TilYouMakeIt Archives

How did the Abbey Road Studios’ recording engineers stream orchestral sessions before LISTENTO?

In this #TilYouMakeIt episode, Senior Recording Engineer, Andrew Dudman, explains the expensive, unorthodox method that was used.

In this example, it was a session for ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ taking place in Studio One where the engineers streamed over satellite to John Williams, George Lucas and the entire ‘Star Wars’ team based in LA while running lengthy cables to a broadcast truck in the studios’ car park.

“LISTENTO has revolutionized how we work on these remote projects.” – Andrew Dudman

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TRANSCRIPT

Cables running through the doors out to the, out to the car park, streaming over satellite to, to get to them

Before the rise of internet streaming and quick, simple, easy, easy methods to stream, uh, music on a certain Star Wars session.

That was just a day’s recording, so no one came over. Producers John Williams and George Lucas, everyone stayed in in America to make it work. We actually had an outside broadcast truck he’d pay through the nose.

For bandwidth and quality wasn’t great. Nowadays, obviously we don’t have to worry about getting trucks in or ISDN lines.

It’s so much easier these days using LISTENTO for the stream of the audio, whether it be stereo stems or five one, it literally has revolutionized how we work on these remote projects.
‘The first take you record could be the magic take. So you just need to have everything slick’ – Andrew Dudman.

In the latest #TilYouMakeIt episode Abbey Road Studios’ Senior Recording Engineer, Andrew Dudman speaks on the importance of precise planning ahead of a recording session and how the support of Abbey Road Studios’ team of assiduous engineers, recordists and runners enables big orchestral recordings to run like a well-oiled machine.

Many films are as famous for their soundtracks as they are for anything that happens on screen, and Andrew has been responsible for recording some of the most iconic and beloved scores in cinema, with credits including the Star Wars prequels, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hacksaw Ridge, Baby Driver and Gravity, to name just a few.

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TRANSCRIPT

The first take you record could be the magic take. So you just need to have everything slick.

Certain sessions, certain band recordings, you can kind of adjust as you go get the band in.

Everyone gets a feel of the vibe and then you kind of work out how you’re gonna do it. But when you’ve got a big orchestra, it needs to be organized.

That’s the joy of having the staff of this building where. You know, we’ve got six runners and nine assistants, and seven or eight engineers.

We’re very well organized, very well planned. When you come in with an empty studio, everyone has a detailed setup sheet, and we draw floor diagrams so you know where everything’s gonna be set out.

It would be chaos if you didn’t have a plan. Do you need to find out all the information in advance? Plan it all out. Get it ready.
‘I’ve been really blessed to work with a lot of great people, I wake up every morning and think about it’ – !LLMIND

#TilYouMakeIt is a collection of stories chronicling those moments and capturing wisdom from the game’s most esteemed producers, mixers and engineers.

A successful career in music doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, patience, and an unwavering sense of dedication to achieve your goals and reach the dizzying heights of your dreams.

In this episode of #TilYouMakeIt, the renowned producer, songwriter and educator !LLMIND shares how he has gotten to where he is.

With almost twenty years of constant grind under his belt, he has gone from working with underground artists in the early 2000s to some of the biggest names in the business, putting his stamp on iconic tracks and achieving Grammy recognition.

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TRANSCRIPT

I’ve been really blessed to work with a lot of great people. I, I wake up every morning and I think about it like, wow, like, is this real?

It was a long grind for me. You know, I’ve been doing this full-time for almost twenty years from this super underground.

From the super underground artists from like the 2000s, you know, your Little Brother and Boot Camp Clik and, and then eventually working with, you know, 50 Cent and G-Unit.

And then from there it just snowballed. At this point, I’ve been, you know, really blessed enough to work with a lot of people.

Two Grammys, ten Grammy nominations, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Drake, Travis Scott, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Khalid, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Moana.

It’s been pretty crazy so it doesn’t feel real a lot of the time.
“It took me so many years to get away from the high fidelity, crystal clean mixing mentality.” — Jesse Ray Ernster

The “less is more” approach has never been more appropriate than in our latest episode of #TilYouMakeIt with award-winning mixing engineer Jesse Ray Ernster (known for his work with Doja Cat, UMI, and Burna Boy).

To become a great mixing engineer, you want to reach the point of unconscious competence – where you’re no longer weighed down by precision but can instead take a light touch, concentrating on the creative vision you hear for the track.

Jesse’s mindset now is to “refine and optimize what they [the producer/artist] have built”, fulfilling their desire for the track.

This means opening up the client’s DAW session, keeping everything intact and working to understand what they want for the track.

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TRANSCRIPT

“I think that most producers, they don’t really want you to fuck up their song. They built the song a certain way for a reason. I just, I’m refining and optimising what they have built. Imposing less of my ego and my taste has been fulfilling more of the desires that they have been wanting.

