mix of kendrick lamar
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achievement, especially as he grew
up in extreme poverty, in the Gardena
neighbourhood of LA.
“I never had the patience to actually
learn to play an instrument or make
a beat, or something like that,” recalls Ali.“But I was a curious kid, and back in my
neighbourhood there were these Nextel
cell phones for which people wanted
custom ringtones. Growing up there was
very, very hard, but I managed to buy
an Audio-Technica 2025 microphone
for 100 bucks and an M-Audio Solo
interface and I used them to record into
Fruity Loops and Cool Edit Pro in which
I created personal ringtones for people.
The fact that I could record somebody’s
vocal and could manipulate it in all sorts
of ways really intrigued me, so I started
to explore engineering. The more I got
into it, the more I wanted to know how
the professionals did it. I did a lot of
research. I tried to learn everything I could
about recording, mixing and mastering
techniques. Being self-taught is a great
teacher. I often sat for 12-18 hours a day
to hone my skills.”
Becoming Top Dawg
To Pimp A Butterfly sounds like it had
a dyed-in-the-wool engineer and mixer
at the controls, not someone who very
modestly claims that he’s still learning
his craft. What’s more, despite his
home-schooled audio background, Ali
prefers to mix in the analogue domain
rather than ‘in the box’.
“I didn’t really have one big break, it
all came through my work with Kendrick,”
explains Ali. “We’ve been workingtogether for over seven years, and as his
career built, people wanted to know who
was doing all these effects on his vocals.
So I was gaining people’s interest through
their ears. When Kendrick signed with
Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), we had
our own makeshift studio at the house of
the company’s CEO, which was just Pro
Tools with an Mbox, a PreSonus mic pre,
and a cheap little mic. I became TDE’s
in-house engineer and we recorded at
least 12 albums for TDE at this studio!
Kendrick and I later started working
at Dr Dre’s studio. He is one of the
greatest, and he was super hands-on with
Kendrick’s M.A.A.D album.
“But Kendrick has his own sound,
so when it was time to mix that album,
Kendrick said that he wanted me to mix
it. Dre appreciated that, because he liked
a young guy who wanted to learn the
art of engineering and mixing, instead
of wanting to become a producer or
a rapper. So he took me under his wing,
and showed me a lot of techniques that
you can’t learn in books and that he
developed over the years, and that I then
made my own. I went from Pro Tools LE
with an Mbox to an SSL 4000 overnight,
and just watching Dre work and how he
got the drums and kick to smack and
so on was an inspiration. Since then I’ve
always used a board when recording
and mixing.
“People look at me as if I am crazy,
wondering whether desk does not take
longer and eats up the budget! But I don’t
care what anybody says: you can’t get that
analogue sound in the box, period. You
simply cannot recreate that sound with
plug-ins. Second, working on the desk
and with outboard gives you a hands-on
feeling with the music. Kendrick’s songs
have a lot of movement and changesin them, and when I am working with
faders I feel like I am touching the music
and am part of it. I don’t like looking at
a screen for hours. It makes me feel like
I am not free. I want to feel free when
I am working. I want to be like an artist in
a booth who can move his hands and feel
free and express himself. I don’t want to
feel like I am editing a movie.
“It may cost more to use a desk and
outboard, but you can’t cheapskate
good work. In my experience, when you
are sitting in front of a computer, you’re
missing out on something. Honestly,
when you are looking at a screen, you
are looking at numbers. Whereas when
you are on a board in analogue, you are
working with your ears. In digital you can
turn things up or down a specific amount
of decibels, or tune this or that frequency.
But how useful is that? It is a bit like going
to a school for engineering. You can learn
many valuable things there, but the one
thing that you cannot be taught is how
to hear something. Nobody else can
One of the more unusual aspects of Derek Ali’s approach to mixing is that he spends,he says, “about 80 percent of my time mixinglistening to just one Auratone speaker, so yes,in mono! Dre always told me that if I couldget something to sound amazing on crappyspeakers, it’ll sound brilliant on normalspeakers. So I try to get a great mix on the Auratone, and I’ll then go to the NS10s,and when I’m in Tom-Tom, to their main Augspurgers, with Bryston 4B amps. I makesure everything is clear and crisp and I’ll doany edits on the NS10s, and then I play it
super-loud on the mains. I mix on just one Auratone, because I like specific elements of
the mix to pop out, and listening in mono onthat speaker really helps me define that. WhenI do my pans I often use the S1 Imager to getthings to sound even wider, with things goinground in a circular motion, and happeningbehind your head. But it ’s difficult to assess your balance like that, whereas when you listenin mono, you can gauge the true value of howeverything sits in the mix. I then referencethings in stereo again, but most of the timeI’m in mono. I’ve been doing this for the lastcouple of years, and I know when tracks arephasing in stereo and what to listen for in
terms of balance. It’s something that I havedeveloped that works for me.”
