Pretzel Logic Music

I was born in 1976, meaning I grew up in the golden era of classic albums. As a kid I used to spin Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” and Maiden’s “Piece Of Mind” on my uncle’s turntable, until one day the repeated listening of U2’s “Achtung Baby” opened my unknowing ears to the joys of sonic massaging of the pop – rock language. Many years later I realised that was because Daniel Lanois is an absolute genius. 

But I digress.

I have been avidly consuming music ever since; every record I’ve listened to I was captivated by the richness of the sonic landscape. At first I didn’t understand, I was like a child visiting a war ship: it’s imposing, it’s exciting, it’s a lot to take in, it’s awesome but I have no idea how to sail it. 
Then the digital revoltion hit in the form of Cubase SX (yes I’m THAT old) and I started messing about with sounds, then working in a studio, then another one, then producing music for my friends. Ever since the start I realised that being in the production chair meant making choices and helping already good songs reach their true potential. Then, finally, when I had an internet access, i could start investigating the big producers and their stories so I could steal tricks and understand how that sound there was made.
Throughout the years I have built a repository of go to sounds and techniques; a vocabulary of expedients I would use whenever I wanted to create a certain feeling or audio suggestion.
Then all those pieces of information became second nature – finally I was able to work in the flow. I had (and still have!) instant, instinctual access to all my knowledge. I could make a decision based on my guts and it would sound good. I was happy.
My career as a bass player in London got me in touch with many, many unbelievable singer songwriters who at some point started trusting me with their songs. At first it was easy to negotiate that, as the sounds they were looking for were deeply rooted in my own culture too. 
Session after session, tho, I could feel the balance shift a bit. The things they wanted me to listen to as a reference for the sound they were looking for were progressively alien to me. I couldn’t find the beauty in the detail, the care in analog sound making, the familiar glow of the textures I could produce so well. In hindsight that was me hanging on to nostalgia in the listening experience.
I started refusing clients – I partly wasn’tinterested, but also if someone is trusting me with their music and they are paying for it, it’s my first duty to not wing it. Either I can deliver something 100% good or it’s a no go for me.

My own paradigm started to shift a couple years ago. At that point I was already investigating the modern pop stuff; I self imposed a strict diet of daytime BBC Radio One because I wanted to rewire my brain so that I could handle the new sonic landscape that was coming at me.
Again, I was a kid in a war ship. I genuinely liked what I hard but had no idea how to get there. As a producer, I am not interested in basing my work on nostalgia, unless I consciously make that decision

Round about that time I was working on “Gather” a song written and sung by my good friend and impossibly talented artist Ariane Barnes.
We sketched out the chords and melodies of the tune then I was left with that material to come up with an arrangement. Now, my usual routine is to let my brain process the song without me trying to consciously interfere with its workings. 
I trust my mind to play a fully produced song to my amygdala, probably when I’m doing something inconsequential like frying fish or waiting in line at the post office. As I anticipated, my own private radio station played “Gather” back at me and what I heard in my head was alien enough to my usual tastes that I had to figure out what is it that I just heard.

“Gather” is a beautiful, heart wrenching song about the Charleston Church shooting; I knew it had to have echoes of Gospel and Spiritual music, I knew it had to be a sonic exposition of the tragedy, I knew I wanted something sorrowful with a slight underlying disturbing aftertaste. 
What came back to me was all that but had no traces of any instrument of the pop – soul tradition. No guitars, no traces of my own instrument, the electric bass, no drum kit. 
All I’ve heard was a digested version of all that I’ve been hearing on Radio One that wrapped the song.
I was as excited as clueless.
I fired up my trusty Cubase and started bringing those sounds into the sensible world, but try as I might I couldn’t match those sounds I’d hear on my favourite new productions. 
Everything sounded… dated. I didn’t understand: I was using the synths en vogue at the time and the right plugins too. 
I sounded like an old guy at a 21 year old birthday party trying to be cool by quoting Blade Runner. I struggled with it for a while and then admitted defeat.

The solution came to me one day in the shape of a young guitarist who used my studio for a little bit of mastering work. What he does is video game music arranged for shred guitar. He brought in a lovely arrangement of a Zelda tune. I played it and it was well mixed and featured a beautiful swooping movie orchestra part which he wrote himself.

“What software do you use to write your music?” I inquired.
“Ableton Live” he answered.
“Really? It’s not the first name that comes to my mind if I think of the DAWs you can make this kind of music with”
The answer he gave me unlocked the door for me:
“I have never been to a recording studio, my software doesn’t have to look like a mixing desk for me to make music with it”

That hit me like a ton of bricks. That was the pivotal point for me. 
Of course most of the new producers who are in their twenties have had a different introduction to the world of sonic sculpting than me. 
A lot of them don’t care about the heritage and history of music production; they hear a sound and if it is interesting then it’s a green light. 
I would go down the alleyways of history to unearth a specific reverb technique used on a Bowie album in the 70s and they are super happy to use an Ableton Live preset. How dare they disregard all I have learned so far and be successful? And more importantly: would I have been able to let go of my precious flow in order to move to a new chapter in my career?

Deep down inside I knew it was either that or I’d be swamped in a place isolated from the evolution of pop music. 
I recognised I was already going through the five stages of grief and loss. 
Denial and isolation I already did. 
Anger (he’s got a laptop and calls himself a producer?) I was already at the tail end of it. 
Bargaining (I can blend my workflow with that, no? Butch Vig was doing it in the 90s and BTW the Foo Fighters are in the charts) was short lived.
Depression (maybe I’m just too old to be a player in this game) gave way to Acceptance quick. 
So I got myself a copy of Live and clumsily navigated it, throwing sounds and effects at “Gather” without the superstructure of my past music production culture. I didn’t fetish this or that compressor. 
I didn’t romance a reverb unit. All I did is free flow sounds in a work environment I didn’t really know how to use. 
In the end, the song didn’t sound great, but finally I could hear the sonic thumbprint of those songs I listened to on Radio one.
Now I was free to build a new vocabulary based on a completely different paradigm of music production and so far it’s going pretty well, judging by how the music is received.
And the best part is that I can switch back to the old me whenever I want and still enjoy and create in that language too.