|
Listen Close is a weekly feature where I take a long hard listen to a song that really grabbed my ears. I think about which elements of the mix have got me so interested and try to understand how and why they work, as well as how they can give me a better perspective on my own productions.
This week I’m exploring ‘I Know Alone’ by HAIM. Released as the fifth single preceding the release of the bands third album, ‘Women in Music Pt. III’, ‘I Know Alone’ arrived onto streaming services on the 29th of April 2020. At the time of writing ‘Women in Music Pt. III’ is still yet to be released, so tracking down the credits for the mix and mastering engineers has proved difficult. The Spotify iOS app does list, in the following order, the producers of the track as; Ariel Rechtshaid, Buddy Ross, Danielle Haim (of the band) and Rostam Batmanglij.
The song can be streamed in all the usual places, but features on the new Listen Close Spotify playlist, as seen below!
‘I Know Alone’ is an interesting and modern blend of natural and synthetic sounds, which combine to create a unique atmosphere that closely reflects the lyrics. Danielle Haim, the lead vocalist on this track, explains on Instagram that the first lyric written for the song was ‘I know alone like no one else does’, and the whole production takes on this idea of loneliness and separation.
In terms of instrumentation the track utilises programmed drums, cold bass and pad sounds in contrast with a solo cello, a lone acoustic guitar as well heavily affected vocal lines and loops. This conjures an aesthetic where the central character portrayed by the lead vocalist lives in a slightly artificial and detached space, while the track swirls around her. I love how ‘I Know Alone’ places the listener inside the specific world of the song. This concept of the ‘world’ of the song is one that I am constantly returning to when I think about my favourite mixes and something I try and be conscious of in my own work. I think the most successful productions achieve a sense of being a complete piece in and of themselves; it’s that difference between hearing a mix and hearing a song. This is the successful combination of the creative and technical decisions throughout the production process to create an overall feel of the track. A squeaking noise from a cello opens the track, leading you in to that world, before the first verse introduces the key components of it. The production of the lead vocal, particularly in the first and second verses, really emphasises the feeling of being inside a lonely person’s thoughts. When the verse vocal enters (00:02 and again at 00:54) a stereo widening effect is high in the mix, spreading the sound across the stereo image as well as giving the impression of placing it in a very small space. The stereo effect and pushed forward sound make us feel like we are sharing this very confined space with the singer, and that we are perhaps hearing it literally from inside their head. The mixer has ensured that the lead vocal still blends with the more open space of the instrumental using a large plate style reverb. This additional reverb has a reasonably long pre-delay (in the 20-30ms range) which creates enough distance between the direct sound and the reverb for the vocal to maintain its unique ambience in the foreground of the track, while still tying it into the overall sound of the song. The single backing vocal line in the first verse (‘I don’t wanna give’ at 00:16) is drenched in a dense reverb, providing a moment of excitement but also helping to bridge the distance between the lead vocal and the rest of the track. Get That Sound
The lead vocal in the verse sections of ‘I Know Alone’ features an attention grabbing effect. It wasn’t immediately obvious to me what processors were used to create the sound, so I decided the best way to understand the effect was to try and recreate it for myself. A friend with a much nicer singing voice than mine kindly agreed to provide me with a dry vocal recording of the first section of the first verse. Listen to that dry recording below, captured with an SM58 dynamic microphone.
Dry Vocal
The first step to recreating the vocal sound was to send that dry vocal to a parallel bus with the UAD Eventide H910 Harmonizer plugin inserted. Here the result below.
Vocal with H910 Bus
Set up in this way, the H910 provides subtle pitch variations to two short delays, the difference between these two delayed sounds gives the vocal a wide stereo effect that never quite stays still, the small amount of feedback in the delay lines creates a sound not unlike a short ambience reverb, giving the sound that ‘close’ quality. I used EQ and De-esser plugins, inserted before the H910, to remove some of the low end and to tame some harsh ‘S’ sounds in the recording. Lastly I inserted a final EQ plugin after the H910 to add some brightness and remove some low-mid build up.
The next step was to add the reverb that creates the space around the vocal. For this I used ValhallaVintageVerb plugin inserted on a second parallel bus. You can hear the final result below.
Vocal with H910 and Reverb Busses
This lush plate reverb sound gives a large sense of space with a relatively short decay time. It's bright and dense sound helps it stand out in the full mix and the pre-delay pushes the reverb back from the main sound, allowing you feel the full effect of the H910, while still providing a nice space for the vocal to sit in.
Remember this is just one way to achieve this sound, the particular character of the sound in ‘I Know Alone’ makes me think that some version of the Eventide unit was used (whether hardware or software) but I found that a similar effect could be achieved using Soundtoys Microshift for the wide pitch variations, alongside a short delay with a feedback control to produce the ambience like component. There are of course many plate reverbs available, and I'm sure a similar sound can be achieve by tweaking the stock plugins in many DAWs.