It took me so many years to get away from the high fidelity crystal clean mixing you know, mentality. Because so many engineers have that it’s just like, Oh, I know I need to eat you it perfectly. There can’t be rubbing. There can’t be frequencies colliding with each other and oh my gosh, that would be a travesty.

No, the imperfections are, this is why they built it. So you know, I’ll get in there and optimise. But I have been just opening their Ableton session or the logic session FL and really just doing it that way, keeping everything intact, all of their plugins, definitely doing way less than before.

I think I’m getting booked a lot more now by respecting what they did.“
“All the big artists I’ve got to record with, came from working with him (Young Thug). So that’s how it really happened for me.” — Bainz

There’s no secret formula that will guarantee that you get your “big break” in music, but there are things you can be doing to increase your chances.

Networking and surrounding yourself with the right people is paramount, and multi-platinum recording and mix engineer Bainz (Gunna, Young Thug, YOUNG STONER LIFE RECORDS) knows this all too well.

In our latest #TilYouMakeIt episode, we hear how Bainz became a household name in the Atlanta rap scene by becoming the go-to mixer and engineer for Young Thug and his label Young Stoner Life Records.

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TRANSCRIPT

“I started working with thug. Thug is the Atlanta scene. All the big artists I’ve now gotten to record with through working with him. So that’s that’s really how it happened for me.

It’s actually crazy. I’d never been to Atlanta before working with Thug. I only started going there a few years into my time working with them.
And when I went there, everyone was so friendly and so welcoming, and everyone knew who I was just off of working with them.

And I was like, Oh, I like this. I’m kind of low-key famous here. I like this because like, there’s just this crazy like, community over there. And everyone is just so friendly and everyone works and everyone’s in the studio.

With people playing games, playing playstation, people recording in one room, you know, after a certain point, it just feels like you’re with family and you’re hanging out and you’re working towards the same collective goal.”
“They’re blown away that this technology exists.” — Matthew Genovese.

Audiomovers epitomizes what producer/songwriter Matthew Genovese is all about — “analog in the digital”, as it allows him to stream all his analog gear, digitally, to anywhere in the world.

Client and A&R feedback are received and incorporated in real-time on a call, meaning everyone involved in the record is on the same page, even if they are on different continents.

When Matthew first came across Audiomovers by word of mouth from fellow producers and mixing engineers, he quickly realized how much time it would save him.

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TRANSCRIPT

“It’s still at a point where some people don’t know about it. And when I bring it up, they’re like blown away that this technology exists.

Audiomovers is a definition of analogue and digital because I can stream all my analogue gear digitally to somebody overseas.

I feel like I heard about it through other producers and mixing engineers using it. And I just realised how much time it would save me.

It’s also widely used with A&R’s, Record Labels and Publishing companies because everybody can listen at the same time across the world.
So I can have the artist at home and the publisher at their office.

And we can all be listened to the same stream at the same time, all on a video call giving feedback to one another and we’re all on the same page.

Sometimes, a client will hear some sort of noise or something very specific.

There was like a digital pop in a song I was working on once and so I was able to just come in here and solo things until we’ve pinpointed exactly what it is and I can fix it.

It was just something that I would have never been able to do without Audiomovers.”
Leadership, confidence, understanding, and most importantly, musical talent, are all must-have qualities for a producer.

But what is the *most* important thing FOR a record producer to be able to do?

According to !llmind (Drake, Jay Z, Beyoncé), “fulfilling the vision for the artist as best as possible, while contributing my creative energy into the project where it’s appropriate”.

In this episode of #TilYouMakeIt, the renowned producer, songwriter, and educator explains that it’s his role is to help the artist realize their full potential, and in turn, create something that thousands of people will sing along to.

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Full Transcript:

“If I’m a producer and I’m producing one song, that might be, you know, one little portion of it. But when you’re overseeing an album you get to really paint with all the colors.

As a music producer, I’m mindful of my job. My job is fulfilling the vision for the artist as best as possible while contributing my creative energy into the project where it’s appropriate and to create something that we know could hopefully go crazy when you perform it.

Right like? Like if this is something you can sing or rap to 10,00, 20, 30, 50,000 people and everyone signs along to it. Then like, I helped do my job. That’s always going to be the goal for me.
Toronto-born, songwriter and producer Matt Genovese shares how his desire to build the skills necessary to better express himself as an artist eventually led him into the worlds of music production and mixing, and building his analog-only studio.

The path to a successful music career isn’t always a straight ‘A to B’ journey. In Matt’s case, he saw building up his skills as a necessity to making progress.

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TRANSCRIPT

“You can’t learn 10 or 20 years of recording experience overnight, but you can learn a lot about gear and engineering in six months or a year.

