4a - Project: Exploring and Listening to Music Multitracks
OVERVIEW
The fourth module of #PWYM is designed for you to apply the critical
listening skills you developed in the beginning of the course to
explore multitrack recordings of Peter Gabriel's *Sledgehammer* and
*In Your Eyes.* After learning some practical strategies for listening
deeply to the individual stems, you'll create two static mixes of one
of the tunes. The first mix will be a convergent mix, where you listen
to a stereo mix and reverse engineer it through adjusting the balance
and pan levels of the individual stems. The second mix will be a
creative mix of your own choosing. You’ll be asked to share each mix
with your group, as well as a description of your process of creating
each mix and what you learned along the way. For this module, you'll
be working with a custom web-based mixing tool that we developed
specifically for this purpose. It works best when run in the Google
Chrome browser. We've divided this module into 4 sections: - A.
[Project: Exploring and listening to the multitrack stems from
*Sledgehammer* & *In Your Eyes*][1] - B. [Video: Paul Geluso: On the
creative processes of engineers][2] - C. [Project: Reverse engineer a
mix and create a creative mix to share with your crew and the PWYM
community][3] - D. [Other People's Good Ideas][4]
PROJECT 1: EXPLORE AND LISTEN TO MULTITRACK STEMS
We've invited Ethan Hein to introduce you to the individual [stem
tracks][5] from *Sledgehammer*. In these videos Ethan introduces you
to the origins of the various sound sources in *Sledgehammer* and
introduces you to our custom remix interface, sharing strategies for
approaching the multitracks and reverse engineering a stereo mix using
the stems and only adjusting balance and panning. **Step 1 - Learn
more about the individual sounds in Sledgehammer**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeBbv0f4hpc **Step 2 - Learn how to
listen to the stems from Sledgehammer** Now that you've had a chance
to acquaint yourself with the sound sources, open our custom mix
interface for [Sledgehammer][6] or [In Your Eyes][7]. Peter Gabriel
has been gracious to give all of us access to the stems for these two
songs. Our interface gives you the ability to solo or mute specific
tracks, adjust the sonic placement of each track left to right by
adjusting the pan knobs, and also adjust the balance of each stem via
the sliders. When you load up the site, you'll notice that the left
two tracks are soloed and panned left and right, respectively. This is
our reference mix of these tracks, which differs slightly from many of
the released versions of *Sledgehammer* and *In Your Eyes.* If you are
first exploring, we recommend that you first listen to the song all
the way through with the default settings to acquaint yourself with
the mix. Be sure to listen for the balance of each sound and it's
placement left to right in the reference mix. After listening to the
reference mix, mute the first two tracks, restart the song and bring
the faders up on each track separately. Try different balance and pan
settings, and different combinations of sounds. See if you discover
new things in the sounds of each stem that you did not hear before.
Some things we like to do include: 1. Solo the bass track and guitar
tracks. 2. Solo the percussion and drum tracks. 3. Take a listen to
only the vocal tracks. 4. Follow your curiosity and try other
combinations. Most of all, take time to explore the stems trying
different combinations and the tracks soloed. What do you in each
individual track that you could not hear in the composite mix? What
surprises you? Can you "reverse engineer" how particular tracks might
have been recorded or the specific effects that might be present or
not present? Take detailed notes and share them with your Crew and the
broader PWYM community.
HOW TO USE OUR MIX INTERFACE
This is a quick guide to using the PWYM custom mix interface. We've
developed this to walk you through *Sledgehammer*, but you can apply
it to *In Your Eyes*, as well.
