In The Studio With: Jack Patterson

Chart-topping, classically-infused electronic act Clean Bandit’s singles have racked up billions of views online. Danny Turner met up with the band’s resident production guru, Jack Patterson, to find out the winning formula

Initially a quartet, formed at the University of Cambridge and now comprising brothers Jack and Luke Patterson and vocalist Grace Chatto, Clean Bandit have become one of the biggest-selling electronic pop bands on the planet. Released in 2012, their debut single A+E scraped the top 100, before the trio cracked the top 20 with Mozart’s House the following year.

Marrying orchestral elements with elegant pop melodies and dancefloorf riendly beats, the band’s fourth single, the Grammy Award-winning Rather Be (featuring Jess Glynne), was a global worldwide smash, leading to the debut album New Eyes (2014). However, this phenomenal success was dwarfed by further chart-topping singles Rockabye and Symphony.

This year will see the release of their sophomore album, their star credentials cemented by collaborations with Elton John and FKA Twigs. Meanwhile, more tracks, described by Patterson as ‘random and weird’, have been penned for a possible third album release soon after.

You studied as an architect; how did that evolve into music production?

“It was a toss-up between music and architecture when I was trying to decide what to do at university. I felt that architecture was a safer bet in terms of a career, until I bottled it. I was doing a lot of stuff on my architecture course that was crossing over – seeing how specific composers and architects used computers. I did my third year thesis in computational approaches to music and architecture, focused on artists such as Iannis Xenakis, who was using the same methods to make music as he was to make buildings. I was always interested in computer music from a very early age and obsessed with Fruity Loops as a kid. I had a MIDI keyboard from the age of 12, but never knew how to plug it into my computer. Had I figured that out, things might have accelerated, but things are so much easier now that everything’s plug-and-play.”

When did you start working with Grace and, your brother, Luke?

“I met Grace at university. She had a string quartet and I started helping out doing recordings of their concerts. Everything was going into a laptop and I was chopping up the recordings and adding basslines and drums before the rap vocals and lyrics. It just clicked and we saw that people were really into what we were doing, which gave Grace a buzz too. Luke had been playing acoustic drums in punk and rock bands up to that point, and I’d been playing keys, bass and sax, which was my main instrument. I was also making beats and messing around with Ableton.”

The sax used to be a prominent instrument in pop, but seems to have disappeared now!

“It’s more like the texture is out of fashion. The melody still works but it feels as though we’re living in an era of tuned percussion, like marimbas and carimbas and stuff like that. People seem to prefer sounds with a short decay rather than a saxophone, which is strictly prohibited in our music.”

You also write for other artists?

“Yes, it’s quite intense with the band at the moment, but every now and then something comes in that’s interesting. I worked on the new Sean Paul and David Guetta track, although they only used the intro, which was fair enough. Basically, I do something and they say it’s shite and only use the first two bars [ laughs]. I think the first 30 seconds of a Spotify track counts as a stream, so I feel like I’m doing my job. But seriously, it’s really interesting and quite freeing as well. I think it’s important to keep the remixes going and it’s really cool that Luke’s been taking on that role as well because he’s coming into his own as a producer in his own right. ”

Rockabye has around 1.8bn YouTube views. Has that success distorted your view on things?

“Yeah, a little bit. It’s a nice thing to have in the background, but I don’t think you should obsess about it. There are always ups and downs when you’re making music and what you think sounds amazing to begin with always ends up sounding shit at one point in your mind. During those moments, it’s good to look at stuff that was previously successful to give you confidence in what you’re capable of.”

Especially as your third single Dust Clears was a slight step back commercially and put a temporary halt to your ascendancy?

