Member Since: 3/4/2009
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Story of how Shellbeck and Max Martin produced RYG
This is a cover article in the Swedish magazine "Studio" (with Pink on cover). Translated from Swedish (not by me), so there might be some unclear parts.
Quote:
Shellback - with Max Martin as mentor Shellback, or Johan Schuster as he’s really named, has got a rocket start on his songwriting career. 4 years ago he was an unknown amateur musician in Karlshamn(town in southern Sweden) - but that was before Max Martin took him as his apprentice. For Studio(the magazine) Shellback tells the story behind the production of Pinks Raise Your Glass.
When Shellback, alias Johan Schuster postponed this interview for the third time he didn’t just sound sincerely sorry, now the reason was slightly incomprehensible for him as well. “When I had my little studio in Karlhamn I was used to things breaking down. Back then I could only dream about sitting in a studio like this - and then the exact same thing happens here!”.
Max Martins Maratone studio has just moved from Söder to Östermalm in Stockholm, and it turns out that even with all the resources in the world it could happen just as it could in a draughty room in Karlshamn(Note:really hard line to translate as it didn’t even make any sense in Swedish). The error turns out to be a conflict between different file formats, an effect caused by a system update which had the studio stand still for a day. With a tight schedule and many large clients the consequences could be serious. Johan Schusters first own recordings were done in his tenths on a double cassette tape deck recorder. Somehow he found out that one could record a drumtrack on one side and then lay a vocal or a synth on the other. The whole drumtrack was recorded on a crappy dynamic mic. The only one he had. “Back then I did Hip Hop and bad Rage Against the Machine imitations”. Next step was a 8 track portastudio and two mics, one on the bassdrum and one on the whirl. “I really knew nothing in the beginning. Firstly I didn’t have anyone to ask, but also because I didn’t have anyone to rely on. I did everything my self. One time someone told me that you got the sound of the drums with the eq, but I didn’t get that you had to to turn on it as well. I just plugged the eq on the drums and thought that it sounded better that way. Pure placebo”. At this stage Johan had advanced to a pc with Cool Edit Pro in his kid room. Later in high school he got his first studio locale - in an old morque in the basement of a former mental hospital. “I still had school to attend so the only hours I could work were evenings and night. You can say that i cured my fear of darkness in those rooms”.
In high school Johan got in touch with Tobias Jimson, a guy from Karlhamn who had moved to Stockholm and had become a successful hip hop producer under the alias Astma.
Astma sent some beats to Johan who recorded live basslines to them in his morque studio, which by now had been upgraded to Logic. “I did, among other things, lay the bassline for a beat used by Promoe(Swedish rapper). That was pretty big. You felt like the king of Karlshamn for a while”. Later Johan began, besides being everything from drummer to singer in different hardcore-bands, to try and support himself by recording demo tapes in his studio. It was anything from death metal to singer-songwriter, and he learned himself more and more about the craftsmanship of producing, at the same time he continued to work on his own project: hardcore, some stoner-rock but also journeys into the more advanced mathmatical Meshuggah style(Swedish experimental and extreme metal band that uses a lot of polyrhythm and polymeter). “I wrote hundreds of sounds. Most of them no one has ever heard”.
Lucky by Chance
Max Martins Maratone studio has a faq. 5 out of 8 questions are about demo records. The answers to those could easily be reduced to following sentence: “No, no, no, no and no. For gods sake do not send in any material. Period“. it stands out quite obvious that Maratone goes by the motto “don’t call us, we call you”. So how could this totaly unknown metal head from Blekinge(Karlshamns province), get inside the doors at the Sistine Chapel of chart music? As with all other unlikely event: it was by chance.
Johan Schuster has a friend named Julius. A mutual friend to both of them was Max Martin. At some occasion when both Julius and Johan were in Stockholm Max Martin had asked them if they would like to come by his studio and see how he worked. “That wasn’t exactly encouraging. My folders were named “Shit Song 1” and so on, his were named “Britney” and “Backstreet Boys” and when you opened them you could pick out from the vocal of Britney Spears”.
