Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#51

Post by ido » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 11:03 AM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #49

transmit101 wrote: post #12

The 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…

I think we still see innovation in games, but what's happened is there are also more clones. So every year we get a bunch of first person shooters, that are more or less the same type of game but with different storylines, graphics, and environments. So this drowning by copycat games makes it seem as if innovative new games are not being produced as much anymore.

It has always been this way (at least as far as I can remember, I've had a PC since '86), you just don't remember the 1,000,000th space invader/pacman/tetris clone.

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#52

Post by sedachv » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 11:58 AM UTC

apu wrote: post #19

That was amazing to watch. I have often wondered how awesome it would be to see great hackers at work in a similar way. I've had the luck to watch one or two sit next to me and work (during school), and it's mind-blowing how fast they are, and how they go about fleshing out a quick skeleton into a full piece of work. Now with software like Etherpad, I wonder if soon we'll have screencasts of the making of great code.

http://terminalcast.com/

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#53

Post by bocalogic » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 12:39 PM UTC

Most of the names mentioned here are brand name, well known musicians. However, thousands of people use Pro Tools and Ableton to create amazing music.Problem is you do not know about them. Only the heavyweights get the big marketing.

As mentioned, the same can be said for the gaming industry, or any other industry. Technology has pushed the cost lower and created opportunity for the lowest common denominator.

The problem with "audio" in general is that it is taken for granted. MP3's on ipods sound terrible. CD's have replaced vinyl character. High end speakers have been replaced with Bose. Deflation in audio, like many other industries.

Using Pro Tool and/or Ableton is not easy and takes a lifetime to master.

As a career, like most others industries, the bids are going to lowest bidder with mediocre experience.

Audio is so important and often neglected.

Happy Holidays to All!

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#54

Post by leif » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 2:15 PM UTC

transmit101 wrote: post #12

The 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…

"""I'm not sure what you'd call the musical equivalent of playability, but I think more musicians should bear it in mind. :) """

still "playability", I think

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#55

Post by parbo » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 2:23 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #7

Back when Prodigy did this in the late 1990's they must have used tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment... samplers, synths, sequencers, filters, etc... Today, the entire thing can be done in a single piece of software. Wow.

The initial demo was all done with a Roland W30, and I suspect that most of the first album was just that but properly mastered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigy#Beginnings_into_fun...

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#56

Post by mikeryan » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 6:44 PM UTC

texel wrote: post #47

mikeryan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the late 1990s they had powerful audio editing software. The first version of ProTools came out in 1991 and there were a ton of cheaper tools as well. I'm not saying they didn't do this on thousands of dollars of equipment but in 1997 there's nothing you saw on this video that couldn't be done on a single piece of software (ok maybe two) even then. It wasn't the dark ages. And get off my lawn.

You still couldn't chop audio nearly this easily, or move it around visually like you can in Ableton. Most of the manipulations were probably done in the sampler, so they all had to be done by ear, and sequenced out using MIDI. I think the big time-saver now is the "elastic" audio capability built into modern sequencers, allowing you to easily realign transients within the audio.

Yes you could, both Cubase and SoundForge we're ~$500 products that would allow you to do multitrack editing like this on a PC.

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#57

Post by brunoc » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 7:57 PM UTC

zandorg wrote: post #45

messel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will forward these comments to my brother. He's a long time digital producer although I'd be hard pressed to get him to mix together ambient/electronic/d&b/whateverIlove. Sounds like a pretty sick and expensive setup. Nice job putting it all together.

Actually, I bought the mixer after I couldn't split about 10 signals to the soundcard any more! I had splitters going into splitters and it was a mess. Then the mixer I bought had FX inputs, so I bought the outboard FX units. Then I read about the S950 and bought 2 . They have 8 outputs which you can run through a mixing desk and EQ, adjust gain and volume, and even put an FX unit on a drum. The great thing is all th…

I'm impressed that you still use hardware samplers. It's pretty much the first thing that I would think of replacing with a computer (quasi unlimited sampling memory, unlimited storage, etc). I have a S2000 somewhere, gathering dust...

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#58

Post by vdm » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 8:14 PM UTC

messel wrote: post #33

Keyframe wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are correct. Moreover, from talking to people who work therein, I get the impression that broadcast production is full of such systems, with overengineered unhelpful software if any.

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#59

Post by lyime » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 8:25 PM UTC

hack_edu wrote: post #22

Keyframe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious how does this work business wise? Since there are quite a lot of samples from other artists/songs, who gets paid how and how much in order to release something like this to the market?

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…

We are also trying to figure out licensing for this genre for Mugasha (http://mugasha.com). It has been a big PITA so far.

Re: Making Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" in Ableton by Jim Pavloff

#60

Post by sketerpot » Fri, Dec 25, 2009, 9:34 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #49

transmit101 wrote: post #12

The 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…

I think we still see innovation in games, but what's happened is there are also more clones. So every year we get a bunch of first person shooters, that are more or less the same type of game but with different storylines, graphics, and environments. So this drowning by copycat games makes it seem as if innovative new games are not being produced as much anymore.

Sometimes clones work. I really enjoy some Super Mario World romhacks, for example, because they took a winning formula and did it well. Here's my favorite one:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/48/

(To get it working, you need an emulator and a SMW ROM, which I won't link to here.)