mix of kendrick lamar

8/18/2019 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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