“It’s interesting because RatherBe was a response to us not working with Ssegawa-Ssekintu Kiwanuka anymore. He was the lead singer in what was very much a band. We’re working together again now, but at the time we were thinking, shit, what are we going to do without Sseg? We started thinking outside the box and worked with loads of other people to try and find a new front person, but soon realised we didn’t need to do that and could act as a collective. That whole experience with DustClears morphed the project basically. People loved the single before that, Mozart’sHouse, and we did wonder how we were going to repeat it, so we thought we’d make a real banger – a party tune, and came up with RatherBe. I guess you can sometimes be inspired by the fear of something slipping away.”

When can we expect to hear your new album?

“We’re mixing and finishing the production. We’ve been working on it since the end of 2014 and have released five songs already, which is a bit weird, but we feel confident than we’ve got ten tracks that feel very cohesive. Then we have this hidden folder that doesn’t sound like any of that stuff, but we still love. We’ve been writing and collaborating with different artists for four years, including sessions with Elton John and FKA Twigs, which has given us a huge range of stuff that’s so random and weird. We’re definitely going to release that pretty rapidly after our next album, but at the moment we’re finishing our next single and have a remote ISDN session tonight with the vocalist because she’s on tour.”

“If we try to mix a vocal with a cello part, there’s not a lot of space for much else”

She’s recording the vocal proper over ISDN?

“Yes, that’s right. They’ll record in New York onto their Pro Tools setup, but hopefully there will be some high-quality feeds going back and forth and a high-fidelity desk feed. Then there’ll be a separate Skype link so we can all see each other and chat – fingers crossed its going to work. We work with so many vocalists that it’s become a big part of what we do. Effectively, when you’re vocal producing someone there is a certain amount of removal anyway, because they’re in a vocal booth and you’re talking to them through the glass, so as long as the technology is holding up and there’s no latency, it could work.”

How did you meet Elton John?

“We met him at the Ivor Novello awards. Grace is the chief blagger in the band; she’s always going up to people and trying to set up sessions. She just went up to Elton and introduced herself and he started singing RatherBe at us [laughs], so we arranged a session. We went to RAK studio and did it there – it was a phenomenal few days. Songwriting is quite a psychological game. You’re thrown into a room with someone you’ve never met and if it’s going to be halfway decent you’ve got to be open to letting loose some emotions. Even if the lyrics are ‘I love you, I love you’, it’s probably come from a deep place. It’s often like a therapy session. I remember when we were working with Emily Warren, she was sat in the corner with Grace in floods of tears, and we’re like, ‘Well, how about this bass sound?’ But those situations do force you to be on a different level to how you might be when you’re producing alone.”

Your music’s sometimes sparse; is that because you’re leaving space for a vocal melody?

“Because we use strings a lot, that’s inherently quite a rich and thick sonic – a cello is almost exactly the same frequency range as the human voice. So we’ve often found that if we try to mix a vocal with a cello part, there’s not a lot of space for much else. We also like mixing quite pure synth waveforms with complex reverbs, but sine waves sound quite broad and overwhelming in the mix, so we try to make sure everything has its place. One of my favourite tracks is Telephone Banking on the first album. It’s so complicated with so many layers, and back then I used to keep adding stuff until it worked. Now I think it’s good to give yourself boundaries and think a bit more about the production at the beginning in terms of the overall aesthetic – or maybe listen to other music in that genre and see how it’s put together and why it works in the way it does.”

Luke is mainly responsible for the percussion?

“On the first record, we had a fair bit of live drums and we’d just be sending stuff back and forth between us. I might make a basic version of a drum part and he’d refine it, add fills and subtle programming. He programmed most of the drums on this second record, but we’ll both use Ableton’s built-in sampler and sequencer plugins and a little bit of modular stuff. We do have a couple of drum machines, notably the Arturia BeatStep Pro, which is really good for sequencing modular rigs and has loads of CV and gate outputs, MIDI and USB sync.”

Having entered the world of Eurorack, what are your preferred modules?

“I was thinking about it for doing live effects on stage and started off by getting a lot more of the effects modules, like the Tiptop Audio Z-DSP processor and sound generator, which is basically a digital signal processing module where you load in these little software cartridges. I was really attracted to that because it turns the module into a hardware version of the Valhalla Shimmer algorithmic reverb, something that I use on Ableton all the time. I love using Shimmer on plugins because it gives the sounds a really nice feel, so to be able to use it live will be great.”

