We've got an obsession with the Phil Collins gated toms.
That's in "Rockabye," that ridiculous fill.
But I can’t show you the original sample because I’ll get sued.
Is it Phil Collins?
No, it’s much worse.
I've had had this instrumental.
It was basically just a beat and that pattern.
And then writing the track with Steve Mac and Amar Malik.
Steve kind of took that pattern and embellished it.
And he had it on like a pizzicato setting on the mellotron.
There was a version of this song, slight melancholy in melodies and also maybe lyrical themes.
But with a quite uplifting rhythm track.
Then we played that to Ina Wroldsen.
She got into the emotional head space of a mom when she was writing the lyrics.
Then I feel like when Sean Paul got involved.
He kind of made it more kind of direct.
And then we orchestrated it for string quartet later on.
So this is the cello.
So first you get these nice plucks.
And then you've got this ... We actually muted the viola there.
I think it was too much.
Violin one, controversial line to be playing.
And violin two is like a lower harmony.
But it's not quite epic enough to kind of compete with Sean Paul so we had to use some
nice reverb, which is this valhalla reverb, which I love.
You can choose the color of it, like 70's, 80's, or now.
But we go with the 70's and it sounds like that.
And just makes it a lot more grand and kind of
appropriate for Sean Paul to shout-out all the single moms.
I've got this like set-up with Push, which is how we play it live.
This is really cheating, but so you just get one note there.
And then we can add a chord plug-in, which adds a minor third on top of every note.
So you can add a scale plug-in, which is like forces any MIDI to go in to stuck in A minor.
So, you're hearing Operator there, which is just like an FM synth in Ableton.
In "Rockabye" it's layered up with like a Polysix to do those [plays music] that main kind of...
Which is like a VST version of the Korg Polysix made by Korg.
It's pretty much like the default sound if you open up one of these.
It's just like very lazy.
Same as Operator.
It's just like a sine wave.
But just take the cutoff on the filter down a little bit to get that [plays music] nice
kind of soft sound to make sure it's on Polyphonic mode.
So yeah so that is the kind of main thing.
And then there's this riff that comes in in the chorus, which is like a counter melody
to, "Rockabye baby."
With a little bit of LFO to modulate the pitch at the end.
Just a tiny bit so you get that kind of [plays music].
You hear it kind of wobbles.
We made it a bit more interesting actually with this crystallizer plug-in from Sound
Toys, which is really nice.
It's like a reverse delay. And you get like these reverse echoes.
Post chorus.
This is what I think gives it like an Ace of Base feel.
There was a big debate whether or not to do this because it kind of felt like it was pushing
it maybe down a "Cod Reggae" vibe which we were a bit nervous about.
But when we heard it in there it just felt really right.
That kind of offbeat
So we tracked Anne-Marie in Club Ralph. The main studio belongs to Mark Ralph who's an
amazing producer and mix engineer.
It's Mark's vocal chain.
It would have been a neve pre-amp.
Probably into LA2, like teletronics, compressor just to keep the level.
And then he likes to ... He'll probably get annoyed with me for showing you this, but
he uses Smack!, this compressor on everything, which destroys vocals if you want.
But if you just apply it lightly, it's really good.
So there's a tom.
It’s just a sampled tom put in Ableton and just pitched down.
On an automation.
And then you gate it.
You might want to gate before the compression, as well, actually.
There you go, that's better.
Oh yeah, shit, you've got to put the reverb before the gate.
I’m being an idiot.
The Seagulls, did you notice The Seagulls in "Rockabye" in verse one?
So, that's seagulls going into shimmer just to give it this oceanic kind of harbor feel.
So that's Grace cello with the harmony coming in and that's got like Smack!, a bit of our
vintage going into some H-delay, analog mode off, and then a nice harmony.
So it’s quite, it’s taller than it is wide.
So that’s a good sign.
So we got a few things in on our next album that were supposed to be from the first that
kind of where we are addressing now.