WALKER & ROYCE The Dirtybird duo take the hotseat to talk album-crafting workflow, inspirational techniques, low-end theory and more
More than just a collection of club bangers, Sam Walker & Gavin Royce’s first album, Self Help, is a schooling in both bass-heavy house grooves and diverse vocal performances. In the wake of the LP’s release, we cornered the US duo and grilled them for their top production tips and track-finishing tactics. Computer Music: How long did it take you both to finish Self Help? Gavin Royce: “It took us about eight months to make. When you get the opportunity to do an album for a label like Dirtybird, it’s a bit of pressure. But we didn’t want to say no! Based on the feedback thus far, we’re doing OK!”
: Did you have tracks finished for it already, or did you start from scratch? SW: “Pretty much from scratch. We had one track finished – we’d just finished it, and we said
COMPUTER MUSIC
to ourselves that it was definitely an ‘album track’. But we wanted to mainly start from the beginning. We went out and got vocals and material specifically.” GR: “Yeah, going into the album, we didn’t just want it to be a ten-track EP. We wanted specific vocals that would work. Although there was a time where we’d reached out to a bunch of people, and no one was getting back to us, and we started to freak out! We had one week when we didn’t know what to do… but then five or six people sent over their vocals at once!”
: Logistically, how you work as a duo? GR: “We used to have a studio together in Brooklyn. We’d get together in the studio for a couple of days a month, but we worked separately a lot.” SW: “A lot of times I’d be working on something, then I’d call up Gav and play it over Skype or FaceTime, to work on things remotely. Getting back and forth is a real pain, but there are so many tools for people to work remotely. Gav doesn’t need to hear if the bass is 1dB too loud – it was more for arrangement and the feel of the track. But with Warkin It, we both worked on it together in the studio, and we banged it out in one night, pretty much. A lot of production is actually really tedious, and the two of us don’t need to be together for all the boring stuff!” GR: “In terms of our backgrounds, Sam is the ‘engineer’ and is more hands-on with technical stuff, whereas I’m from more of a DJ background – I’ve been a full-time DJ in New York for over a decade, so I come from more of an arrangement, vibe, idea and direction angle; whereas Sam comes at it from more of a technical standpoint.”
: Did you sample a lot for the album?. GR: “We didn’t want to do as much sampling as we’ve done in the past. We didn’t want to sample anything you’d have to clear – not because we didn’t want to clear it, but because we wanted to make this our own original music. So for the album, we went out and sought specific types of vocalists. Dancing With White Girls is an old friend of mine, and I hit him up for some vocals. The two tracks he turned out for us are great.”
: A lot of the vocals on the album are heavily processed, and sound quite ‘sampled’. How do you prepare an instrumental for a vocalist?
bass three days ago at 3pm’, and we go back and find that we made that fatal change last Wednesday at lunchtime!”
SW: “You’ll realise there were a couple of very subtle parts you forgot or took out, that were adding a significant amount of ‘oomph’ to the track. And you don’t realise why it sounds like garbage now – it’s because you removed that special sauce earlier!”
: That must shape your process going forward, as you’ll learn from those moments. SW:
“Yes! The production process is definitely a case of remembering all the mistakes you’ve ever made. You might have a natural inclination to do something, and your earlier self would’ve just done it, and it would’ve come out terribly. But now a red flag goes up.”
: Hardware synths often output in mono, but there’s a lot of clever stereo stuff going on in your record. What’s your approach for getting width and stereo movement? SW:
“Good question. I’ll tell you what we don’t do – we don’t use stereo enhancement plugins! We’re trying to do it old-school rather than artificially. So panning things, panning a slightly different sound to either side at the same time, like two different takes from the same instrument panned out. Or having things move around with auto-pan – the underlying principle is to not try to ‘fake’ it.
“Record producers from the 70s and 80s didn’t use crazy tools, but they still had huge soundstages, because they had real acoustic space and would pan instruments widely, and they’d record the guitars multiple times and pan them across the soundstage.
“Although, one tool that does a good job of widening is Soundtoys Microshift, specifically on a vocal if you don’t have multiple takes and you want it to come out to the sides. It doesn’t seem to fail when you collapse it to mono, but it’s not perfect – we prefer to not use stuff like that. We always sum to mono to check everything’s cool.”
: And because of your panning, it probably sums to mono nicely… GR:
“Almost always. That was a lesson we learned early on. We were listening to Disclosure tracks that were insanely wide, and you try to emulate that as a beginner… but then you get into a club and it sounds like garbage and sounds empty in the middle. So we realised not to do that. Stereo has to be done carefully.”
: Mono compatibility for the club versus width for headphones is a tricky compromise! SW:
“It’s part of learning the ropes of production. It’s not an easy thing to do – you need to take time in the studio, with your monitors set up right so you can hear the depth of the soundstage in order to make the right decisions. The vast majority of home studios aren’t set up well, with lots of echoing in the room, so you’ll exaggerate things too much or place sounds into the wrong spot. I have my studio acoustically treated a lot for that reason – not just Auralex on my walls.
“Then there’s going from the studio to the club and back. We knew our track Why Tho wasn’t going to come across, because we played it out and it didn’t have the right punch. But we had the luxury of going back and fixing it. We’d switched our monitors to the Neumann KH310s, and they sound amazing, but I’m used to using my KRK VXT8s. We switched because I wanted a better level of control I wasn’t getting with the KRKs. We wrote the track on those Neumanns, and it just didn’t sound right when we played it out. So I switched back to my KRKs, and immediately it sounded like it did in the club. It was missing the kick. So I still use the VXT8s – everything else was written on them! And another track written on the Neumanns didn’t sound right, either! These KRKs aren’t cool or sexy, but they certainly get the job done for us.”
