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We’re uncovering the recording and mix tips that rarely leave the studio in our newest series, #101.

Kickstarting the series, we speak to three-time Grammy nominee Teezio about the high-speed tracking techniques he uses when tracking vocals for Chris Brown.

Arming multiple channels to never miss a moment of inspiration, Teezio explains the process he uses to guarantee Chris’ creative flow is never hindered.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“Hey, I’m Teezio and you’re in my studio in Los Angeles, California. Today we’re going to be going over some recording techniques that I use with Chris Brown. Let’s dive in.

We’re in the room, we’re vibing and he’s coming up with lines. He comes up with the first line and it’s like ‘go in there now and lay it’. He runs in the booth. And obviously, I have the track always in record ready to go, boom!

I usually have three record tracks, right? So like one of them is the one that records and the other two are where I dump the vocals before I actually drag them to where they need to go. We set off recording, he’s going to lay the first line and when he finishes, I’m gonna hit stop record, drag it up.

He’s gonna listen to it and he’s going to now sing the next line. So same thing he sings it, he’s done singing, he listens to it, does the next line, maybe says ‘do it over’ so I do it over. Everything is playlist. I never delete anything that he records.

So that’s kind of the whole layout. Everything is happening really fast. There’s no silence for Chris. Everything he’s hearing in the headphones is a constant push of music.

He doesn’t know any of this is happening. It’s just a smooth, almost as if he’s driving on a road with no bumps. And that’s what I want to make the experience like for the artists.

All of the hectic stuff, I’m dealing with it. All the stuff that I’m doing, how I’m moving like this, it’s all second nature to me. I don’t even think. That’s what happens over 13 years of doing this. It’s all I know is how to do this.
Exceeding 100 million views on YouTube, 150 million streams on Spotify (making it the most popular song by an African artist in the streaming era) and reaching No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart — Afro-fusion giant Burna Boy has everyone in a chokehold with the lead single from his sixth studio album ‘Love, Damini’. And don’t worry, this won’t be the last you’ve heard of it.

Introducing you to our brand-new series: #TheMakingOf.

We’re teaming up with some of the most esteemed producers, engineers and mixers in the game who are lifting the hood behind their biggest hits. In Episode One, Grammy Award-winning mix engineer Jesse Ray Ernster gives us an access-all-areas look into the process for mixing Last Last.

From adding angst and presence to the initial beat to finalising the mixes through his iPhone and Airpod speakers using the LISTENTO mobile player, Jesse reveals just what went into mixing one of the biggest tracks of 2022.

Full transcript:

“I’m Jesse Ray Ernster and I’m going to be showing you the song Last Last by Burna Boy.

I originally mixed this song all in the box, but today we’re exploring kind of a new workflow I’m having fun with lately, and spilling the session out on the console. I thought that it would be really cool to explore this record once again in the analog format. Alright, let’s jump in.

I’m just gonna solo the beat. I’m monitoring pretty quietly, I want to get some balance. I want to get it feeling good. It’s pretty clean, it’s pretty punchy and transient right now, I think we can get the kick a little bit more angry by driving the channel, and I can do that up here by just driving the line in. You know if I really push it, I can hear it [laughs], you know if you don’t push it at all. But we’ll get some drive.

You know, like the way Dre used to push tape. We’ve also got some EQ pushing some of the knocky frequencies around 1K on the kick. You know without…it’s clean….pretty 2000s. Not angry enough. Kick that in, get some of the grind. And same with the snare, the snare’s pretty clean. This sort of rim sound. But if we crunch it, then it becomes this like kind of cool dark thing. And these percussion tracks, these weren’t really hot in the mix, like I don’t know that they were really audible at all. But they really should be. If anything, I regret not really pushing those up in the release, I think those are great.

Also, we’ve got to take a look at the 808s. What’s happening here. Little bit clean, we could drive that channel again as well. And then we can engage a little bit of channel compression to just tighten the transient. We’re not compressing for level regulation, we’re compressing to shape the envelope of the start of the transient point to really help it, you know. So instead of “boom, boom”, we give it the “fuuh, fuuh”. It shapes that.

Alright, we have the beat working now we have the instrumental sounding great. Let’s bring Burna in. And as an engineer, we get to the part where the vocals come in, we’d be really tempted to try out some EQ and some stuff and see what we need. But I have a feeling he doesn’t need much, Burna usually sounds like a legend on his own without a lot of filtering and without a lot of effects.

