Well, I've gone and done it.
I used an arrow in a RU-vid thumbnail.
Special thanks for @thefonzkiss for the idea for this video. On my last video, he commented, "ok here’s your challenge. Not Enough in the style of the keyboard stuff on 1984/5150."
I absolutely loved the idea. Usually I try to recreate keyboard/synth parts as closely as possible, but for this track, the idea of giving it a "5150" sound was incredibly appealing. I'm sure this will open me up to some criticism, which is totally fair. I just hope more people enjoy it for what it is.
But how to do it? The most obvious first choice was to add a layer of OB-8. I remember an old interview with Ed talking about recording "When It's Love", which was done with newer keyboards at the time, and Engineer Don Landee recommended adding a layer of OB-8 for "warmth", and I'm basically doing the same thing here.
I used, "Love Walks In" as a model for the sound I was trying to emulate, so my first instinct was to simply have the piano trigger the synth, as with that song. I did that, and it was...okay, but I felt on its own, it didn't work as well as it does with "Love Walks In." I think it's because there's a lot of single notes in the melody of "Not Enough", whereas with "Love Walks In" it's a lot of chords, which just sounds better when the synth and piano are paired. That's why I decided to come up with a completely new synth part to layer over the song. I still have the piano triggering the synth, but it's not the entire time.
The other main component of the signature sound of 5150 is Alex's electronic Simmons drums. So I used Demucs software (the same software I used to separate "Not Enough" into "stems" and mute the original keyboards), extracted the drums from "Love Walks In" and replaced the Balance Drums. I absolutely love how well it worked. (And they're not totally replaced - the cymbals are all still from Balance.).
I should make something clear - I'm not doing this to try and "improve" the song or anything. It's absolutely perfect on its own. I just thought this was a nice, alternate way to enjoy it. Whenever I do one of these projects, I usually gain new appreciation for the track, and this is no exception. I think this may now be one of my favorite Ed solos. The passion in his playing is jaw dropping. Check out when they played this live on Letterman. Ed's solo got applause, and rightly so.
If you made it to the end, thanks for reading! If you have any questions or clarifications about how I did this, feel free to ask in the comments.
8 май 2024
