples taken from Loops like these oh yeah without it wow this clap is amazing let me see if we can find like a clap that sounds a little bit more real this is pretty cool this could be it something like that maybe doesn't really make a big difference to be honest I was expecting something different the first one of this Loop is very nice oh yeah okay so I adjusted all the Fades and I layered them in a way that I like how they're flamming okay and so now they sound like this yeah the only thing missing now with this snare is a little bit of tail so I think I'm going to add a very small Reverb that's nice but I'm wondering maybe a gator Reverb could really do the job here uh to make it stand out a little bit more have a little bit more of that 80s feeling on the snare not Phil cin not that much but so without it with it wow I like it a little bit more pre LA on the longer Reverb so it doesn't start playing right away but we have like the snare which sounds a little bit drier and then after like 30 40 milliseconds the longer Reverb kicks in I think I like this wow okay so these are the two main elements of our drums and I'm super happy about how they're sounding they sound thiso but they also sound modern enough to like really have the punch that we need in nowadays music One thing I want to do is for this one the first that we picked I want to enhance the attack a little bit more not much like 12% 133% now we're also going to reduce the sustain a little bit to make it really tight I'm going to go a little bit stronger here okay cool and one more thing I want to do on this one is enhance that note 2db something like that so this is without it this is with it and I did something very similar on this layer right here by enhancing this area and I also tained a little bit the high end I shaped this layer as well I just use you know a different transient shaper this is the one that you always see me use but this time I felt like using this one nothing special just increase the attack decrease the sustain there's actually a substantial difference in this layer this is before this is after I wanted to focus a little bit more on that initial part of the sample not much on the tail okay so this was the easy part now we got to make sure that the groove is on point and to make sure the groove is on point we really got to pay attention to how we move these hats so the hats to me sound mostly like acoustic hats we can definitely find some cool acoustic samples here and maybe play them in to make sure we have the right feeling I feel like the groove is an essential part of this song it really makes it move with that Baseline the guitar Rift and the drums to me these hats sounds pretty soft like they've been played with brushes I have these vol there's a vintage drum machines look at this like there's so many high hats Jazz we have folk we have brush that's what I was looking for okay so I picked the ones that I was actually showing you I have this one this one this is a little bit more open I'm not sure I'm going to use this one but definitely a combination of these three the pattern that we need here is very very simple is like eight notes something like that yeah so I'm going to have to adjust the timing of these but what I did is basically I used this one the very short one to have this simple eight notes pattern and then I added this one just on the upbeat which now I have to like kind of quantize I don't want to quantize it perfectly but I need to make sure they sound well together and then I use this one which is a little bit more open compared to this one and and I put it only on the fourth so I put it on the kick and the snare so what happens is [Music] this so you have that eighth note feeling but like I'm doing now with my mouth every quarter you have the high hat a little bit more open something like that okay so I did some adjustments to the velocities and also to the timing as you can see it's not perfect like at all but as long as it sounds good to my ears and the groove is there I'm happy with it and this sounds good to me like they don't sound late they don't sound early which is the most important thing for me okay so this is sounding really cool the groove is there like I really love the sound selection but anytime that I make my own drums from scratch like I just did now I also like to add one or two additional Loops if they're live Loops even better because they give that live feeling the live feeling that I'm already trying to give to these drums that I made for example with the velocities with the timing of these samples not being exactly on the grid well I want to enhance that feeling and so that's when I introduced Loops not from the very beginning now at this stage to just you know enhance the feeling that I already have I have a very interesting folder right here that i' like to take from you know okay so these are the four Loops that I selected if I play them together they sound like this it's basically like a full loop and that's not what I want I want to keep the feeling of these Loops but just as a support one thing that I like to do sometimes to experiment with these Loops is add this very cool free plugin just make sure to check the video I made about my top five plugins in 2024 because I included this one I use it all the time this is free and it's very cool to like shape the Sounds in a way that's a little bit different than just you know pitching up and down I want to clean CLE up a little bit the top end but I don't want to EQ it for now I just want to shape the sound in a different way and one thing I want to do is also make sure that these transients are not as loud I can do it with LFO tool doing something like that for this one a little bit more work but basically the same thing we did for the first one and then I used this plugin this WOW control I found a pretty cool preset called grungy this makes it I don't know what round did now they sound like this and they're very very cool addition to what we had already this you know gives more life to the drums that we had in the beginning without it the groove was already pretty cool this brings it to like another level okay so I'm very very happy about the drums that we have now I'm ready to move on to the base no we're not done with the drums I know but like this is the bulk of the drums this is what we need to move on to the Bas and the base is probably one of my favorite sounds of the song because you cannot really tell what it is like is it a real base electric Bas a synth base what