Start to Finish| Introduction | Critical Mass studios| 00:00 | Jason Bentley: Okay, well here we are in the
Santa Monica at Critical Mass Studios. A friend
| | 00:04 | of mine named Tobias Enhus is a
composer here. And regarding the Twilight's
| | 00:11 | Remix, I was initially contacted by
the film company putting up this movie
| | 00:16 | Twilight, which seems to have a
tremendous buzz and I was not aware really of
| | 00:21 | how big this project is. But they
wanted to do as a promotional marketing
| | 00:26 | piece, a remix companion to a
particular score queue, so essentially taking a
| | 00:31 | theme from the film and having it remixed.
And I have done remixes over the
| | 00:37 | years for a lot of different artists.
| | 00:39 | This is a very specific type of
project though. Since it's a remix of a film
| | 00:44 | queue and in a lot of ways a
romantic theme, it presents a lot of unique
| | 00:48 | challenges in how we approach it
because it's not something that necessarily
| | 00:52 | is going into a dance club or is
going to be played by a DJ. It's more of a
| | 00:57 | promotional thing and then it's based
on a film score, which is very different
| | 01:00 | from a pop song, or something more
specific like that. So it's based around a
| | 01:06 | melody. So that's been some of the challenge.
| | 01:09 | But anyway I wanted to work with a
friend of mine, Tobias, on this project and he
| | 01:14 | has a specific skill set that I felt
would bring a lot to this project in
| | 01:18 | particular. So here we are at Critical
Mass and we are going to head down to
| | 01:23 | the studio space and talk a bit with
Tobias and really break down the whole
| | 01:28 | session and what we did to the
original queue, which is composed by I should
| | 01:33 | say, a composer named Carter Burwell is
the composer of the Twilight film score.
| | 01:39 | So this is a specific queue, it's a
romantic queue, and it's called Bella's
| | 01:43 | Lullaby. So let's take a look, we are
going to head down to Tobias' Studio.
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| Laying out the project| 00:00 | Jason Bentley: Here we are in Critical
Mass Studios. This is my friend Tobias.
| | 00:04 | Jason Bentley: Hi, Tobias!
| | 00:04 | Tobias Enhus: Greetings.
| | 00:05 | Jason Bentley: So this is where I have brought
the Twilight remix. Now as I mentioned it's a
| | 00:13 | special challenge, this particular
queue because it's a film score queue and
| | 00:19 | it's also a romantic theme. So it's
not something that would immediately
| | 00:24 | suggest, oh remix. Throw some beats in
there, take it to a club, have a DJ play it.
| | 00:29 | It's not really that kind of a
project but for this and part of being a
| | 00:37 | producer with a good vision of the court, vision
of the field is understanding what kind of talents
| | 00:45 | you can put in play on a project to
realize it in the best way. So this is
| | 00:49 | really why I approached Tobias to work on this.
| | 00:51 | Tobias' background is as a composer.
I have known Tobias for a number of years.
| | 00:57 | We met a few years back and we have
collaborated on a few different things over
| | 01:01 | the years. And I just knew that he had
a particular skill set that would really
| | 01:05 | help this particular project, simply
because it's really about trying to
| | 01:11 | extrapolate a score melody, a romantic
melody and draw that out more. So with
| | 01:18 | his skills, his background and also
just knowing him personally, he has a
| | 01:23 | special affinity for electronics and
sound design along with score. So that
| | 01:31 | sort of skill set meant that he was
the perfect person to be on the team for
| | 01:35 | this project.
| | 01:37 | As far as how we began this process,
as producer I described what kind of
| | 01:46 | approach I wanted. I played some things
for Tobias just as a stylistic example.
| | 01:51 | There's certainly a prominent melody
in this romantic theme. It's clearly a
| | 01:58 | romantic theme. And that's the
main thing, other than some orchestral
| | 02:03 | flourishes. Those are some of the
things that you immediately latch on to and
| | 02:08 | we can play a bit of that from the
original Carter Burwell piece of Bella's Lullaby.
| | 02:13 | (Music playing. Piano.)
| | 02:24 | Jason Bentley: So that's the money shot.