The Value Of Mono
‘These Walls’
Written by Kendrick Duckworth,Terrace Martin, Larrance Dopson,James Fauntleroy & R McKinneyProduced by Terrace Martin,
Larrance Dopson & Sounwave
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teach you your own taste and tell you
what number is right. It is just a number.
Instead you have to train your ear, you
have to learn to notice the different
frequencies and sounds, and then let
your own taste decide.”
Tom-Tom Club
Kendrick Lamar is, by all accounts,
a workaholic, who loves nothing more
than spending time in the studio writing
and recording. And so work on To Pimp
A Butterfly began at the end of 2012,
immediately after the release of and
promotional tour for M.A.A.D City .
Lamar and Ali spent most of their time at
No Excuses in LA, with the other studios
mentioned in the credits for the album
used only very briefly.
“Sometimes Kendrick would do
a show somewhere, and after the show
he still wants to work, so we go to
a local studio,” recalls Ali. “He’s alsohad a studio in his tour bus ever since
we were on tour for the first album. If
he didn’t have that, he’d be recording
in GarageBand! So we made it easier
for him, and set up this studio in the
bus, with a simple setup, consisting of
a Pro Tools HD rack, two mics, the Sony
C800G and a Telefunken U47 and an
Avalon mic pre. Nothing crazy, just stuff
that allows us to get down ideas. But our
main headquarters for the making of the
album was Tom-Tom (the nickname for
No Excuses Studio), which is owned by
Interscope. It has Dre’s former SSL 4000
G+, the last G-series ever built, in 1991.
He mixed his album The Chronic (1992)
on it and Eminem’s The Slim Shady LP
(1999), and lots of other famous albums,
so it’s a real classic board in rap history.”
Far more live musicians and fewer
samples were used than is normal on
a hip-hop album. “The main guys who
were there for the entire making of
the album were Kendrick, myself and
producers Terrace Martin, Rahki, Tae
Beast and Sounwave [the latter two are
members of the Digi+Phonics production
collective, the main in-house producers
for TDE ]. That was the core personnel,
and we were involved from day one
until the day we finished the last mix.
We consider each other brothers, and
Kendrick does not look at this as purely
his album. When we were in the studio
he talked about it as our album. He
brought everybody in and we voted
on how things should sound and work.
When we played what we were doing topeople, many were just dumbfounded
and said that they’d never heard
anything like this before. For this reason
the other producers had to be around
and feel the energy and connect with
Kendrick’s vision.
“The other producers came in when
Kendrick had ideas for working with
them, guys like Pharrell, Thundercat and
Flying Lotus. Boi-1da is based in Toronto
and he was one of the only ones who
didn’t come over to the studio. The
general working method in hip-hop of
the producer sending over some beats
didn’t work for this album. There were
Most of To Pimp A Butterfly was recorded and mixed at Dr Dre’s No Excuses Studio.
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it starts to sound like it’s underwater,
giving a real funky effect. I also had
the S1 Imager on the bass, to give it
more presence.”
Vocals: Waves Renaissance
Compressor, SSL Channel & S1
Imager, EMT 250, Empirical Labs
Distressor, Fairchild 670, SSL desk EQ &
compression, AMS RMX16.
“There are quite a few plug-ins on
Kendrick’s vocal. He has a real raspy,
mid-range vocal, so I use the Renaissance
Compressor to smooth that out. I have
it in manual and opto modes, with the
threshold all the way down to -18, so if
anything in the mid-range leaps out too
much, it keeps that in check. I use the
SSL Channel strip on his vocals, just for
high- or low-pass filtering, because most
of my vocal EQ is done on the board.