Let’s try it, let’s try a little bit of EQ and see if we can just improve and subtly refine his vocal sound. It doesn’t need it. That’s just the sound of his voice. He’s a giant. So we’ve unpacked a bit of the tracks individually, and kind of taking a look at all of the instruments and the vocals on the song. I think as a whole now, we could take a look at the mix bus and add a little bit of EQ there. My favorite for this is Mixland Tilt EQ, there’s a 40K high boost that just adds so much sparkle. Let’s hear what that does. Really boosting it. It adds quite a bit of sheen. It just adds a little bit of that air. This is modeled after just amazing pieces of vacuum tube gear you know, and it’s just shiny. It just sounds good. At this stage in the game, if it’s feeling good on speakers and everywhere else I’ll usually get the AirPods out and check on the phone.

And here she is, dearly beloved. We’ve got the LISTENTO plugin, I put it very last in the chain just right at the end to stream the audio to my phone. Pull up the Audiomovers LISTENTO link that I sent to myself and then I’ll just work in AirPods for a bit, and kind of work off of the stream. It sounds great enough to where I can trust it reliably. I can’t tell the difference at all from the session audio to the stream, it’s incredible.

Stream Last Last.

Follow Jesse Ray Ernster:
In the most recent episode of #AllStarMixTricks, legendary producer, songwriter and teacher !llmind expresses the importance of trusting your gut when it comes to decision-making.

If your intuition is pulling you towards a certain sound, style or technique – chances are it’s right.

Imploring creatives to avoid overthinking wherever possible, !llmind advises creatives to trust their initial feelings and let those vibes carry the session.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“What’s up guys my name is !llmind and my mix trick is follow your instinct.

When you hear something that gives you goosebumps, whether it’s a snare drum that sounds great or like a weird distortion that you just put on your vocal. Go with it and move on. Don’t sit there and fiddle with the knobs too much because you’ll lose the feeling.

So follow your instinct be in the moment. Keep it, print it, commit and move on.”
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.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

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.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

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.
Grammy-Award-Winning mixer Jesse Ray Ernster (Burna Boy, Doja Cat, UMI) tells the story of how utilising remote collaboration technology allowed him to honour his commitments to his family and his clients simultaneously.

Striking the right balance between work life and family life is a challenge many people working in the music industry face.

When tight deadlines and childcare responsibilities came to a head, Jesse turned to remote collaboration software to tap into his studio set up from home.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“This album could not have happened the way that it did without Audiomovers, it just wouldn’t have worked. We had a couple of rush delivery albums come in. One was the Burna Boy album, but a few days before that, this ‘Forest In The City’ album from UMI, we had 10 songs to mix for that.

We don’t have childcare and I was watching my kids. I love that, I didn’t want anything to get in the way of that. But my studio is also very dangerous. It’s not the best place for me to be locked in on the screen, while a toddler and a baby are running around getting into things and strangling on my cables.

So the quick solution was instead of bringing in the computer, the chassis for the UAD, hard drives, the server rig, monitors and amps, i just brought my laptop. It’s 10 years old, it works. It can connect to the computer with remote desktop. We used Audiomovers to stream the audio to it. So the studio stayed outside, I brought the laptop in, hung out with my kids and made some mix moves.

We did it together, headed in the kitchen, we’re cooking, we’re playing catch and reading books and just the process of going back and forth with the client that way. It really empowered me to be there and not sacrifice the family life while fulfilling this job for the artists and the team.“
“Does Dre hate my beats?”

In time for Halloween, we teamed up !llmind for the finale of #HorrorStories, as he reveals the moment he learnt to make failure his friend.

Having his beats met with indifference by his hero in their first session together, the two-time Grammy award-winner shares how a situation he initially perceived as his greatest failure, became the driving force for the culmination of his success.

Full transcript:

“I was like ‘Fuck, he doesn’t like any of this shit, like, Dre hates my beats’.

Back in 2013, I got a text from a friend of mine. His name’s Tyhiem. And he was like ‘I’m actually up the block from you. I’m with Dr. Dre.’ I did double take on my phone. I was like ‘Dre? Like Dr. Dre? Okay, cool!’

Tyhiem and Dre walk to the studio and he’s like ‘Yo, plug in. Let’s hear some stuff’. I’m playing beats for like 10 minutes and I glance back and I see Dre sitting down on his phone, with his head down, like not moving at all, just bored.

I stopped the music. I turned around and Dre was like ‘Yo ill, your stuff was cool. But it wasn’t anything I haven’t heard before’. I felt like I really failed in that moment. So I went back to the studio and it gave me that extra fuel to go a step further with my music.

A year later, I got a call back from Ty and he was like ‘Yo, we’re in the studio with Dre, he wants you to come over.’ I was like ‘oh shit, perfect’. So I ended up being in the studio with Dre and we ended up recording like three songs.

