Meanwhile, in the studio…
Darren might be best known for his dazzling beatboxing skills and mindblowing live performances, but he’s equally serious about his studio work. The second half of his main Producer Masterclass video sees him dissecting his new single, 6am (Ready To Write), which features dialogue sampled from video of American comedian Joe Rogan. Put together in another absolutely enormous Ableton Live project, it’s a straight-up banger that fully capitalises on Beardyman’s characteristic mad humour.
“I know this is a weird tune,” says Darren. “If you’re going to be making some dance music, you wouldn’t do any of that. There are other mixes of this that follow more dance music tropes, and that are better for the dancefloor and all that kind of stuff, but it’s kind of a skit built around this sample of Joe Rogan reading out Hunter S Thomson’s daily drug routine.
“It’s nothing that complicated – I deliberately didn’t want to introduce all kinds of crazy elements. There’s a couple of synths, there’s your drums, there’s your effect elements… I wasn’t very fastidious with the naming of tracks or anything like that. If I was doing a really well planned-out track, I would fastidiously label every single element and group things in a logical way that was easy to navigate; but with this, I just threw it together, so it’s a bit scrappy for that reason. So don’t do any of the things that are in this tune!”
This time, the size of the project itself – it really is immense! – is due to the bundling together of multiple versions of the track in the one epic Live set. “Instead of just having a different project for each version of the tune – because I was going backwards and forwards changing things on one tune then wanting to transfer to the other – I’ve ended up just doing one gargantuan session, which is every single possible version of the tune: extended mixes, radio edits, clean versions, dark techno remixes… it’s insane!”
As wayward a workflow as this might sound, it’s one that Darren would actually recommend, partly because of the places it can take you, and partly because it’s the easiest way to navigate multiple versions of the same track. “It makes a session quite unwieldy, but in Ableton, I can’t think of another way of keeping changes across different projects. It looks mental, and it is. It sort of forces you to make a decision and stick to it.”
Beard’ and wonderful
The anarchy doesn’t end with Beardyman’s philosophy on project management, either – one of his favourite production techniques involves putting completely different instruments and sources on the same track in the name of artistic liberation.
“There’s a rule that I like to break a lot, because it’s fun,” he beams. “You’re not really supposed to put multiple elements on the same channel, because it’s confusing and it doesn’t really help in the long run, and if you want to change one element, you end up changing the other. But I like the fact that as soon as you’ve used a channel for more than one thing, you then can’t change the settings on that channel. It’s kind of the same methodology as continually bouncing down, so you’re dealing with audio rather than lots of automation. And also, I just like the fact that as you’re working on the track, you end up memorising what the effects chain is on any particular channel, and then you can use that very quickly to throw things into, so that you’ve got sonic continuity between different elements. It’s not necessarily a good way of working, because you can end up getting very confused, but it means you can make things quicker. I’m just trying to justify the fact that I’m a slapdash idiot and I don’t know what I’m doing. Do as I say, not as I do.”
Darren’s endearing modesty continues with his summing up of 6am (Ready To Write) at the end of the video session. “It’s just a really silly tune about doing loads of cocaine in a hot tub. There’s lots of detail, but it’s detail to try and achieve a result that is just banging, rather than beautiful. It’s ugly, but sometimes ugliness can be beautiful. If you take nothing else from today, take that.”
“I’m just trying to justify the fact that I’m a slapdash idiot and I don’t know what I’m doing”