The choruses of the song (00:25, 01:17, 02:55) add many more layers of instruments and vocals, giving the track a familiar feeling pop music ‘lift’. The choice of instruments here help the track to stay in line with theme of loneliness while being musically a lot denser and more exciting than the verse that precedes it.
The acoustic guitar part has a close sound that has a realistic quality to it; the ambience surrounding it gives the impression that it was played in an everyday space, such as a bedroom (which it may well have been). This helps maintain the sense of the character in the lyrics being on their own. When the guitar is pushed forward in the mix at 02:21 this choice is further emphasised. Here the guitar sound contains digital artefacts and is layered with a sample of noise that is reminiscent of low quality phone camera footage, giving the impression of an intimate performance broadcast from isolation. While it’s worth noting that this song was written and recorded before the world entered a state of lockdown, the emotional connotations of those Zoom-like artefacts is certainly a lot more relatable in the current situation. The cello part doubles the guitar, both musically and in its emotion. The decision to keep the part as a solo cello player, rather than multiple players or a larger string section, adds to the effect of the lonely sound, as solo cello has been used throughout music history in pieces with a melancholy feel, for example, Chopin’s ‘Nocturne in C sharp minor’ or John William’s ‘Main Title (From “Schindler’s List”)’. It can be useful to remember that our productions don’t exist in a vacuum, and that we aren’t limited to using just similar music as a point of reference. Some sounds have been established as cultural signifiers for certain emotions or situations (like the ‘sad cello’ present in ‘I Know Alone’) and they can be utilised to enhance lyrical and musical choices. Using these production and mix techniques ‘I Know Alone’ creates a very clear emotional state that the song exists in; this overall feel allows the production to include many different and potentially disparate elements (evolving garage inspired beats and melancholy cello solo aren’t the most obvious combination). As long as these different parts don’t feel like they are breaking the established mood of the song, they feel like integral parts of the whole. Establishing a world for a song to exist in can be enormously engaging for the listener, but simply containing a large amount of elements that are pointing towards a larger whole doesn’t immediately make a production a success. Throughout ‘I Know Alone’ it feels as though there has been a great deal of care taken in choosing which elements take priority at any one time, and it’s the way those parts are separated in the ‘front to back’ image that gives the aesthetic choices a sense of depth. As is pretty much standard in modern pop music, the lead vocal maintains priority in the ‘foreground’ throughout the song, only when the lead vocal drops out do other elements step forward to the ‘front’ of the mix. This happens at 02:17 with the acoustic guitar, which is then replaced with the cello at 02:44. Slightly unusually, the final chorus doesn’t feature the lead vocal melody present earlier in the song, instead a warped vocal sample gets the spotlight (02:57) and for the outro the backing vocals drift further into focus (roughly 03:24 until the end). The drums also hold a point of priority; they stay up front in the mix for the majority of the song, with changes in the snare sample used to up the excitement in the choruses, even though its front to back position doesn’t shift. This is momentarily subverted, from 02:42 to 02:50 the drums return after a short drop out pushed far back in the mix and slightly off centre. This section of the song is dramatically different to other parts, the cello is pushed right forward in the mix and a lot of parts drop out completely, but keeping the drums tucked in the back provides a sense of continuity even if they aren’t consciously being heard by the listener. The ‘middle ground’ of the track is where things are most dynamic, this is where backing vocal and synth parts are shifting in and out of focus to keep the track engaging and generating a sense of movement, even while the lead vocal and drums stay very consistent. For example, during the second chorus (01:17) at 01:32 the cello is pushed forward, giving this section a sense that something new has happened, even though musically it repeats. Throughout ‘I Know Alone’ the background of the mix contains elements that aren’t immediately obvious, but definitely contribute to our overall impression of the track. During the second verse (from 00:55) a looped and heavily affected vocal sits low in the mix and slightly off to the right, the lyric is unintelligible though I suspect it is a variation of the ‘when Sunday comes they expect me to shine’ refrain that appears later in the track (02:21). This adds variety to the second verse, as well as providing a sense of continuity for a bold sound that might otherwise feel like it appears from nowhere. ‘I Know Alone’ is a great example of a song that manages to conjure a whole sonic world for the listener to explore which continually shifts its front to back soundstage to keep that listener interested. When working on my own productions creating a consistent environment for songs to live in can be challenging, to me it is one of the key things that takes a project from a mix to a finished song. With ‘I Know Alone’, HAIM, along with their producers and engineers have shown that a strong emotional tie to the lyrics of the song is a great starting point, and it gives a clear direction for the choices that follow. Whether it's the choice of instrument or reverb type, many of the decisions in a mix can and should serve the song itself.
Stray Observations
Further Listening
To hear HAIM create a much sunnier space, check out ‘Summer Girl’, another single preceding ‘Women In Music Pt. III’. For another dense world to explore, have a listen to ‘Impossible’ by Clairo, which also features production by Rostam Batmanglij and drums by Danielle Haim.
Thanks once again for joining me in exploring an exciting mix! I would love to hear your opinion on the song, and any tips you have for creating depth in a mix? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
RSS Feed