Musical wise Johan was less impressed. The kind of pop music Max Martin worked with lay several continents from Johan’s own tracks. At they were made of a improvised drum track he then built further on instrument by instrument, as some bizarre Mikado game. But at Julius 19th birthday Johan decided to give him a special present. A pop song. After all Julian loved pop music and besides, how hard could it be?
As with everything else one doesn’t take very serious it turned out it could be quite good.
When Julius got to hear his birthday song his first reaction was:”Damn Johan, this sounds really cathy!” “Julius has a really great a&r ear. He can’t play a lot on instruments but he has an unusually good nose for when songs are a hit or not”. Julius’ praise had Johan sit down and write a real pop song as a challenge for him self, but he sent the track to Max Martin, who had Johan come to Stockholm and record a real demo. He packed a some t-shirts and a toothbrush and thought it would only be a week in Stockholm. Best case scenario two. That is now 4 years ago and the return ticket to Karlshamn still lies unused.
Became Max Martins apprentice
When Johan arrived in Stockholm in November 2006 it turned out Max Martin had other plans for Johan than just a demo recording. He became Martins apprentice. “He wanted me to sit silent on a chair in the corner of the studio and watch him do his work. There is no harder thing for me. I love music and have hundreds of ideas in the head all at once and simply can’t resist the temptation to get my hands into it”. Sometimes Johan was asked to make coffee or run a small errand, but other than that he did nothing in 2 or 3 months than stare in to the back of Max Martin and try to comprehend what music production on this level was about. After some time Johan got to do small tasks like to do an analysis of the top 10 songs on the Billboard chart, and step by step he got closer to the sound board. Literally speaking. “I quickly learned how a pop song is written. To simplify. To use the same melody through out the song but perhaps shift the octaves or just make slightly changes. But I also learned the etiquette of the studio and how to handle artists. Even if you have a really good idea you just don’t start shouting it out but wait for the right moment to do it”. Some nights it also happened Max Martin would leave early and said to Johan that he could use the studio if he wanted to stay. Experiment with a some drum sounds or test a recording of something. “I recorded some small guitar parts but I was scared to death to change the settings on the board”.
Pink loved the song right away
In February 2007 Johan went on a Europe tour with the band he was about to quit a few months later. The musical preferences set aside he would not let go of the chance to work with Max Martin, and before a sound check in Austria he got a really addictive and sticky melody inside his head. He recorded it by singing into his phone and when he returned to Stockholm he produced a demo with the melody as verse and a chorus hook. “After that demo I didn’t sit in the corner any longer”. When Pink later arrived at Maratone to write songs for her fifth album Funhouse Max Martin thought he would give Johans demo a chance. It turned out Pink loved the song and a half hour later she had the base of the lyrics ready to what would be So What, and she, Johan and Max could finish the track. “Martin suggested hip-hop drums, before that the beat was more like Seven Nation Army, and it transformed the song into becoming Pink”.
That was the second song Johan wrote during his first year of apprenticeship of Max Martin, and it went straight to the first place on the Billboard chart. When Johan called his mother and told her, he was number one in the U.S. she got very surprised and wondered why it hadn’t been in the magazines. “That’s the way it is in Karlhamn. If it’s not in Sydöstran(the local newspaper) it hasn’t happened”. Pinks latest hit, Raise Your Glass, also started as a Johan Schuster demo. He had an idea about a house riff on the guitar. Pink is not a fan of synths, she wants it in the rock style. The chopped up intro G-D-C to C-Em-D is in basic the entire song, and with a riff-like melody and following chords plus four on the floor kicks Johan and Martin finished the song as much as the could without having melody or lyrics fully completed. They brought it to Los Angeles where Pink gave it thumbs up and with her lyrics and vocals, including Max Martins little but very important twist in the E minor chord in the chorus, they finished the track in two days time. “Martin has this amazing ability to see what’s missing in a song. He hears right away where the mistake is and often has the right tools to fix it”. Johan is also very impressed by Pinks vocal performance. “Pinks is fierce when it comes to record the vocal. When she sings a chorus it’s all in one take. And it’s spot on. When we do ad-libs with other artist we usually have to sit down try to figure out what kind of ad-lib it should be, how many and so on. Pink just says “go” and the lays everything all in once. She is amazing”.