That's really the hook. There's another brief queue
| | 02:31 | which is more of the orchestral
flourish, I think it's something that Tobias
| | 02:34 | would probably agree was something that
jumped out and was just pleasing to the ear.
| | 02:38 | You know it was like okay, this is something
we would like to see repeating and becoming.
| | 02:43 | Tobias Enhus: Yeah, it had a very sort of
organic, nice texture to it. But that was the
| | 02:49 | piano a bit singled out and here's the
orchestral bit that we kind of singled out too.
| | 02:55 | (Music playing. Strings.)
| | 03:05 | Jason Bentley: Also we should say that these
elements are drawn out of the multi-tracks from
| | 03:10 | the original. So we were provided with
the session from the score session. So,
| | 03:18 | there are actually quite a few
challenges and difficulties in reining that
| | 03:22 | information in and that music in
because it's not something that's to a grid,
| | 03:26 | and is syncopated exactly.
And so in the early stages --
| | 03:30 | Tobias Enhus: Someone conducted that so
there's a free hand in there somewhere. And as with
| | 03:35 | most score there's like a little
fermatas, little pauses and breaks, and even
| | 03:40 | if they may have a click track
somewhere in the back in their head and through
| | 03:43 | headphones, it's still a hand that's
conducting it. So tempos are being moved,
| | 03:49 | shifted and they may come back and land
on the beat, but that's a little bit of
| | 03:53 | the challenge of sort of
just getting it on the grid.
| | 03:58 | Once that was somewhat established,
I basically went off on my own and just
| | 04:02 | started dial up the toys and see what
I could get out of it. And taking the
| | 04:09 | parts that we decided on, latched
onto the theme, make sure that we still
| | 04:15 | retained the theme but still kind of
build the body around it, and really just
| | 04:20 | send it through all kinds of processes.
So for something like this it's always
| | 04:25 | fun to throw the bits into Kyma,
see what happens, toss it around and
| | 04:29 | see what we can get out of it.
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| Studio tools| 00:00 | Jason Bentley: Now in his process and shaping,
it's interesting to know some of the programs
| | 00:05 | in his creative process. One program
that you can talk about a little more is
| | 00:09 | called Kyma, which Tobias, you really
subscribe to this. And different programs
| | 00:15 | that are more familiar to composers
such as Logic or Pro Tools or what have you
| | 00:21 | can essentially be routed through Kyma.
Kyma gives you control over certain
| | 00:27 | sound parameters but it lets you
play in the analog or the digital world.
| | 00:32 | Tobias Enhus: It always is a very big part
of my tool set, because it really is Lego for
| | 00:39 | sound basically. It allows me to
build anything that I want in essence.
| | 00:43 | Jason Bentley: In this case you actually
create the framework for what Kyma is doing with the
| | 00:50 | musical parts that you are sending it. So
that's what we are looking at here on the screen.
| | 00:53 | Tobias Enhus: Yeah, this is basically the
little program map that I made in Kyma that creates
| | 01:01 | this sort of rhythmic pulsing loops.
So I am feeding the parts of the queue
| | 01:09 | into and basically this is a part
random process, part controlled process of
| | 01:16 | just creating interesting evolving
bits. But it was really created for this
| | 01:22 | project because we needed some sort of
a basic structure of a bed, and that we
| | 01:28 | could latch on to and then add our
drums to and just set a nice tone.
| | 01:34 | Jason Bentley: Describe
this kind of flow chart setup.
| | 01:36 | Tobias Enhus: Yeah, this is the New York
subway system right here that we are seeing.
| | 01:42 | Basically, what I built for this
particular little gadget is basically on this
| | 01:48 | end we are seeing here is a drum
machine with little pieces of analog drum
| | 01:56 | modules, all connected, and the flow
is going from left to the right. And
| | 02:01 | basically, every little act that we
see here, I can open up and we see the
| | 02:06 | parameters that I can change here.
| | 02:09 | But what is cool about this
environment, it's basically a programming
| | 02:16 | environment that allows you to build
your own pieces of software and then once
| | 02:21 | you are done with writing the software,
you execute it on the hardware, which
| | 02:27 | holds a tremendous amount of DSP power.