How do you find the hardware version compare to the plugin?

“You get more control on the digital plugin, but as you can also control all of these parameters on the module using CV as well as the knobs, you can get complicated stuff coming from it. What I’ll often do is use it with the Arturia BeatStep Pro acting as a sequencer. I’ll send out different parameters and CV values to the reverb, shift, tone or length of a sound, so I’m playing it like an instrument as opposed to just using Shimmer as a plugin.”

Any other modules you like?

“Another favourite is this sampler by Qu-Bit Electronix, which loads sounds from a Micro SD card. It holds four banks of four samples and you can trigger the sample and control the pitch. It’s a very basic sequencer/sampler with sends and a reverb, but not your traditional analogue module because it has digital technologies built in. The Roland BITRAZER module is also amazing. You can plug it in off-the shelf and use its bit and sample rate crushing effects, which means you can get nasty sounds really quickly. It’s got a USB input and you can use an iPad app to totally redesign what the digital circuits do. It’s fully reprogrammable, so instead of it being a bit crusher you can turn it into any module you want. It also can work well as an audio interface.”

We notice you have LZC Industries’ Visual Cortex module for video synthesis. Can you explain how that works?

“It’s a video synth that acts as a sequencer sending trigger outputs to an HDMI screen that I have set up. It has different banks of rhythms and you can control the tempo and type of rhythm for video synchronisation. It looks very basic because I’ve got it set up to show blocks of colours, but you can actually run video into it, so in the same way that you can effect a sound with a reverb or delay, you can affect video by doing stuff such as shifting the colour, mirroring and contour of the images.”

Is it right to say it was the Moog Mother-32 that first got you into the modular realm?

“Yes, that’s right. I got the Moog from the band a few years ago as a gift for my birthday. I didn’t know how to use it at the beginning, but it’s a semi-modular synth that comes in a case – although you can remove it from the case and load the whole panel into your own rack system. It’s basically a Moog synth voice, but with a modular extension panel on the side. Playing around with that got me hooked on modular and it has that classic Moog sound. It’s got its own built-in sequencer too, which is really handy.”

It’s rare to find a modular system with a built-in sequencer, so how would you normally handle the recording aspect of modular gear?

“I’ll use the Arturia BeatStep Pro. I also have an Expert Sleepers FH-1 module and you can plug in a USB keyboard to act as a controller and assign the outputs, whether it’s the pitch, velocity or gate, and control the modular rig with the keyboard. All of the stuff that Expert Sleepers makes is amazing.”

Seeing what modular can offer, is it fair to say you’re starting to come out of the box now?

“Because we’re touring so much it’s hard to write on the road, so I’ll tend to pick the modular stuff up then. Modular’s such fun, but it’s also quite addictive. Because you can access the circuits, they become a multiplication of each individual module. With a plugin, it is what it is, and it’s not like you can reach in and mess around. With modular, once it’s running

it feels like a living system. We had a small system that we took on the road with us when we toured the US, and we’d have parties where we’d get a beat and a bassline going and it would just go on playing for an hour [ laughs]. I guess it’s an antidote to the rigid pop stuff that we do. That has its place, but using modular is a more freeing experience.”

So will you start using modular more as part of the production process from now on?

“It depends. I’m so used to using the laptop and I’m so quick at using Ableton. With modular, I feel like you have to dedicate a day to get anything done, whereas with the laptop, even if I have 30 minutes while my mum’s making dinner, I’ll get something done. Because of how the studio’s designed, it’s not ideal, and that’s why we’re in the process of building a new studio that’s totally ready to go with enough cables and wiring. I need a mixer really, because all the patching slows the process down.”

You have some other hardware tools, notably the Akai EWI3000: a quite bizarre instrument!