I also like to use the S1 Imager, again
because of his voice being so raspy andmid-rangey, and the Imager opens it up.
A perfect analogy is to think of a blanket
on a bed which is tied in a knot, and then
you open it up and spread the blanket
over the bed. The Imager opens up his
vocals and allows it sit on top of the track
in a similar way. For outboard I used
the EMT 250 reverb. The first time the
studio took that out, I was like: ‘What’s
that? A refrigerator?’ I also like to use the
Distressor on his lead, because it adds
some grit and presence at the top. So the
RCompressor and S1 smooth and widen
out his vocal sound, and the Distressor
opens up the top end, making it crisp and
Ableton Live, including drums, bass
and keyboards, plus some effect tracks,
followed by guitars and trumpet; then, in
light blue, are visible a number of Ali’s aux
effect tracks, followed by two lead vocal
tracks, horn tracks and more effect tracks
in browny-green, and the guest vocal
tracks mostly in darker blue. It is notable
that there are hardly any plug-ins on the
drums, a fair amount on the other music
instruments, and a lot on the guest vocals.
Instrument tracks: SSL desk EQ,
API 550, Neve 2254, SPL Transient
Designer, Pultec EQP-1A, Waves
Doubler & S1 Imager.
Ali explains: “This is actually one of my
cleanest mixes. I didn’t do anything crazy
on the drums, just SSL desk EQ, plusthe API 550 EQ on the snare, and Neve
compressor as parallel compression on
the drums as a whole. I also used the SPL
Transient Designer on the drums. A lot of
Kendrick’s music is really bass-heavy, and
the API and the SPL allow me to get the
drums to sit next to the bass and vocals
in way that gets them to smack and be in
your face without overpowering the other
elements. I’ll take out some mid-range
with the API, around 1kHz or so, and I’ll
add high end, to get that high presence,
and I’ll then take out high end on the SSL
again, so it’s not piercing your ears. I do
that a lot on snares in general. The API
gives me a really nice top end for that
smack, and the SPL gives me that thump.
I used that chain on a lot of the drum
tracks on the album. I like my drums to
be clear and to hit hard and be present in
the mix but not overpowering. I try to get
every mix to sound both dirty and clean, if
that makes sense.
“The Neve livens the drums up with
some added body and mid-range. I also
use it on the vocal, the brass and the
guitars. In this song I had a Pultec EQ on
the bass. The plug-ins on the synths and
keyboards are mostly there to trim things,taking out unwanted frequencies and stuff
like that. I don’t like to boost frequencies
with the Waves plug-ins, because to me it
sounds like they are thinning the sound.
I’ll add frequencies on the board and will
shape things there until they fit. Below
the instruments are a number of aux
tracks which I use in the third verse, where
I added a lot of crazy stuff. The [Waves ]
Doubler acts on Thundercat’s bass, so
Kendrick Lamar.
Derek Ali’s engineering skills were tested bythe amount of live recording that took place inthe making of To Pimp A Butterfly . “I mostlyuse our Stephen Paul-modified TelefunkenU47 to record Kendrick, going through aNeve 1073 mic pre and then a Tube-TechCL1B compressor, which gives a great, fat, warm vocal sound, especially in conjunction with the U47. Sometimes I’ll run his vocalsthrough a Pultec EQP-1A3. On ‘Alright’ Iused a U67 instead of a U47 on his voice andon ‘For Free?’ two Electro-Voice mics, theRE20 and the 666. We stacked the two EVmics on top of each other, and this gave a warm, almost distorted sound. I use plug-inson his vocals during recording, because it’seasier and quicker, and they tend to be the Waves Renaissance Compressor, Metaflanger,De-Esser, SSL Channel, S1 Imager and the[ Avid ] Air Chorus.