So if I make a comparison, for instance
| | 02:33 | like Reactor or something like that of
people may have heard of, is that inside
| | 02:39 | these blue fields I can now write
completely new programs. I can write
| | 02:44 | completely new code, if I wanted to.
| | 02:47 | So this allows me to keep an open-
ended Lego system. I can basically reshape
| | 02:51 | the Lego pieces that I have available
for myself to create larger structures.
| | 02:56 | And once I have created a large
structure and I am happy with that, I can just
| | 03:01 | fold it down like this, whap!, and now
it's just saved as one little application.
| | 03:06 | Now I can grab this application and
then start to build new structures again.
| | 03:10 | So it's an infinite amount of tree
building, branching out and building these
| | 03:15 | structures that I can do with audio.
And therefore, you also have really the
| | 03:22 | benefit of the hardware that you have
an enormous amount of computing power.
| | 03:25 | You have 40 processors available to do
the computational part of this. So it
| | 03:31 | really allows you to freely create any
sort of sonic structure that you want.
| | 03:35 | So for the main melody part, we
talked about having a little bit more of a
| | 03:41 | retro sound and to do that I relied
quite heavily on my good friend, the
| | 03:48 | Synclavier. That was the iconic
beast from early 1980s and the rest
| | 03:55 | machines hides back in the closet here.
So that's basically a little super
| | 04:03 | computer from 1984 and it gives a
pretty cool low-fi, but yet a gritty sound to it.
| | 04:14 | I'll play a little bit of a melody
bit here again, but this is all coming
| | 04:19 | from d Synclavier, now
together with Carter Burwell's piano.
| | 04:23 | (Music playing.)
| | 04:42 | Tobias Enhus: I'll stop there. So basically
various sections of the piece, we will hear more
| | 04:46 | of the Synclavier, less of the
Synclavier, but it's just a basis to give it a
| | 04:50 | little bit more of a body to stand up
to the quite much larger arrangement that
| | 04:58 | it is now with drums and bases and
things like that than where it came from,
| | 05:03 | which was sort of very sensitive,
quiet little romantic queue.
| | 05:07 | Jason Bentley: Is this an endangered species now,
because can't people just buy this in a box?
| | 05:12 | Tobias Enhus: No. It is an endangered species.
I mean it is a dinosaur absolutely. And it's a
| | 05:17 | little bit of a novelty to use it. But
even to this day, this machine sounds
| | 05:23 | better than anything out there. So if
you want to be the athlete of audio, and
| | 05:30 | yeah you can run on the racetrack and
maybe you'll get a good time. But if you
| | 05:33 | want to win the Olympic games in
terms of who's the best sounding here,
| | 05:39 | the Synclavier gives that one little
extra edge. So I am sticking to it.
| | 05:47 | Jason Bentley: So now you see why I came to
Tobias in Critical Mass, as he does the heavy
| | 05:51 | lifting, the big guns out with
the Synclaviers. So very cool.
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| Detailing the process| 00:00 | Tobias Enhus: One of things that I wanted
to do with this particular piece, because again
| | 00:05 | that it's an orchestral piece and it's
piano based and it's little sort of a
| | 00:10 | bluesy theme, and nothing really ever
repeats itself. One of the things that we
| | 00:17 | needed to do was basically to create
something that actually can repeat itself
| | 00:23 | to get a couple of phrases that are
cool and get sort of more contemporary
| | 00:28 | structure to it and what I did here on
this thing is I basically did a filter
| | 00:35 | sequencing with beats
underneath it that controls the sound.
