La face cachée du rêve / FURICO Music team remix 1 & 2 (Titalee, EmmaJack & FMT)
Notes On "La face cachée du rêve / FURICO Music team remix 1 & 2 (Titalee, EmmaJack & FMT)"
Titalee Clip de présentation Officiel
These two songs are a 'Remix' using all their vocals and performances, and a 'Re-arranged' version where we did the backing tracks to their songs.
The impetus for this project came when Titalee asked for our input on the release of their 'Morning Râga: la face cachée du rêve'.
At that time, without any discovery at all, their Original Version was a very nice version and we couldn't think of anything that we should change here.
However, as I listened to the song, the bassline and the tone of the song reminded me of Dub and Reggae, and the title 'Râga' (an Indian musical mode) reminded me of 'Ragga/Raggae', and I thought it would be interesting (and I would like to hear it) if there was a version with more emphasis on these combinations. So, I offered this to Titalee and they readily agreed, and so the project began.
Therefore, the genesis of the project is a kind of play on words, with 'Râga' and 'Ragga (Raggae)' superimposed on each other.
The idea was inspired by the work of Dennis Bovell, who in the 80s used to highlight New Wave bands like 'The Pop Group' and 'The Slits' in the UK with more Dub-like mixes.
The fun of this seems to lie in the fact that "unexpected interest arises from combining things that are originally far removed from each other". Moreover, I realised that it is also strange or odd to be the one who creates the music, as I am an outsider in terms of culture, with no roots in either (Western or Caribbean).
Therefore, the music is French Reggae, dub, Indian, rather European-ish, with sticky strings, which I don't understand.
However, there are similarities between these music, both (Raga and Reggae/Raga) have little sense of harmony, and in a Western context, they can be described as one-chord songs.
We thought about how we could broaden or deepen our musical range around these similarities.
[La face cachée du rêve remix 1 (Remix Version)]
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 57
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Feb 22 2023 - Mar 10 2023
(TI writes:)
For this version, as mentioned above, in order to emphasise the Raggae and Dub atmosphere, we thought it would be enough to simply increase the volume (sound pressure) of each part and do some bandwidth and acoustic processing, and in fact most of the parts were done just that, but for some of the rhythm loops, but when we turned up the volume, the atmosphere changed, so we layered on our own rhythms to reinforce them, and added synth oscillator synths, reggae-style guitar cuts, drums and strings.
For the strings, we wanted to add a European sound that has no connection to Reggae or Dub, as it is too obvious to use those formats, and the music itself (song content, melody lines, etc.) is not necessarily Raggae. Also, this was inspired by the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra in the Soul II Soul of yesteryear.
So the atmosphere is very different from the Original, but the structure of the music is almost the same.
Acoustically, the only modifications made were to the bassline, which was emphasised an octave lower than in the Original, to make the vocals more prominent, and to add a delay and spring reverb.
The spring reverb is a Fender twin reverb reverb from the Guitar amp simulator preset in Studio One.
There are many variations of plate reverbs in the Studio One reverb presets, but no spring reverb. However, I was about to stop using the reverb because a plate reverb doesn't give a Raggae,Dub-like atmosphere, when I suddenly remembered that the Guitar amp reverb is a spring reverb, so I tried using it and it turned out to be good.
For this version, I had in mind to "use all their vocals and performances", so I didn't have much choice and the work went rather smoothly and I was able to create a sound close to my image, but it was the second version that took a lot of work and I was very confused.
(TM writes:)
As usual, TI sent me a mixdown every time he made it and I usually comment on that for any further improvement as producer but for this I had none. All I responded were "Excellent!" "Superb!" "Outstanding!" or something like those, meaning I did nearly nothing. From the concept to the mixdowns his plan was a hit.
[La face cachée du rêve remix 2 (Remix Version)]
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: Studio One 6 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6 Professional
Number of tracks: 72
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and Recording period: Feb 22 2023 - Mar 15 2023
(TI writes:)
For this version, I asked TM to arrange it with the intention of using only the Original vocal track.