GR: “A lot of it is being familiar with your space. Big producers have ‘wrong’ studios from a sound standpoint, but it works for them. Learning how your speakers and room sound is all part of being comfortable and learning your craft.”
: How about the act of finishing tracks? Initial ideas and loops are one thing, but getting them over the finish line is another… GR:
“I think that’s the beauty of being a duo, and us not working on everything together all the time. We’re able to give things fresh ears – when Sam gets to a certain point, I can come in and suggest how it should be arranged. We have our yin and yang, which is why we were able to finish the album quicker. Claude VonStroke was surprised that we turned it in on time! He said he’s never had an artist turn in an album on time!”
SW: “I’ll usually know even if a track can be finished as soon as we start to arrange it. That’s where it’s gonna fail or not. In Ableton [Live], we load up the Session View with stuff, and we don’t commit anything to the Arrangement View until we have all parts of the recipe. Like making a chilli! There have been lots of times when we think we have a track, and we start to lay it out, but that’s where it falls apart. If that happens when you start to arrange it, you stop, delete everything and go back to the Session View – you either need more stuff, or you have to change what’s there.
“It’s like a poison, because in the production process, every time you play your track, you’re getting more and more sick of it; you’re losing
“He said he’s never had an artist turn in an album on time!”
perspective. It’s like playing a vinyl record that wears down with every play – it’s getting worse and worse in your mind. So it’s a very sensitive time. Sometimes, I might go to bed and arrange it the next day. But sometimes, that’s a terrible mistake – maybe you really need to keep going at 3am and lay it all down, otherwise you’ll lose the thread and inspiration.”
GR: “But, if the arrangement gets going, and you’re confident with it, the track becomes an ever-shrinking to-do list. And at the end of it, you’re done. We never have problems finishing a track when we’re confident with the arrangement. Then it’s just a track, and if the track sucks, then OK! The very best or most successful tracks seem to come together so quickly, in an afternoon or so.”
SW: “And usually, those great, quick tracks are the ones that are written after the tracks you struggle with! The one you had to finish – like a remix or something – had a deadline, and then with the next thing you pick up, you start right away and want to flush out all the stuff from the last track. Boom! That one will be a hit, because your mind is so sick of the other one!”
: That momentum makes perfect sense! GR:
“Your perspective is good, but then your chops are honed because you’ve been working on that other project for three or four days. So you know where all your files and plugins are – you’re kinda ‘hot’ and in the zone. Our tracks I.T.B., Take Me To Your Leader and a couple more were made like that. We were sick to death of other projects, then started a new track that became way better than the last one, as it was way more spontaneous.”
: You can finally do all the things you couldn’t do in that other project! SW:
“Exactly. Shaping things is very different from throwing in new stuff. And sometimes you forget to throw new stuff into a project when you’ve been stuck with it for a while. ‘What, I can create new synth sounds?’ You forget to take out the stuff you’re struggling with. No one’s keeping track – delete it! It’s fine to start new stuff. If it’s something you’re really married to, you can always go back to it – thanks to Ableton, like we mentioned earlier – without even stopping playback!”
: Your tracks have lots of bass weight. What’s your agenda with coming up with ideas and getting low elements to fit? SW:
“One big thing for us is making sure the kick drum isn’t too long. I started to notice that tracks we really liked had really short kicks – long enough to get the point across, but with a really tight decay. So I look at my kick’s tail on a scope, and I bring it into [Ableton’s] Sampler. The basic Simpler only has convex and concave envelope slopes, so you can’t get a full volume then a completely cut-off decay. We convert to Sampler, and bend the curve all the other way, so you have a shape that’s full-volume with a sudden drop-off. We either use a sampled kick, or Nicky Romero’s Kick plugin, or layer up a bunch – then we resample it, throw it into Sampler, then do that enveloping. That creates a whole lotta space to allow other bass stuff to happen. If you’ve got a giant 808 kick with a long sustain, where’s the rest of the bass gonna go?
“Also, many sound systems have a lot of resonance in the bass end, so even if your kick is really short, it’ll keep resonating on the system. Those 15" drivers continue to move. So a short kick will sound long enough to get the point across, but then you’ve got room to shove in a lot of other cool stuff and get a groove going. We use 808 hits, little toms, and little dull tom ‘knocks’. Then we might throw in a wide-open sawtooth or square. And switch back and forth so they’re alternating. Our track Hit Dem
Drawers has a lot of bass; we’re breaking all the rules. There’s a kick, two 808s, and a huge synth note. But somehow the track still works.”
GR: “It’s good having a pair of speakers like the KRKs, which are ported, so you can feel if the kick is poking through. We’re getting away with it on these honest monitors. And the kick doesn’t need to be the loudest thing in the world – if it’s a bit smaller, you can fit other bass elements in.”
: And all that club and DJing experience must help too… SW:
“That’s the thing: the first time you hear these tracks in a club that you’ve never heard on a home system, you think ‘woah, how is this even possible?’. But then you listen to it on a normal system, and it’s all very controlled. It was just that sound system magnifying things to a crazy degree. So having the ability to listen to a track on a sound system, then listen at home ‘under a microscope’ is invaluable. I’d advise younger producers to try and listen to those records in both environments, to understand the relationship between the two. That’s something you need to get good at as a producer – it might sound a bit unimpressive at home, but it’s going to sound awesome in the club.”