Props for this link. These guys were true pioneers that pretty much started the whole 'rave scene' back in the 90's. I saw them live in Toronto once, fantastic show.
Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
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Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#32Props for this link. These guys were true pioneers that pretty much started the whole 'rave scene' back in the 90's. I saw them live in Toronto once, fantastic show.
I'm by no means an expert on rave but you're definitely wrong about them starting the whole scene.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rights-clearing in electronic music and hip hop is usually quite complicated. Taking a beat or riff from a song is fair game, as it could not in any way be claimed to serve as a replacement for the original work. Often though, big named folks like Kanye West or Daft Punk will clear their samples before releasing, just in case. I believe the payment is a flat rate, through rights clearing houses and the artists' agent…
Do you have any more info on this perhaps? I know when I'm working on a TV show or basically anything that will get screen time I have to work out through sheets of paperwork where I list every single sound item in the video, including main background track(s), background noise tracks (imagine a distant bg music from a radio down the street) etc. I have to list Name of the track, artist that played it (since it doesn…
That sounds like a system in SERIOUS need of hacking to improve usability.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#34This article goes into a bit of detail on some of the gear and a few pictures of the setups used by Liam Howlett, post 'Fat of the Land' at least.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#35The producer here is clearly talented, but the fact remains that notwithstanding Liam Howlett's setup in the late nineties, today's most basic music production software is a country mile more powerful than that which produced some of the most memorable music of the last twenty years. I often think that there exists a clear analogy between electronic music and video games. The computer games of the 80s and early 90s p…
Simplicity and purity of idea maybe? I make Drum and Bass, and it seems that the whole genre has gone through a period in the last seven years whereby the opportunities afforded by sequencers and plugins have led to music which was often technically proficient, but uninspired, and more importantly, uninspiring.
Now, there's a resurgence of minimalism which I'm absolutely loving. When there aren't a thousand things going on in a tune, the choices you've made are laid bare for all to see. We had to go through some pretty ridiculous stuff to finally get here, though.
I completely agree with the analogy between 8 (and to some extent 16) bit video games, and the current generation. Limiting your scope makes it much easier to flesh out your ideas... it forces you to go for depth, because your breadth is more or less predetermined. Some of the best music humankind has ever seen was written for one person sitting at one musical instrument, capable of making a fixed range of sounds.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#36The producer here is clearly talented, but the fact remains that notwithstanding Liam Howlett's setup in the late nineties, today's most basic music production software is a country mile more powerful than that which produced some of the most memorable music of the last twenty years. I often think that there exists a clear analogy between electronic music and video games. The computer games of the 80s and early 90s p…
Simplicity and purity of idea maybe? I make Drum and Bass, and it seems that the whole genre has gone through a period in the last seven years whereby the opportunities afforded by sequencers and plugins have led to music which was often technically proficient, but uninspired, and more importantly, uninspiring. Now, there's a resurgence of minimalism which I'm absolutely loving. When there aren't a thousand things go…
Each artist needs their best constraints.
As a fan, I prefer a good layered number of tracks that drop down to simple and ramp back up to complex melodies/harmonics. It's hard to find the perfect song, but I've listened to thousands of near misses ;)
Glad to hear things are leaning out, hope that doesn't always mean less tracks.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#37Props for this link. These guys were true pioneers that pretty much started the whole 'rave scene' back in the 90's. I saw them live in Toronto once, fantastic show.
I'm by no means an expert on rave but you're definitely wrong about them starting the whole scene.
Actually, it's pretty fair to presume that they were pioneers of rave. True they weren't big at the same time as the Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, or Westbam, but they were releasing tracks as early as '91:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy
And unlike their predecessors, their production is far more in line with the rave sound and iconography that any other group of that era.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly hardware rack samplers. I think Liam used (uses?) Akai S1100 or a similar model. You play in chunks of audio to them, trim the waveform to the part you need, optionally build a keyboard-split/layered patch with it, and then play it via MIDI. They also have some envelopes for pitch modulation and other stuff you can use. You can do this with sounds you make yourself (The Prodigy frequently samples their own syn…
Exactly my point. This stuff was way harder without all these nice comfy ProTools and ACID GUIs. The keyboards never had interfaces that were easy to use when doing things like trimming waveforms. Must have been hella tedious.
Especially back when most CPUs were about 200MHz tops, drives were much smaller, and turning on a single reverb brought everything to a screaming halt. (Freezing trax was not an option.)
One of the better DAWs at the time was Opcode's Vision (still is, tho they went out of business back then)(Live didn't exist, Pro Tools didn't have MIDI worth mentioning) and the first decent plug-ins were just being released... nothing worked together and crashes were frequent.
Very tedious ... not to dis this production which is madly skilled. I'm still not convinced that Prodigy did all that in software.
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm by no means an expert on rave but you're definitely wrong about them starting the whole scene.
Actually, it's pretty fair to presume that they were pioneers of rave. True they weren't big at the same time as the Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, or Westbam, but they were releasing tracks as early as '91: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy And unlike their predecessors, their production is far more in line with the rave sound and iconography that any other group of that era.
They were around from the beginning but they had a lot of contemporaries too. Like I said, I'm not an expert but rave culture arguably got going in 89 with the rising popularity of house and then techno (this still sounds fresh from 89 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6musPMSe24Q)
Around 90 and 91 it moved to a focus on more hardcore techno and breakbeat. Mr Kirk's Nightmare by 4Hero was around 1990, which sounds quite primitive now but quickly spawned records like those produced by NRG, Prodigy and G Double E. Prodigy were part of a much wider scene but had the talent and music to go mainstream.
Apologies to anyone if I've got this wrong. I was about 10 back then but I have plenty of friends who lived through it (and indeed were DJs back then!) so I've picked up a lot.
Here are some tracks from 91 and 92 that I can recall as being representative of the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCoCTkC0oL0&feature=fvw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRIW4ZHHCg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS2w6o2llHQ
Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff
#40This article goes into a bit of detail on some of the gear and a few pictures of the setups used by Liam Howlett, post 'Fat of the Land' at least. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Oct04/articles/prodigy.htm
Liam Howlett used Reason (among other things) to make Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. I'm not sure what was used for their latest work, Invaders Must Die, but it's likely similar software given their live setups for the last few years have been powered by several Macbook Pro's (along with other equipment).
Truly a master at his craft though. Here's a hacker who started making professional electronic music mostly the old way in the early 1990's, and has successfully transitioned into the digital age. If you've listened to Prodigy long enough, you end up coming across music they sampled in the most unlikely of places. It's like an endless easter egg hunt. I can't even begin to imagine how dynamic Liam's record library is.
BTW, if you've never seen them live before, you don't know what you're missing. Seen them three times already and they easily outshine NIN, Manson, and Rob Zombie in terms of live energy. The type of crowd they attract is energetic and intense. But bring a pair of earplugs if you don't want to go deaf. ;)
Edit: Check out Nekosite if you want to know more about the band: http://nekosite.co.uk/