is it is it a layer a combination of all of these possibly yes and that's why it's probably my favorite sound of the song actually not my favorite sound of the song is that super cool lead you know what I'm talking about right the one that goes that's an insane sound the first time I heard the song I was like what is this sound we're going to remake that later in the video so stay tuned for that before the base it kind of reminds me like I said in the beginning of kiss me more and I know for a fact that in that song they use the sample of a real base so basically they found a loop like this one of an electric base a real base and then they sampled a single note from this Loop and they made the Baseline out of that all of these notes repeated we can just sample one of these something like that maybe this one is better though yeah okay we probably need to make it a little bit dirty the capitator is always the plug-in that I'd like to use first when I'm when I need a little bit of gradness on top of the base yeah and to stay in this world of real base but sampled I can go for some plugins like corg Triton uh the M1 oh yeah oh wow you know you have that feeling of a real base but if you listen carefully you know it's not real it's not played live found this one it's not in the right octave but this sound is quite interesting because it kind of reminds me of an upright base I think I'm going to keep this and then we're going to create a new track and find the subbase this sound right here I've used it before as a subbase and I like it because it's not a pure sine wave it has some more like harmonics low pass it a little bit we might just need to add a little bit of like saturation Distortion and maybe compression to this group because you know when I put a lot of layers together I like to have them compressed together so they sound like one thing I'm going to start with some uh Distortion saturation we use the cap already let's go for uh the other sound toys uh Dev lock if you just keep it very low in the mix it adds some texture to the sound some like grittin I've had it for years but I've never used it really because I didn't know how to use it now I'm using it very lightly whenever I want to add some greediness to the sound let me show you how so let's decrease the [Music] mix that's what I want but not as much so maybe no three without it wow but now I want to make it a little bit darker with this [Music] knob all right maybe 10 very controlled Distortion that's what I like I love this oh wow I just want to play those guitars so bad now and I'm almost ready to play those guitars but first let me make an actual espresso let's go make some actual [Music] coffee all right ah there we go you can smell it from the camera wow this is good I'm ready now okay so we're going to start from the main guitar Rift the Riff that you hear throughout the whole song the thing that actually you remember [Music] if you try to sing the melody on top of these chords that I just played on the guitar doesn't make a lot of sense and probably you're wondering okay why this is one of the most interesting techniques that Julian bonetta used while producing this song The Guitar does something the keys are doing something else and then there are more guitars the other guitars are playing different voicings so the harmony of the song is made of multiple instruments doing different things but complimenting each other in a very interesting way and that's a very cool Tech technique that you can use to in your own Productions first of all let's try to get a good take off this ah come on the timing let's go okay so I recorded a bunch of takes as you can see I did 19 and then I selected the best parts and I put together a pretty good comp I think I wish I could show you the full process how I got to this result but you know there's no time to do this in this YouTube video but if you're interested in my full process like no gatekeeping at all make sure to check my master class link down in the description it's over 10 hours long like you can see my full process from start to finish but for now this is the final result this is what I got [Music] now we're starting to actually hear the song very cool before I process these guitars uh to make them sound better I actually want to record a couple more layers but these guitars are going to be a little bit different because instead of a riff this time we're going to strum so I can have a very cool combination of chords here I can for example have one track playing this okay and then I can have for example another one playing [Applause] this you know these are all different voicings so when we put them together it's going to sound amazing and there's also one more guitar layer that goes like [Music] this okay so let me show you what I did because I think this is very cool the main thing about these guitars was just uh finding a good balance between them and finding different sounds uh for each layer I created two groups one which I kept cleaner in terms of like sound and one that instead I treated a little bit differently adding a shimmer two layers one uh left and one right these are doing the exact same thing and then I have the little thing that I showed you before that little Melody and then on the group I just put a little bit of LFO tool to like you know add some side chain but this is the interesting part the Shimmer which creates this effect you know here how like the the pad is coming out of these guitars so basically this is enriching the chords so nicely for the other layer it's a little bit simpler instead I just chose different sounds and did different things with the voicings and then I have another one penned slightly to the right because this was pan slightly to the left darker a little bit more like distorted if I just play you these two groups together basically you have the harmony of the [Music] song [Music] yeah and let's add the other [Music] guitar the sound of the Riff is not quite there control the Peaks a little one thing I'm going to add that is soothe this is a LIF saer with guitars I just want a little bit of Reverb I think I'm going to put it uh before soothe in parallel and I also want some delay some surgical EQ here without it it was sounding like this and now it has more body because I enhanced all of these frequencies and also I wanted to make sure that the top note was the one that I was hearing better so that's the reason for this crazy EQ right here and for this one right here and actually remove a little bit of