The break down was another thing that came up in Los Angeles. “In the verse and chorus we are really insisting on following our base idea. Those parts are always carefully made up . The surprise(note: might mean catch or break?) can then be made up in the moment”. In Raise Your Glass they have added an extra note or bar in the end, so the part consists of 12 bars plus an extra with a drum whirl pick up in the 13th bar, and here Pink does what 99 out of 100 singers would do as well: She starts the chorus with “So raise your” in the 12th bar before she realises her mistake and says “aww, ****”. A mistake the whole world now is familiar with.
The energy is built up gradually
There’s nothing complicated about Raise Your Glass, which also makes it perfect as a pop production, but it’s not the same to say that it’s missing details worth pointing out. The chords are the some through out the song, but you don’t hear the E minor until after the the chorus start where the melody lifts just above the E minor and then sticks. The melody is also built up around a sort of densification- or concentration principle, where the energy is built up gradually step by step. The verses are structured but at the same time have a touch of hip hop at some notes. The B-part or pre-chorus is then made up of the same phrase repeated 5 times before the chorus-pickup. The chorus then twist and turns a bit with its double phrases “never be-never be” and “come on and-come on and” which are more or less whipped in. Johan tells that now they never touch Pinks own rhythms. They tried to go in and tighten it a bit when producing So What but it only got worse. The build up also features a pretty obvious on-off structure. Partly the parts with hip hop verses and rock choruses but also in the chorus where you find the same arrangement with the sustain in the first bars of G-D-C, which then lays down on a side chain pumping fade out(note: at least that’s what I think it means) in the second half of Em-C-D.
If you just heard the record and didn’t pay much attention Raise Your Glass could sound quite simple arranged, which it in some ways also is. The accompaniment to the vocal in the first verse is only guitar and bass drum, but that bass drum is made up by a combination of 9 different kicks on their own channel. Obviously that gives you a unique bass drum sound. “I can’t in any way imagine the possibility for someone else to get the identical sound”. But you could ask yourself the question whether the target group of the song would be able to hear the difference between 7 or 9 tracks., just as well as you could just capitalize and stand in awe of Johan and Martins sense for precision of the details.
Co work the mix
The mix were finished by Serban Ghenea, who also mixed Pinks hit So What, in Los Angeles. Neither Johan or Martin were in the studio but that didn’t mean they had let their hands of the record. “He does the mix in Pro Tools and send his masterbuss to a iTunes at us so we can hear exactly what he does when he does it, and can, in example, tell him to set a guitar fixed, even though he’s on the other side of the world doing his thing”.
Because the mix is done in Pro Tools Johan and Martin sits with a mirrored desk top of the Los Angeles studio. You don’t have to wait for the mix to be send back and forth but everything can be done in real time. Almost just as fast was the stage between mix and release. The master was done Monday 4th of October. Tuesday it was released to radios and on Wednesday as download.
Artist: Pink
Titel: Raise your glass
Songwriter: Max Martin/Shellback/Pink
Studio: Maratone
Production: Max Martin/Shellback
Recording: Martin/Shellback/Michael Ilbert - guitars/Sal Ojeda - vocals in LA.