So it worked out in the end, but it was a super big learning lesson for me and I’ll never forget that.”
Picture this. You’ve produced a track packed with potential to realise you’ve later deleted the entire project. Many may abandon it, however Alina Smith from the production duo, LYRE MUSIC GROUP, proves just why you shouldn’t in her edition of #HorrorStories.

After losing the session files for one of her tracks, she reveals how remaining positive and deciding to rebuild the song from scratch allowed her to achieve a better end result than she initially expected.

Full Transcript

“About a year ago, I wrote this song for a YouTube collaboration. So it was part of a video. And I accidentally deleted the session.

I never ever do that I have everything backed up like 17 times, but I think it was in the folder with the video files. And I usually, you know, delete old videos that already were posted.

Months later, I looked for it and was like ‘oh, yeah, this was really good. I should like finish this for real as a real song and pitch it to Kpop’ And then I was looking for a session and it was gone. It was not anywhere.

But I asked a collaborator of mine to rebuild the track around the mp3 that I had. And he did such a spectacular job. It ended up being so much better than the original version. You know, something very positive came out of me losing these files and being really upset 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’.
Matt Genovese takes us through some of the amazing gear he’s cultivated through the years, picking out the choicest pieces in his collection and taking us through the kit he would save in a worst-case scenario.

If a fire broke out in your studio space and you could only save five pieces of gear what would you save?

We knew the question we had to ask, when we visited producer and songwriter Matthew Genovese at his drool-worth analog studio in LA.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“I’m responsible engineer and I have backups that stay in my computer. And then I have another backup that I do every day.

Then I take it out of my studio and put it in my house, in case my studio burned down. so I wouldn’t have to grab a hard drive or a computer.

I would grab my Stevie Ray Vaughan Strat that I’ve done all my hours on, and my Martin OM-28 V. That’s two.

I would probably wheel out my tape machine, my Scully 280 And then maybe my Oberheim OB-8 and the DMX drum machine.

Those are replaceable, but it would be hard to replace. Everything else I think insurance would cover and I could find.”

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We’re uncovering the recording and mix tips that rarely leave the studio in our newest series, #101.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“Hey, I’m Teezio and you’re in my studio in Los Angeles, California. Today we’re going to be going over some recording techniques that I use with Chris Brown. Let’s dive in.

We’re in the room, we’re vibing and he’s coming up with lines. He comes up with the first line and it’s like ‘go in there now and lay it’. He runs in the booth. And obviously, I have the track always in record ready to go, boom!

He’s gonna listen to it and he’s going to now sing the next line. So same thing he sings it, he’s done singing, he listens to it, does the next line, maybe says ‘do it over’ so I do it over. Everything is playlist. I never delete anything that he records.

So that’s kind of the whole layout. Everything is happening really fast. There’s no silence for Chris. Everything he’s hearing in the headphones is a constant push of music.

He doesn’t know any of this is happening. It’s just a smooth, almost as if he’s driving on a road with no bumps. And that’s what I want to make the experience like for the artists.

All of the hectic stuff, I’m dealing with it. All the stuff that I’m doing, how I’m moving like this, it’s all second nature to me. I don’t even think. That’s what happens over 13 years of doing this. It’s all I know is how to do this.

Full transcript:

“I’m Jesse Ray Ernster and I’m going to be showing you the song Last Last by Burna Boy.

I originally mixed this song all in the box, but today we’re exploring kind of a new workflow I’m having fun with lately, and spilling the session out on the console. I thought that it would be really cool to explore this record once again in the analog format. Alright, let’s jump in.

In the most recent episode of #AllStarMixTricks, legendary producer, songwriter and teacher !llmind expresses the importance of trusting your gut when it comes to decision-making.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“What’s up guys my name is !llmind and my mix trick is follow your instinct.

When you hear something that gives you goosebumps, whether it’s a snare drum that sounds great or like a weird distortion that you just put on your vocal. Go with it and move on. Don’t sit there and fiddle with the knobs too much because you’ll lose the feeling.

So follow your instinct be in the moment. Keep it, print it, commit and move on.”

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.

Grammy-Award-Winning mixer Jesse Ray Ernster (Burna Boy, Doja Cat, UMI) tells the story of how utilising remote collaboration technology allowed him to honour his commitments to his family and his clients simultaneously.

WATCH THE FULL VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT

“Does Dre hate my beats?”

Full transcript:

Picture this. You’ve produced a track packed with potential to realise you’ve later deleted the entire project. Many may abandon it, however Alina Smith from the production duo, LYRE MUSIC GROUP, proves just why you shouldn’t in her edition of #HorrorStories.

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:

Matt Genovese takes us through some of the amazing gear he’s cultivated through the years, picking out the choicest pieces in his collection and taking us through the kit he would save in a worst-case scenario.