| | 00:40 | So basically I take a little short
clip, and it plays in the same tempo and
| | 00:43 | everything. But Kyma is now
basically filtering the sample in time to the
| | 00:52 | music and therefore I am getting a lot
of interesting sort of little morphing
| | 00:57 | bits that are coming out, little
musical phrases that comes out of this and
| | 01:01 | that can stringed together into a
longer passage. But you are still retaining
| | 01:04 | like perhaps one tonal center, a few
chosen chords as opposed to jumping all
| | 01:09 | over the place and with key changes and
things like that, just again to create
| | 01:13 | a nice interesting bed.
| | 01:15 | What I did here in Kyma was
basically I built an essence, a small little
| | 01:20 | software app just for this particular
song so that we could do this sort of
| | 01:26 | rhythmic sequencing with filters just
to create a cool vibe. And let me play a
| | 01:34 | little bit of the actual remix here.
| | 01:38 | (Music playing.)
| | 01:47 | So what we are hearing right now...
| | 01:52 | So what we are hearing right now is
basically a very short excerpt of the queue,
| | 01:58 | actual queue, and mainly what we are
hearing is now this process bed coming
| | 02:03 | from the Kyma. But we are still retaining
a lot of the essence of what makes up
| | 02:07 | the queue. And on top of that I am
throwing some well-chosen bits that Jason
| | 02:15 | and I selected to basically build up the track.
| | 02:19 | Jason Bentley: Now you notice there is some
dialog and we felt that that was potentially
| | 02:25 | important to bring a whole lyric or
narrative to the remix. Originally, we are
| | 02:31 | dealing with a very short film queue;
it's maybe two-and-a-half minutes in its
| | 02:34 | original form. So in order to draw that
out to a remix as you would know it, we
| | 02:40 | definitely needed some other ideas
in play. But it also helped us to find
| | 02:45 | sections of the remix in a
traditional song form and tone as well.
| | 02:50 | You hear initially opening with more of
a relaxed kind of a tone, establishing
| | 02:57 | tone. And then we helped to build
through the dialog bits and creating almost
| | 03:03 | this lyric field. We build into more
intensity. We build into the feel of an
| | 03:10 | arrangement, not strictly speaking
verse, chorus, verse, chorus but just the
| | 03:14 | sense of being taken somewhere,
storytelling. Then with Tobias obviously
| | 03:22 | there's so much potential in the
program and in some ways, my role and in
| | 03:30 | trying to fit it as a remix is dumbing
down that process. And making at byte
| | 03:35 | size portions, because I think Tobias'
world, there's no limit in writing.
| | 03:42 | He wouldn't necessarily write in
repetitive phrases. It's just not part of your
| | 03:47 | DNA necessarily.
| | 03:48 | Tobias Enhus: I would say scores. The
mantra in film scoring is try to constantly
| | 03:55 | develop and never repeat
something. So that's very ingrained.
| | 03:58 | Jason Bentley: And in the remix world, that's
the name of the game. So those two points, the
| | 04:03 | lyric through dialogue snippets and
through just trying to create more of a
| | 04:10 | repetitive, sequenced kind of
arrangement are some of the decisions that are
| | 04:17 | being made while he's creating and
processing. And then with beats which
| | 04:23 | everyone thinks of, oh you are
remixing it, you are going to throw beats in
| | 04:25 | there. So indeed it's a process of
writing the beats and getting the feel right.
| | 04:30 | I mean there are so many
subtleties in that part of it.
| | 04:33 | Tobias Enhus: That
really came at the end though.
| | 04:36 | Jason Bentley: Yeah, it does come at the end,
that's true. And in most of the musical composition --
| | 04:39 | Tobias Enhus: Sometimes, I mean I would
imagine -- I don't start with a beat and we certainly
| | 04:44 | didn't start with a beat
on this one. Which was cool.