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/ruthmann/PWYM/sledgehammer/ When you first
pull up the mixer, here's what you see: The two channels on the left
are the complete original mixdown of "Sledgehammer," soloed and panned
hard left and right respectively. The rest of the channels contain the
individual stems, all with their levels set to zero. From left to
right, the stems are: - Shak: the sampled shakuhachi (bamboo flute)
that plays at the top of the song. - Drums: the drum kit and
tambourine. - Bass: the fretless electric bass guitar. - Guitars: the
two electric guitars. - Piano: the digital synth piano sound. -
Prophet: the Prophet-5 analog synth that sounds like an organ. -
Horns: the trumpet, trombone and tenor sax. - BG Vox: the female
backing vocalists. - PG BG Vox: Peter's overdubbed backing vocals. -
PG Vox: Peter's lead vocal. Each channel has a mute, solo, pan and
level control. To begin exploring the multitrack, un-solo the mixdown
channels on the left and start bringing up different stems, alone or
in combination. You can discover some interesting things just by
listening to the stems in isolation. For example, try soloing Peter's
lead vocal: Whenever Peter is singing, you can hear the rest of the
instruments faintly in the background. This is a phenomenon called
bleed, and it happens when undesired sound leaks into a mic. The best
way to prevent bleed is to record instruments and singers in acoustic
isolation. However, Peter added his vocals after the rest of the
tracks were complete, so why is there bleed in his mic? Usually
singers use headphones to prevent bleed. However, some singers don't
like headphones; they find them unnatural, and prefer to hear their
voice out in the room. Peter recorded his vocals while monitoring from
speakers, and naturally, some of the sound from the speakers made it
into his mic. The Beatles were also famous for always monitoring from
speakers. If you solo the guitar, you'll notice that there is no bleed
whatsoever. Even if the guitarists were playing live with the rest of
the band, their sound is perfectly isolated. Either their amps were in
separate rooms totally sealed off from the rest of the studio, or the
guitars were just plugged straight into the soundboard. If the signal
never passes through the air, there's no difficulty in keeping it
isolated. Once you've finished your mix, how do you share it with the
world? The answer is in the little code at the end of the web page
address. Each time you move a control, you'll notice the code changing
automatically. When you're happy with your mix, all you have to do is
copy the web page address and paste it into a forum post, an email or
wherever you'd like. Then anyone can click the link, and the mix
interface will load with your settings all dialed in. Pretty cool.
Happy mixing! **Further ideas** As you now know through your work in
the first three Modules for PWYM, listening to a song while viewing a
visual analysis can often help you hear more details about a
particular song and recording. You know that you learn even more when
you are the one who creates the analysis to a favorite song. To help
you hear more within *Sledgehammer, we've provided a link to our
[Perceived Space][8] and [Musical Structure Graphs][9] for
Sledgehammer and encourage you to view them while working on this
project as a point of reference. ***Note:*** These interfaces work
best in [Google Chrome][10], but will also work in Firefox and Safari.
They will not work in Internet Explorer. ***They are also not
optimized to work on mobile devices*** such as iPads and tablets.
Please be patient as the audio files load; you are downloading
multiple large audio files. After the initial load period, the
interface will reload more quickly.
EXPLORING THESE IDEAS THROUGH OTHER MUSIC
In PWYM 1.0, [Bradford Swanson][11] introduced these concepts through
the music of [Clara Berry and Wooldog][12], a singer/songwriter duo
out of Kennebunk, Maine. If you'd like to approach this through that
music, see the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuV11OZZhDI You can load a [multitrack
remix interface for *Air Traffic*][13] here.
CAN'T LOAD OUR REMIX INTERFACE?
Our license with Peter Gabriel prohibits us from making the
multitrack stems available for direct download. However, an
alternative project is to download the [multitrack samples from Peter
Gabriel's *Shock the Monkey*][14] that Peter released as part of a
remix contest for [SoundCloud][15] and load them into a DAW of your
choosing. There are also other [multitracks available for remixing
which you can find online][16]. Create a mix of one of those songs
that you like and share it with your crew. [1]:
http://community.playwithyourmusic.org/t/4a-project-exploring-and-listening-to-music-multitracks/
[2]:
http://community.playwithyourmusic.org/t/4b-video-paul-geluso-creative-processes-of-engineers/1610
[3]:
http://community.playwithyourmusic.org/t/4c-project-reverse-engineer-a-mix-and-share-it-with-the-pwym-community/1608
[4]:
http://community.playwithyourmusic.org/t/4d-other-peoples-good-ideas/
[5]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_%28music%29#Production [6]:
http://sh.pwym.org [7]: http://iye.pwym.org [8]:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1c6o5C0bov0UEAt4JpX1VTT_btEnq4nysQzjrtdnPoAE/edit?usp=sharing
[9]: http://bit.ly/1784Rnp [10]: http://chrome.google.com/ [11]:
http://bradfordswanson.com [12]: http://claraberry.com [13]:
http://at.pwym.org [14]:
https://realworldrecords.com/remixed/group/84776/peter-gabriel-shock-the-monkey-remix-competition/
[15]: http://soundcloud.com/ [16]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_works_released_in_a_stem_format