(This was not specified by Titalee, but the intention was to make a clear difference from the first version.)
They had given us the tempo information, so we had no problem matching the tempo, but it was very difficult to create an arrangement that matched their groove, and TM had to rearrange the rhythm several times.
The rhythm arrangement had to be changed many times.
For this mix, we aimed for a tighter and dreamier vibe than the original.
Specifically, in this mix, the instrumentation (top instruments) where there are vocals is kept to a minimum except for the Narration at the beginning, where only the bass and rhythm stand out. In the arrangement, the upper part is monophonic, so it doesn't stand out much.
In fact, the idea of balance in this area is based on the Norwegian electro duo Smerz.
The noisy phrases added throughout the album are sample strings (Cello and Violin). I modulated them in various ways to create this kind of sound. For this phrase, once I had finished the song and listened to it repeatedly, it seemed like 'something was missing', so I asked Titalee to wait for a release and added a new one.
I also used Studio One's crosstalk function between tracks (which was hard to control, as it simulates a mixer glitch, and I had to use the 'crosstalk' feature in the mixer to get it to work). I've written various sequence information such as turning it off where I want it to be perfectly aligned.
Using this, you can faintly hear sounds that should be muted and not sounding. Effects that should not be used can be applied to unrelated tracks.
（This is a simulation function of an analogue mixer, but in reality, such mixers did not exist in the market even in those days, even as inexpensive consumer equipment. Even if it were faulty, it would be unusable in any era if it were this bad.)
The lower bandwidth (40-50 Hz) is emphasised by sine wave in order to get the bass texture.
Drums are very important in this song, so TM edited the rhythm pattern many times, and also made many changes in the mix.
The same type of snare and hi-hat are used on three tracks, each played in a different way to accentuate the sound.
The snare, which is played in a roll, has a very delicate rhythm and accent, and because the snare sample is not played in a roll, it has a strong attack, so there are parts where it becomes grating, and it was difficult to control this.
For this, I wrote a sequence phrase of attack time and threshold amount to vary the way the compressor was applied to adjust the attack time for each phrase and input volume.
Also, TM eventually asked for a Gate Reverb to be applied to the snare, but the preset Gate Reverb was too exaggerated and made the sound image sound like 80s pop music, so I create a Gate Reverb that is not too extreme by combining a single Gate, Compressor and Reverb, just like when there were no presets.
The bass drum also switches between 808 and raw sound samples depending on the location.
(TM writes:)
I agree that it was difficult, though greatly fun. The first time I had a listen to the original version, it seemed to me like some mixture of French, Indian and reggae music and very attractive in terms of the sort of loose groove -- I mean imprecision in part and human touch by that. It's obviously a weakness digital music has in its nature. Designing imprecise beat intentionally was an option, but it would've been too awkward, I imagined.
Specifically, the loose groove in the original version consists of the "squared" rhythm on the drums and several other parts as well as the swung one on the others, mixed with imprecise timings of the sine wave bass. Wonderfully well-balanced. Then, I took a different approach, which is to be based upon a dynamic squared rhythm and highlight sometimes particular parts such as fills-in on the drums and chromatic percussion with swing.
As for the swing, the timing off the beat would be 0.666 if you use the third note of a triplet, but quite often in folk music it is less around 0.6. FMT's past work called "Bangriddim .594" locates all the notes off the beat at 0.594, but in this case I went for 0.583, even a bit earlier in order not to make the differences between the squared and swing beats too distinctive and drastic. Such arrangement is a strength that digital music can easily actualise.
Also, like many other FMT's pieces, the other parts than so-called the rhythm parts like drums and basses play important roles in making groove, but most of them follow the scale based on the original version so that audience can feel it's very different but consistent.
Just one thing I'd like to add is that I love the snare sound that TI brushed up so much. That's so cool.
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