| | 04:47 | Jason Bentley: And also it was about the
feel and the subtlety of the beat, the mix, very
| | 04:54 | subtle aspects, volumes of things in
making it feel right. Just the way that
| | 04:59 | something swings. You don't really
think that that much attention is put to
| | 05:04 | such minute detail but it really is
in order for it to really feel right. And
| | 05:09 | I would love to play sort of the
transitional section of this remix and then
| | 05:13 | how things get really much more intense.
| | 05:16 | (Music playing.)
| | 06:08 | Jason Bentley: So you know the second half of
it really has a whole different character from
| | 06:13 | the opening and establishing tone,
which is great. It allows us to musically
| | 06:19 | and in effect lyrically tell a story and
take people somewhere. And when you are
| | 06:23 | trying to get that out of a very
brief two-and-a-half minute queue, I mean
| | 06:27 | that's the challenge with the remix.
| | 06:30 | Tobias Enhus: And the structure of the song
of being sort of divided into two segments, a
| | 06:35 | little bit, more cooler laid-back
version with more emphasis on the dialog and
| | 06:39 | the atmosphere and then the little
bit more aggressive backend. It's also
| | 06:43 | obviously the whole vampire
duality that's played into.
| | 06:49 | Jason Bentley: Sure, yes.
| | 06:49 | Tobias Enhus: That was just
sort of a vehicle to get into.
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| Mastering the track| 00:00 | Jason Bentley: So we are really trying to
just finish up and do a final pass, and this is
| | 00:03 | after a number of revisions. The
client had a lot of input, some of which was
| | 00:08 | very insightful, a closing phrase of the
vampire for instance from the dialog as
| | 00:16 | kind of a resolve because indeed the
movie features vampires and all of that.
| | 00:20 | So it's a nice closing finish. It's
actually a really good idea. So we are
| | 00:25 | doing that within Logic. Tobias is
doing all kinds of volume adjustments and
| | 00:30 | arrangement issues and you can
actually see that in the session here. Tobias,
| | 00:34 | if you would even describe what some of these.
| | 00:36 | Tobias Enhus: Yeah, absolutely. Again, we had
a couple of passes, like final passes, and once
| | 00:41 | you listen to it through different
speakers we came to conclusion we had to
| | 00:45 | bring down the dialogue a little bit.
There was like minor tweaks, and finally
| | 00:51 | just a little pass through the SSL
Duende Plug-in, which is a combination of a
| | 00:58 | hardware and software so you can
control it on your screen. That's a nice
| | 01:04 | mastering suite. And yeah,
that's pretty much it I would say.
| | 01:10 | Jason Bentley: Does the SSL do just a nice,
finishing sound to it in bringing some of the frequencies?
| | 01:18 | Tobias Enhus: Yeah, basically the SSL has a
very nice organic -- again, and since we are
| | 01:26 | doing everything inside of computer
these days, it's very important to find the
| | 01:32 | plug-ins that still retain the analog
feel that we are used to with like large
| | 01:41 | studios from 1980s and 1990s. And the
SSL Plug-in, to me, has a lot of that
| | 01:50 | extra little air that comes out in
the high end, and also gives it a very
| | 01:56 | classic, good compression that is
very fitting for radio and pop play.
| | 02:03 | Jason Bentley: And that's where also I come in.
I'll be playing it on the radio and then as
| | 02:09 | far as the film company, my
understanding is that this remix will be offered as
| | 02:14 | a pre-ticket purchase incentive. So
you are one of the first people to buy
| | 02:19 | tickets for this movie, you can
download a free remix, which we have done.
| | 02:25 | And I am calling this the Critical
Mass Remix. It gives it a nifty little
| | 02:30 | naming convention. But we are also both
credited there. But more, the Critical
| | 02:35 | Mass, it feels a little sexier, and so
that's the studio where we are at. So,
| | 02:42 | hopefully you will see it and hear it
out there and I'll be playing it on the
| | 02:46 | radio and it all just dovetail brilliantly.
| | 02:50 | Tobias Enhus: Yeah, I hope you like it.
| | 02:52 | Jason Bentley: Yeah, hopefully.
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| | Bella's Lullaby (Critical Mass Remix) |
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