We've got an obsession with the Phil Collins
gated toms. That's in "Rockabye," that ridiculous fill. But I can’t show you the original sample
because I’ll get sued. Is it Phil Collins? No, it’s much worse. I've had had this instrumental. It was basically just a beat and that pattern. And then writing the track with Steve Mac
and Amar Malik. Steve kind of took that pattern and embellished
it. And he had it on like a pizzicato setting
on the mellotron. There was a version of this song, slight melancholy
in melodies and also maybe lyrical themes. But with a quite uplifting rhythm track. Then we played that to Ina Wroldsen. She got into the emotional head space of a
mom when she was writing the lyrics. Then I feel like
when Sean Paul got involved. He kind of made it more kind of direct. And then we orchestrated it for string quartet
later on. So this is the cello. So first you get these nice
plucks. And then you've got this ... We actually muted
the viola there. I think it was too much. Violin one, controversial line to be playing. And violin two is like a lower harmony. But it's not quite epic enough to kind of
compete with Sean Paul so we had to use some nice reverb, which is this valhalla reverb,
which I love. You can choose the color of it, like 70's,
80's, or now. But we go with the 70's and it sounds like
that. And
just makes it a lot more grand and kind of appropriate for Sean Paul to shout-out
all the single moms. I've got this like set-up with Push, which
is how we play it live. This is really cheating, but so you just get
one note there. And then we can add a chord plug-in, which
adds a minor third on top of every note. So you can add a scale plug-in, which is like
forces any MIDI to go in to stuck in A minor. So, you're hearing Operator there, which is
just like an FM synth in Ableton. In "Rockabye" it's layered up with like a Polysix
to do those [plays music] that main kind of... Which is like a VST version of the Korg Polysix
made by Korg. It's pretty much like the default sound if
you open up one of these. It's just like very lazy. Same as Operator. It's just like a sine wave. But just take the cutoff on the filter down
a little bit to get that [plays music] nice kind of soft sound to make sure it's on Polyphonic
mode. So yeah so that is the kind of main thing. And then there's this riff that comes in in
the chorus, which is like a counter melody to, "Rockabye baby." With a little bit of LFO to modulate the pitch
at the end. Just a tiny bit so you get that kind of [plays
music]. You hear it kind of wobbles. We made it a bit more interesting actually
with this crystallizer plug-in from Sound Toys, which is really nice. It's like a reverse delay. And you get like
these reverse echoes. Post chorus. This is what I think gives it like an Ace
of Base feel. There was a big debate whether or not to do
this because it kind of felt like it was pushing it maybe down a "Cod Reggae" vibe which we were
a bit nervous about. But when we heard it in there it just felt
really right. That kind of offbeat So we tracked Anne-Marie in Club Ralph. The
main studio belongs to Mark Ralph who's an amazing producer and mix engineer. It's Mark's vocal chain. It would have been a neve pre-amp. Probably into LA2, like teletronics, compressor
just to keep the level. And then he likes to ... He'll probably get
annoyed with me for showing you this, but he uses Smack!, this compressor on everything,
which destroys vocals if you want. But if you just apply it lightly, it's really
good. So there's a tom. It’s just a sampled tom put in Ableton and
just pitched down. On an automation. And then you gate it. You might want to gate before the compression,
as well, actually. There you go, that's better. Oh yeah, shit, you've got to put the reverb
before the gate. I’m being an idiot. The Seagulls, did you notice The Seagulls
in "Rockabye" in verse one? So, that's seagulls going into shimmer just
to give it this oceanic kind of harbor feel. So that's Grace cello with the harmony coming
in and that's got like Smack!, a bit of our vintage going into some H-delay, analog mode
off, and then a nice harmony. So it’s quite, it’s taller than it is
wide. So that’s a good sign. So we got a few things in on our next album
that were supposed to be from the first that kind of where we are addressing now.
such a weird but amazing song. I really love Clean Bandit
alright if this is the video content Genius is thinking about, I am all for it!!
I would love to see something like this for Stay, by Zedd. Would he include plagiarizing Poltergeist, by Banks?
Yessss got so excited seeing this in my subscription box. I'm so fascinating by music production and always so happy when an artist lets us into their process even a little bit.
lmao this made me like the song
Relistened just for the seagulls