TRACK 1 - SIDE CHAIN-KICK
TRACK 2-4 - HIGH LIVEKICKS
TRACK 5-8 - HIPHOPKICKS
TRACK 9-10 - HIPHOPKICKS W. ROOM
TRACK 11 - HARD HIHAT
TRACK 12-15 - SNARE
TRACK 16-17 - CLAPS
TRACK 18-19 - TAMBOURINE
TRACK 20 - TAMBOURINE (DIFFERENT NOTES)
TRACK 21 - SHAKER
TRACK 22-25 - HIHATS (OPEN ON FORTHS, 808, DIRTY LIVEHATS, JUST IN THE CHORUS
TRACK 26-27 - TAMBOURINES (16THS)
TRACK 28 - CYMS
TRACK 29-31 - LASERS
TRACK 32-33 - CRASH (909s)
TRACK 34 - MASHINE HIHAT
TRACK 35 - LIVEDRUMS (SNARE)
TRACK 36-38 BASS (1. SYNTH CS01, 2. STUDIO ELECTRONICS SE01, 3. LIVEBASS, RICKENBACKER 4001 THRU AMPFARM)
TRACK 39-40 - GUITAR (FENDER JAGUAR THRU WAVES GTR)
TRACK 41 - ORGAN
TRACK 42-43 - GUITARS (TELES, OPEN CHORDS CHORUS, AMPFARM)
TRACK 44-45 - GUITAR (LES PAUL, MELODY, AMPFARM)
TRACK 46-47 - GUITARS (5THS, LES PAUL, AMPFARM)
TRACK 48-49 - AC GUITARS (RECORDED WITH AKG 451EB)
TRACK 50-53 - AC GUITARS (BRIDGE)
TRACK 54-55 - SOLINA
TRACK 56 - "PUNK OUTPUNCHES" (DOOOOOONG)
TRACK 57 - GUITAR (FENDER THINLINE PLAYS MELODY)
TRACK 58 - SYNTH (CS01 PLAYS MELODY)
TRACK 59 - JUNO 106 (SIDE-CHAINED IN B-HOOK)
TRACK 60-61 - GUITAR ("CRAZY GUITAR", THEY PLAYED AS FAST AS THEY COULD AND PUT DELAY AND REVERB ON IT)
TRACK 62 - SOLINA (DUBS THE MELODY)
TRACK 63 - GUITAR (SAD GUITAR, JAZZMASTER WITH REAL SPRINGREVERB THRU REAL AMP)
TRACK 64-66 PIANO (NORD, STABS THE ONES EVERY FORTH BEAT IN CHORUS)
TRACK 67 - LEAD VOX VERSE / PRE (ALL VOCALS RECORDED IN L.A WITH TELEFUNKEN ELA M 251 --> NEVE 1073 DPA --> UREI 1176 BLACK --> TELETRONIX LA2A)
TRACK 68 - LEAD VERS / PRE (ECHOFARM AND DIST)
TRACK 69-70 - TWO CHANNES THAT DUBS THE LAST WORDS IN EVERY VERSE)
TRACK 71 - VOX - DUBS EVERY OTHER SENTENCE IN THE PRE
TRACK 72 - VOX - HARMONY ON THE PRE
TRACK 73-75 - VOX - LEAD ON CHORUS AND DUBS LEFT RIGHT
TRACK 76-78 - VOX THE CHANNELS HARMONY, CENTER, LEFT, RIGHT
TRACK 79 - BACKING VOCALS - SHELLBACK, MAX MARTIN, PINK AND HER BOYFRIEND "HOCKEY VOCALS"
TRACK 80 - VOX - "TALKING ****", ALL THE SMALL COMMENTS IN THE SONG
TRACK 81-83 VOX - THE CHANNELS BOTTOM HARMONY
TRACK 84-86 - BACKING VOCALS
TRACK 87 - TOP HARMONY IN THE BRIDGE WITH FLANGER
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Raise Your Glass is definitely not my favorite Pink song by a mile, but it was interesting to read how the most successful producers work...based on the example of my fave.
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