I originally started as an artist and I really started learning this side of it because I wanted to better express my ideas to producers. So I thought I should learn how to use logic or Pro Tools or Ableton.

I would over produce almost because the song just didn’t sound like I wanted to, the kick drum did wouldn’t hit hard enough, so I would add another kick drum and what was really happening was the mix wasn’t good. And I didn’t know how to mix.

So then I realised that and I was like ”I need to get better at mixing just so that I can make my own stuff sound better’. By the time I figured that out, I had gone down such a rabbit hole with my analog stuff, that for me to send somebody stems to mix my song that I did, it just never comes back the same way and I have such a fixed way of doing things that I just started mixing everything that I do.

Eventually, it just got to a point where I just didn’t need the producer or the mixing engineer, I could just do it myself. In my early 20s I moved away from being an artist and just became full time producer, mixer and songwriter.“
Alina Smith delves into her experiences of working with the biggest labels in k-pop, including singer-songwriter, record producer and record executive J.Y Park.

Initially drawn to k-pop music due to the expression of musicianship that it allows, songwriter and founder of LYRE MUSIC GROUP Alina Smith has built her rep working with some of the biggest names in the genre, including Itzy, Red Velvet and SUNMI.

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TRANSCRIPT

“I don’t find it challenging to deal with labels because they’re really good at communicating.

I like K-pop, I think it’s really musically interesting. You can just kind of show off musically. Dealing with labels in Korea, it’s not that difficult. They’re very fair to writers I find in most aspects. They communicate very well, if they want any tweaks or changes.

Obviously, the higher level, more advanced source promotion project you’re working on, there’s going to be more label people involved. I’ve had the head of a record label, J.Y Park involved in a song that I worked on.

They can be quite intense with changes and requests and I see it as a positive thing. If I see a bunch of change requests, I’m like ‘Oh, they want this and they like really want to try to make it work’.

As writers, we just have to match that energy and it works. It’s not it’s not that hard. You just have to have a good attitude about it.
Legendary producer, songwriter, and educator !llmind, tells the story of sending beats to Kanye and the moment he learned one had made the grade.

“It was one of those moments where preparation and opportunity meet”. At the time making five to ten beats a day, !llmind has a tireless work ethic. So, when the call from rapper Rhymefest that he was with Kanye and needed beats came through, !llmind was ready, sending dozens of beats for the session.

Full transcript:

“I think that was one of those moments where preparation and opportunity met.

In 2010, I created an album, and one of the rap features on that album was a rapper named Rhymefest. And then around 2011, he hit me up and he was like ‘Yo !llmind, do you have any beats? I’m with Kanye.’ And I was like ‘Absolutely!’.

Thankfully, I was prepared due to the fact that I’d just been making beats every day, you know, like five to 10 beats every single day, like non-stop, no sleep.

So I sent him like 30 or 40 beats, and then one of them ended up getting in the studio. Then he recorded it and you know, he texted me like ‘Yo, Raekwon just jumped on the song.’ And then he was like ‘Yo, Pusha T’s on the song. I was like ‘oh shit, this is actually happening’.

Diving into it too, I think what helped me in that moment was not overthinking. The beat that Kanye chose, I did not expect at all. Those melody and synth lines, I never knew were ‘Kanye sounding’.

From there, it was kind of like ‘okay, I’m headed to like the next phase of my career’.

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“All the big artists I’ve got to record with, came from working with him (Young Thug). So that’s how it really happened for me.” — Bainz

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“They’re blown away that this technology exists.” — Matthew Genovese.

Leadership, confidence, understanding, and most importantly, musical talent, are all must-have qualities for a producer.

But what is the *most* important thing FOR a record producer to be able to do?

Full Transcript:

“If I’m a producer and I’m producing one song, that might be, you know, one little portion of it. But when you’re overseeing an album you get to really paint with all the colors.

As a music producer, I’m mindful of my job. My job is fulfilling the vision for the artist as best as possible while contributing my creative energy into the project where it’s appropriate and to create something that we know could hopefully go crazy when you perform it.

Right like? Like if this is something you can sing or rap to 10,00, 20, 30, 50,000 people and everyone signs along to it. Then like, I helped do my job. That’s always going to be the goal for me.

Toronto-born, songwriter and producer Matt Genovese shares how his desire to build the skills necessary to better express himself as an artist eventually led him into the worlds of music production and mixing, and building his analog-only studio.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

Alina Smith delves into her experiences of working with the biggest labels in k-pop, including singer-songwriter, record producer and record executive J.Y Park.

Legendary producer, songwriter, and educator !llmind, tells the story of sending beats to Kanye and the moment he learned one had made the grade.

Full transcript:

But what is the most important thing FOR a record producer to be able to do?