♪ 'Cause you make my earth quake ♪
♪ Oh, you make my earth quake ♪
That was a little taste of "Earfquake,"
a standout track from "Igor,"
Tyler, the Creator's 2019 album
that landed him the Grammys' biggest hip-hop prize.
Issa Rae: And the Grammy goes to...
LA, stand up! "Igor," Tyler, the Creator.
Narrator: And the highest critical acclaim
of any of his projects yet.
To understand what makes "Igor" special,
you just have to peel back the layers
on a song like "Earfquake."
It's the highest-charting single off the album
and of Tyler's whole career.
And one of the reasons it's so addicting to listen to
is its intricately layered sound.
At any given second of the song, you've got a kaleidoscope
of different sounds whirling together.
From the multipart vocal harmonies...
♪ Don't leave, it's my fault ♪
to swelling synthesizers...
with everything over a rumbling, distorted bass.
Tyler writes and produces his own stuff,
so he deserves full credit
for song arrangements like this one.
But making all those layers of sounds
mesh together perfectly required the handiwork
of Tyler's go-to mixing engineer, Neal Pogue.
We visited Neal at his studio
to find out how he helped bring Tyler's song craft
to life on "Earfquake."
♪ Crashing down, I'll need you ♪
Neal is a Grammy-winning audio mixer
who's worked with artists like
OutKast, Lil Wayne, TLC, and Nicki Minaj.
And he's been at the mixing board
for Tyler's last three projects,
including 2017's critically acclaimed "Flower Boy."
Tyler: And it came out cool.
Narrator: With complex musical arrangements like
"Earfquake," mixing can really make or break the song.
A mixer's job is to blend together
all the components of a recording,
drums, bass, melody, vocals, etc.,
into a finished product that sounds
harmonious and beautiful.
Essentially, the mixer is like an orchestra conductor,
making sure all the different sound sources
mesh together as perfectly as possible.
Neal Pogue: So, how I build a mix is
I always start with the drums first.
Because, to me, drums are the
essential component to a song.
♪ Make my earth quake ♪
♪ Oh, you make my earth ♪
Neal: The next sound that's very important is the bass.
Narrator: It goes without saying that a song called
"Earfquake" needed the kind of bass that
literally makes the ground shake.
Neal: Boom, boom, boom. It's long. [laughs]
And big, you know what I mean.
Even though he's singing and it has a melody,
he still wanted that bass to come through.
Narrator: As a mixer, Neal's pretty much an expert
in the science of an amazing bass drop.
♪ Oh, you make my earth... ♪
See, a lot of it has to do
with sound frequencies.
Basically, your ears can detect a huge range
of frequencies, from 20 hertz to 20,000,
and each element in a mix,
whether it's bass, drums, or vocals,
has energy in different parts of this range.
Mixers use a tool called EQ,
or equalization,
to adjust the balance of different frequencies in a mix,
filtering out some frequencies while boosting others.
Neal: Said EQ can make you cry, dance, fight,
you know, love, everything.
Depending on the song, which the frequency changes
the color of the track.
Narrator: Next came the colorful part: the keys.
Neal: Meaning the drums and the bass, that's the groove.
Stuff like keyboards and pianos, that's the beauty.
Narrator: Anyone familiar with Tyler's music
knows that he loves his chords,
and "Earfquake" is no exception.
The key riffs drive the melodies in the song,
and the piano's actually the main instrument
you hear for a good part of the song
during Playboi Carti's verse.
♪ Oh, my God, hold up ♪
♪ These diamonds not Tiffany's ♪
♪ So in love ♪
Neal: Tyler, being a keyboard player
first and foremostly,
it's all about keyboard lines and keyboard chords,
and that's a big part of him.
Narrator: Since it's Tyler, though,
you need synth keys on top of your piano keys.
♪ Oh, you make my earth... ♪
♪ Make my earth quake ♪
The focus here was on making the synths and pianos
sound sunny and buoyant, even on top of those heavy drums.
Neal: Tyler loves colors.
He loves, like, beautiful bridges and things like that,
so he loves for it to be colorful.
All the songs, he wanted them to be brighter.
You know, to really have that dynamic
and to be right, coming right at you.