this so we talked about the guitars playing these different voicing to like make the chords richer but the same thing is also happening with the keys one thing that I can definitely hear is like a CP70 that kind of electric piano to my ears this is what they're playing like an a minor okay and then basically this chord uh which would be GB d [Music] e just not sure of this preset this is more like it okay this is the classic CP70 sound you know oh yeah very cool and to support this piano I think they also added a little synth something that could be I don't know like a Juno a Jupiter let's go for the Jupiter just for once I like this it's kind of wobbling you know it's kind of so much better so this is what the piano is doing in the hook these are the voicings for the hook we don't have the piano in the verse it's coming back in the pre but it's doing something slightly different that we're going to see in a second but before moving on to that I want to finish the hook we need those bells that are playing the main Melody this sound could work if we play it in two octaves at the same [Music] time let's go I like it and maybe um a little bit of chors okay so this is basically it for the hook we have the keys we have the guitars we have drums we have the bass and when we go into the verse most of these things simplify a little bit so we can just take all of this duplicate it and going into the verse we have the same same drums the same Bas and uh the guitar now is a little bit filtered you know to make room for the vocals but then going into the pre we have those strumming guitars that are coming back and this starts to build you know the vibe for the chorus and one thing that's changing a little bit is this piano in the pre it's coming back plain slightly different voicings again [Music] yeah okay guys I just noticed the layer that I've never noticed before like I listened to this song like a thousand times to really you know hear everything but I missed this one thing I think there's some sort of like keys that are playing in the verse going through some plugins that make it glitch like like bad reception you know when you're like on hold because you're calling the DMV or something like that and they put the music you know but you know there's bad reception that's what what I'm hearing okay I found this sound which could be a good starting points so from this if I'm thinking of something glitching two plugins come to mind the first one is definitely uh lossy and the other one is this one this one right here Loi it's already making it sound Loi and maybe with lossi we can really bring it to the next level let me see Bad cell connection okay maybe this one yeah this one this is the one I'm looking for I also want some microshift to make the stereo bigger and now we're going to filter it yeah okay guys we're almost there but we're missing the coolest sound of the whole song which is that lead sound we're going to do that in a second but first of all I got to reorganize this session because this is a mess I I really don't know what's happening here okay I reorganized the session and while doing that I also added a couple of layers that I want to show you real quick in the hook we also needed a Shaker to define a little bit better some of the accents so what I did was simply taken a couple of Shaker Loops you can see I chopped them up and I made sure that the accents were in the right spots youve probably noticed that there's also a crash pretty simple nothing crazy a little percussion like this is a wood block and then there's a t fi they use the transition from one section to another I just found a cool Tom sample put it in a sampler so I could you know tune it uh what else I just added a couple of open eye hat this is a very simple 808 hat and here like a more acoustic hat but now that we have the full arrangement of the song we can add a couple of things that are missing I want to add a little base that only appears in the beginning of verse two going into the pre it's just a different Baseline and it's a different sound to me it sounds like a synth base [Music] yeah I needed some Distortion and so I used this very cool plugin some very short chorus and this plug in the dbx 160 to add a little bit of transient so now oh wow we're ready we're ready for that we're ready for the lead sound [Music] and this lead sounds like a profit to me probably so possibly Repro again but I don't know I don't want to go for Repro I think this time I'm going to try to find a similar sound I don't know in the mini moo this is already pretty close and it's the first sound I don't want the delay here but maybe the CH oh wow I love this oh my God this sound is insane I need to add some like Distortion to this oh wow more more more Distortion whoa amazing it's almost perfect but there's one crucial part of this sound that we need to make right there's a little bit of vibr a little bit of modulation especially on the last note and we don't have any at the moment we need to add it with the modulation wheel and the keyboard on the last note I'm going to really boost it up so it's going to sound something like that [Music] yeah the final thing that I always like to keep for the end is the drum processing and as always I start from this one dial it in little by little this is pretty intense but let me dial it back a little left Drive [Music] and lately I've been using this more more I don't want to do anything crazy and to finish just a little bit of eqing I just want to boost a little bit the very low and like the kick mostly the kick and there we have it there we have it all right guys we got to the end of another amazing remake this is my favorite song of 2024 and I think it came out insane we were able to really break it down in every single detail I love this one and I hope you enjoyed it too I hope it was helpful and that you learned something so a lot of you guys are asking me to make these remakes downloadable drop the stems drop the samples and for now I can just let you know that something is coming so if you haven't subscribed already make sure to subscribe right now and this way you're not going to miss it when it's time if you have any questions let me know in the comments if you have any song requests for the future let me know in the comments make sure to drop a like on the video and I'll see you on the next one

Channel: badhabit

Views: 92,938

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Id: bGZWWifGQew

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024