This is our live synth performance of @garbage's Milk, an overlooked gem of the 1990's, originally released as a single in 1996 for their debut album. Please expand description for more nerdy talk.
From left to right, gear list and synth players were:
M-Audio Keystation - Douglas Araujo - Synth pad #1 (Mellotron strings)
Arturia Keylab 49 - Gegê Teófilo - Synth flutes (Mellotron flute)
Sequential Sixtrack, Roland Sp-404 - Guillermo Caceres - Bass & drum loops
Yamaha An1x - George Frederick Marques - Synth pad #2 (Saw pads)
Vocals - Quésia Carvalho
Despite Garbage is generally labelled as an alt-rock band, Milk is quite a classic trip-hop track: it features female vocals hovering over a cushy synth bed with a classic hip-hop beat. Not surprisingly, it was remixed by some of the trip-hop medallions of the time, including Massive Attack and Tricky, and some of these remixes received at least as much airplay as the original.
With many versions to choose from, Garbage has performed the track in a number of ways, alternating between combinations of sampled drum loops in sync with acoustic drums, electric guitars and bass, and a sampler keyboard (e.g. Kurzweil K2500) for pads and flute sounds. For this video, we chose to stick to the original album version, but using an all-electronic set up. After all, since this is practically a trip-hop track, we thought we could play it using typical trip hop hardware: a sampler and a few synths.
Compared to others in our repertoire, this was not a particularly challenging track. With some strategic playing, all parts could have been performed by a single musician using a keyboard/sampler. Still, for fun purposes, we decided to split parts to fit our usual line-up.
The sounds in the track always seemed Mellotron-ish to me, but there were several ways to get Mellotron sounds in the mid-1990s. The key to get the authentic sounds of the track came from a Musicradar article in which Steve Marker, the band's guitarist, comments the first album, track by track. He recalls: “We had some crappy keyboards. It was like a rackmount E-MU Proteus or something that we would have used. Now that we have 5,000 Pro Tools-based plug-in synths, it’s really hard to get those sounds back." Well Steve, guess what? We actually found the sounds!
So, based on Steve's inside info and using some of my (frequently) useless knowledge on archaic synths, it was possible to narrow the sounds down to the E-mu Vintage Keys/Plus modules. The problem was finding one we could use on short notice - we didn't. So, the viable alternative was to get the E-mu Vintage Pro soundfont from Digital Sound Factory and use it on Kontakt. Our guess proved right on point: the Mellotron Strings and Mellotron Flute presets are exactly the ones used in the original track. If this had not been possible, the closest alternative would have been to use a Roland JV/XP/XV/Fantom synth with the Vintage Expansion Board, which has very similar (good) Mellotron samples with a 1990s flavour.
So, the M-Audio controller on the far left plays the Mellotron String preset, and the Arturia Keylab next to it plays the Mellotron Flute preset. The two are MIDIed to a single laptop running Kontakt on Windows with a Native Instruments audio interface (under the table), and its audio output was connected to the mixer (Yamaha Mg12).
In the center, the Sequential Six-trak plays the synth bass, programmed to loosely resemble an electric bass. The bass was the only non-electronic instrument used in the original track, and is usually played live in the band's live performances of the song. Next to the mixer lies the Roland Sp-404 sampler (the same used in our other videos), but the cameras did not get a good shot of it. The sampler plays a layered drum loop that, while it is not the exact one used in the original recording, was programmed in true '90s fashion, by combining and layering drum loops taken from Polestar Magnetic's XL1 Akai sample CD (which is a goldmine of 90's loops if you're into that sort of thing). The result sounds heavier and dirtier than the original drum loop, but we intended that vibe.
On the right side, the Yamaha An1x doubles the synth pad part by adding a more silky texture that nicely complements the harsher Mellotron strings, achieving this wider, richer synth pad thing. Next to the An1x is our Roland Jx-10, which didn't see action in this specific track. The original recording also used different layers of pads and a truckload of reverb to mesh things, so we did no different. Quesia's vocals used a Lexicon MX200 rack for reverb, but it also had some of the Yamaha's built-in reverb mixed in along with the synths.
The audio was recorded by two Zoom H4n (4 tracks) and one Zoom H1 (2 tracks), routed from the mixer.
Once more, please forgive the shaky cameras, the terribly grainy images, and other small imperfections, we were just having fun. Thank you for watching :)
#Garbage #SynthCovers #LiveSynths
7 окт 2024