“The jazz band was also recorded at NoExcuses. On the drums I had an RCA 77 forthe overheads left, and a Neumann U48 forthe overheads right, an RCA 44 in front ofthe kit, and an AKG C24 as room mic, withone side pointed at the drums and one at thesax. The close mic on the sax was a NeumannM49, and I had a Neumann U48 on theupright bass, and on the piano AKG 414EBs with C12 capsules. That was it. All mics wentstraight into the SSL board, and I had mono
compression on everything.“The sax, trumpets and trombones on
the rest of the album were recorded with acombination of RCA 44, RCA 77 and Royer121 ribbon mics. We re-recorded the musicof ‘That Lady’, the Isley Brothers song that was used for ‘i’ [the album’s lead single ], and forthat I had an AKG D112 on the inside of thekick and a Neumann 47FET on the outside,Shure SM57s on the snare top and bottom,Sennheiser 421s on the toms, NeumannKM84 on the ride, Shure SM81 on the hi-hat,Neumann 87s for overheads, and AKG C24and [Telefunken ELAM ] 251 as room micsand the Neumann TLM170 as room floormic. The guitar cabinet had an SM57 andRoyer 121 in front of it, and the keys and bass were DI.”
Like every engineer, Ali does rough mixesduring recording, but he only used plug-insat this point. Because his final mixes weredone on the board using significant amountsof outboard, the final mix was a very separatestage. “In some respects my mixes are likereverse engineering, with me taking outplug-ins, and replacing them with desk EQand compression and outboard. In some casesI replaced the Metaflanger and the S1 withthe Eventide H3500, for my pitch-shift andchorus effects. Other effects I often usedduring the mix were the Neve 2254, for drumparallel compression, Dbx 160x and LA3Acompressors, the Dbx 902, if I wanted to
replace the Waves De-Esser, and the L exicon480L for reverb.”
Miking Up
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allowing his vocals to cut through.
“The aux reverb tracks are mostly used
for the vocals in that final section. You
can hear I have vocals automated to pan
left and right, and the S1 Imager makes
them sound almost 3D, with stuff going
on behind you. The reason I did that is
because the song gives you a really happy
feeling in the first two verses, it’s like
a wedding party, even if when you listen
carefully, you’ll hear Kendrick is singing
about, excuse my language, pussy. But in
the last verse he’s talking about people
in jail, and so I added loads of effects
to give you that feeling. As an engineer
you manipulate sound to get certain
emotions. For that reason I don’t want
people to listen to my mixes. I want them
to experience my mixes!“Anna’s vocals were mainly treated in
the box, with minimal stuff done on the
board, just some shaping with the board
EQ. The same with Bilal’s voice. I did send
both their voices through an outboard
Fairchild 670, for parallel compression.
I didn’t do much to Thundercat’s voice
either, it was mainly a question of trying
to get it to sound airy, and for that I used
a combination of SSL board EQ and reverb
from the AMS RMX16. I might have initially
done that with an in-the-box reverb, which
I removed during the final mix.”
Stereo mix: SSL bus compressor,
GML 8200.
“As I mentioned before, we mixed back
into Pro Tools, via a Lavry Gold A-D
converter, and to half-inch tape. Whether
I treated the two-mix depended on
how loud my mix was. If it is super-loud
already, I probably won’t do anything,
but the majority of the time I use the
SSL stereo bus compressor, and I also
will often use a GML EQ, just to tune it
a little bit. The album was mastered from
the tape reels. Kendrick had been sayingfrom the beginning of the project that he
wanted a vintage ’70s sound, and doing
my research I figured that mixing to tape
was the best way to achieve that. We tried
it, and we noticed how much warmer my
mixes came out when they were printed
to tape. Kendrick and I loved it. So in the
end what we did was a hybrid of new and
old approaches. You use the things from
the past, and then you modernise them as
best as you can.
“We really want for people to listen to
this album from top to bottom, without
skipping songs. This meant that the entire
flow of the album had to be cohesive,
and build in a certain way. So after we
finished all the mixes we sequenced the
album in a new Pro Tools session using
the Lavry mix prints, and created a kind
of blueprint of the album, adding effects
and skits and bits and pieces to get the
songs to flow into each other. We then
replaced the Lavry mix prints in this Pro
Tools session with digitised versions
of the mixes that were mastered off
the half-inch tape, and did some more
fine-tuning. We had a lot of help with theentire mastering and sequencing process
from our mastering engineer Mike Bozzi,
at Bernie Grundman Mastering. So the
album is one long piece of work from top
to bottom. Listening to the entire album
became a whole experience that makes
you think about things and the emotions
that are there.”
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