Tutorial: The making of...
Fort Minor 'Remember the Name' (Dirty Transformer Remix) by PJ Burnhill
http://www.mikseri.net/pjburnhill

Equipment

• Apple PowerPC G4, 733Mhz, 1.5Gig RAM, OS X 10.3.9 ‘Panther’
• Emagic EMI 6/2m Audio Interface
• Evolution MK-249C2 MIDI Controller Keyboard
• Generic Aiwa ‘HiFi’ speakers (??? See below)

Software, Effects and Instruments Used

• Apple Logic Pro 6
• Native Instruments Kontakt 1.5
• Audacity
• Logic Pro
o Effecst: Channel EQ, Compressor, MultiPressor, StereoSpread, Spreader, PitchShift 2, Phaser, Flanger, Warp Drive, SubBass, Tape Delay, Stereo Delay, Limiter
o Instruments: ES2
• AU Matrix Reverb (Apple)
• Izotope Vinyl (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/)
• Alphakanal Buzzer 2 (http://www.alphakanal.de/snipsnap/space/Buzzer2)
• Urs Heckmann Rumblence:Zoyd (http://www.u-he.com/zoyd/)
• Stack of free samples scavenged off the web


Preliminary Notes – Please Read:

• If you can’t be bothered to read the whole article, read the ‘Introduction’ and jump to ‘The Sound’ and read from there onwards.

• This tutorial is mainly about music production (loosely speaking) not about song writing! I.e. I don’t assume that you like the song as a song, but that you like the sound quality, the sounds and techniques to some extend and are interested in learning how this was done. This said I’m aware that there are places where distinctions are blurred and I’m writing about things that work for me; they might not work for you. You have been warned!

• Even though I’ve received a lot of good comments on the sound quality of the track I’m the first to say that it’s nowhere near a commercial track release. I was under strict deadline (only had 2 full days from start to finish) and you can read at the end of the tutorial what I would’ve done to it have I had the time to do it.

• You can download all track samples from http://ccmixter.org/media/people/pjburnhill. Samples are released under CC BY-licence (see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/); basically credit me in your music, be it commercial or non-commercial. And I would love to hear how you used them; drop me a line!

• You can look at my screenshots with comments at http://picasaweb.google.com/pjburnhill/RememberDirtyTransformerRemix


Introduction

Way back when I was using Impulse Tracker and especially in the early years after buying my Yamaha A3000 sampler and getting hold of Emagic's Logic I really didn't know what I was doing when it came to music production. Not that it made any difference, you just made do with what you knew and I was happy as larry whenever I finished off a tune that people seemed to like. No matter if most of those people were your friends who just wanted to ‘encourage’ you; “It’s really good! You should keep on working on it! Especially on that bass, I’m sure it sounds great on your speakers!” I was happy about the comments and never seemed to get the hint of sarcasm in their words!
It wasn’t until I started to talk to some guys with some experience and came across some tutorials on mixing and sound design on the Internet that I really started to understand the complexities of making a piece of music sound decent . When I was reading of other people’s tutorials on how they made their tracks I learned a lot about techniques and ‘protocol’ that later came to save me hours in production process and actually started to make my tracks sound like they’re actual music… of sort.
So, since I’ve benefited so much of those tutorials and studying HND Music Production at University of Brighton in UK I’ve learned a few things, I thought I might as well write one off my track for anyone who might be interested! And I’m not expecting people to get all excited about what’s written in here, what I have in mind is that ‘me’ 10 years back when I had the tools but could’ve really used a little help on those simple little things that make a big difference! So here we go…

Download and read the whole article by clicking here. (60kb Word Document)

Or if you prefer reading it as a HTML page, click here.

Note! The URL for 'Beatbox' version of the track has changed. New URL is http://my.opera.com/pjburnhill/homes/blog/remember_the_name_(beatbox).mp3