Narrator: EQ can brighten the whole tone of a song,
helping instruments like pianos and keyboards
cut through what otherwise might be a crowded mix.
Neal: Now, when I put the EQs in...
see? How...
see how it brightens it up?
Producer: Yeah.
Neal: Now, if I take that brightness off,
it's dull, see?
It doesn't affect you the same way.
Narrator: Besides playing with the frequencies,
one of the main ways you can make
a densely layered mix like "Earfquake"
sound dynamic is with panning.
Stereo panning is all about how the song travels,
with different sounds sweeping
from left to right across the speakers
or jumping from one of your headphones to the other.
Neal: From left to right.
It's over there,
and now it's over here.
Narrator: When all these sounds are hitting your ears
at different positions in time,
it makes for a much more immersive listening experience.
Like at the end of the album opener,
"Igor's Theme," when panning keys
float you right into the beginning of "Earfquake."
♪ For real, for real this time. ♪
And then, once you hit the chorus,
the skipping synths almost make you feel
like you're levitating.
♪ You make my earth quake ♪
♪ Oh, you make my earth quake ♪
♪ Riding around, your love is shaking me up ♪
♪ And it's making my heart break ♪
Neal: I call it headphone candy.
There are a lot of things, if you listen to the album,
you'll feel things panning, like [makes noise],
or coming across, taking you on a ride,
creating your own little video
inside your head of what that is.
Narrator: The final track Neal added was the vocals.
♪ Make my earth quake ♪
♪ Riding around, your love is shaking me up ♪
♪ And it's making my heart break ♪
You've got ad-libs from Playboi Carti,
backing vocals from Jessy Wilson,
an uncredited feature from Dev Hynes, aka Blood Orange,
and finally R&B legend Charlie Wilson on the chorus.
One of the highlights of the track,
and Tyler's personal favorite moment,
comes from the melting harmonies in the chorus.
Fine-tuning the balance between those harmonies
was part of the mixing process.
♪ It's my fault ♪
Neal: If you have a bunch of harmonies,
you know, low harmony, high harmony, whatever,
I think, like, making sure that the high harmony's
not too louder than the low harmony,
and, you know, then that has to do with mixing.
Narrator: Tyler's own vocals are heavily manipulated
so that he sounds near unrecognizable
for much of the song up until the outro.
♪ Complication, no ♪
♪ I don't want no sovereign nation ♪
♪ Crashing down, I'll need you ♪
♪ 'Cause you make my earth quake ♪
♪ Oh, you make my earth quake ♪
♪ Riding around, you tell me something ♪
Neal: Things had to be pitched a certain way.
A lot of times, he sent the vocals, like,
to me that way, because that was part of his production.
Narrator: By layering digital effects
on his usually distinctive voice,
Tyler tucked his vocals deeper into the mix
on "Earfquake" and on the rest of the album too.
♪ Falling in love, yeah ♪
Neal: If you notice, his vocals are not very loud
on this album, and that's on purpose.
He want people to feel the music,
but kind of lean in and hear what he's saying
rather than just be right in your face.
Narrator: With panning, Neal could space out
the different vocal tracks
along with the other instruments in the mix,
establishing a sense of depth in the sound design.
Neal: Everything can't be up front.
Something has to have a backseat.
So, it's kinda like looking through...
it's like putting your hands through something
and seeing that, it's like layers. That's how I see it.
It's like layers of something on the left side,
on the right side, something's in the back,
something's in the front, something's panning across.
Narrator: That's the difference between a cluttered mix
and a full, multidimensional one.
Without mixing, some of the most
beautifully chaotic moments on "Earfquake"
wouldn't have had the same effect.
One of the richest of these moments
is the bridge that leads into the song's outro.
♪ Don't leave, it's my fault ♪
♪ I said, don't leave ♪
Neal: When it goes to that little synth line,
that part always captured me, when it was out
and everything is happening during that moment.
To have that cord progression
and that synth line going through it
and the melody of the background vocals,
I was like, wow.
To me, that's
one of the most amazing things he's ever done.
♪ Oh, don't leave ♪
♪ It's my fault ♪
♪ Don't leave ♪
♪ It's my fault ♪
♪ 'Cause when it all comes crashing down, I'll need you ♪