“I actually use it a lot live. This is the analogue version from the ’80s – it’s basically an electric saxophone. I put it through an analogue MIDI module, so you have CV coming from a built-in fan, and depending on how hard you blow, it spins the fan and that generates a voltage. Then there’s a bite sensor at the tip for pitch bend and you can slide up and down the octaves using the buttons. The new ones are digital and have MIDI and USB outs.”

In terms of hardware synths, you’re a big fan of the Nord Stage 2?

“It’s a very hands-on synth that’s quite intuitive, so I’ll make a lot of sounds on there and put them into sound libraries. I’ve been trying to create a Eurorack voice for the EWI3000, so I can play the sounds I have on the Nord in modular form, but the way you play the electric sax is so expressive I haven’t been able to get the right control out of these modular samplers. But the sampler on the Nord is superb; the way it deals with portamento, glide and vibrato is much more sophisticated. I should probably sell all my modular stuff and buy a new Nord.”

You have a few other hardware synths too?

“I’ve loaned a Korg Kronos and Yamaha Montage from those companies, because the samplers on them are even more powerful apparently. I really like hardware samplers, I’ve got a big rack of old Akai samplers upstairs that I used to use, but it feels like a lot of the keyboard companies are abandoning them. Roland, in particular, used to do the Fantom-X and Fantom-G, and brought another one out after that, but they seem so obsessed with making their own sounds that they forget that people prefer to sample themselves, which is why, although the Nord is a lot less sophisticated, it does what it does perfectly. I’ll often use the Wurlitzer as a writing tool because the sounds are so immediate and everything sounds good on it, even though I won’t actually use Wurly sounds on the record.”

You have a fairly modest effects rack?

“Some of the hardware is patched into this rack. For vocal recording, I used to love using the TC-Helicon Voice Works for vocal recording until I got the Harmony Engine vocal harmoniser. The Focusrite ISA 430 MKII also allows me to get a bit of control over demo vocals, but now I’ll tend to use plugins for mic preamps. I used to have an acoustic piano in here that I’d mic up and put through this TL Audio compressor, which quickly gives you a good sound. I also have a rackmount version of my old Fantom XR synth, and the UAD-2 Satellite Thunderbolt is great if I want to run more plugins when I’m running out of DSP. My outboard stuff is more used for writing. It’s rare that a final vocal will be recorded in this room; we tend to go to bigger studios, but we did do half of the vocals for Symphony here using either a Neumann TLM-103 or the Warm Audio WA-87 mic.”

You mentioned Ableton is your choice for software sequencing?

“I’ll start off a tune in Ableton and get it to a certain level. A string line, for example, will be played in on a temporary synth and I’ll replace it later in a Pro Tools session. I love Ableton because it’s just so quick. You can drag a sample in, keep a beat going while somebody’s working on a vocal, add keys in real-time or even start working on the arrangement while the track’s in motion. I can move to timeline mode without even stopping the beat and start sequencing a part, so you’re not thinking about a song as a linear thing.”

What’s in your library of instruments?

“Operator is a very basic FM synth, but I use it a lot for making simple bleepy sounds and getting lots of variations of those. For pianos, I’ll tend to use Spectrasonics Keyscape because I like the libraries on there, and I’ll use Ableton Drum Racks quite a lot for drum programming or to bring a loop in and chop it up. I use Native Instruments’ Kontakt a lot too; you’d be surprised at how many cool and quirky sounds there are found hidden inside Clean Bandit songs.”

You mix the tracks with renowned producer and mix engineer Mark Ralph?

“Whenever we mix we do it together and use his gear. It’s a proper collaborative effort and I’ve been learning his methods. I don’t know if I could mix the records myself, but watching the process forces you to rationalise everything. Once I’ve finished the production, we’ll take all the individual parts and put them back together again properly. Normalising stuff, building the gain structures and making sure the dynamic journey is correct is so important, and knowing that Mark will be able to fix things is reassuring and helps with my decision-making process at the early stages of the production.”