Pippa shows off her new look, new dance and new sound performing 'Devil' live to Levine's backing track on Get Your Act Together.
Every week, BBC1's new Saturday night show Get Your Act Together takes an aspiring singer or group and attempts to transform their music, image and performance, to turn them into true professionals — in two days. Among the eminent record producers chosen to work their magic on these acts is Steve Levine, who talks to Sam Inglis about the unique challenges involved.
"You just press Stop, then a number. There's a test button at the back... Oh, I've just realised, the tape speed on this thing's not self‑sensing, is it?" In the lounge area attached to Studio One of Fulham's prestigious Marcus Studios, one of Britain's top record producers and his two programmers are struggling with a video recorder. It's yet another problem thrown up by the unusual circumstances in which Steve Levine, Darius Zickus and Paul Meehan are working today. Between them, they have two days to take a demo from an aspiring artist they've never previously met and produce a potential hit single — while coping with the attention of a film crew.
Levine and his cohorts are providing the production effort in one of the comprehensive artist makeovers, encompassing music, clothes, hair and makeup, choreography and presentation, which form the new BBC TV series Get Your Act Together. In their two days, Levine and the others have to create a backing track over which the artist, clad in her new outfit and dancing her new dance, will sing a live vocal on the show. "It's like Changing Rooms, Jim'll Fix It, Stars In Their Eyes and Dreams Come True, all squashed together in one," he says. "While we're working on the record, there's stylists trying to find some clothes, the artist's having her hair done... Yesterday I went down there to do a choreography session and she's going again this afternoon. So all that information is being crammed into 48 hours, to be used on the third day, which is a whole day's shoot."On the day I visit, the artist being made over is a quirky female singer‑songwriter called Pippa, who has written a dark, somewhat Björkesque song called 'Devil'. ("It's like a cross between trip‑hop and reggae," remarks Paul Meehan.) "This is the second one I've done," says Levine. "It's musically and artistically completely different to the other one, which was two guys who are singer/songwriters. Then, the whole track was done completely live, which was necessary for the type of music that it was. So for me it's interesting because it's just so different."
Not content with overseeing the wholesale reconstruction of 'Devil' in the studio, Levine is also heavily involved in developing the other aspects of Pippa's artistic makeover — hence the wrestling match with the recalcitrant video recorder. "Because she's a very visual artist, in the same style as Madonna, Björk, PJ Harvey, all those kind of people, I decided it would be a great idea if we could try to have a performance in front of a set of screens with a kind of quasi‑video behind it. I suggested it to the director, and he said 'Oh, yes, that sounds like a great idea'. So while we've been recording the song, Ed Silvester up at TSC has been using the new Trinity video system they've got: it's a really high‑powered desktop video‑editing system for about 10 grand, so it's within the reach of musicians — it's about the same price as Pro Tools, and really powerful. The great thing about that system is you've got all the same filtering and everything that big video studios have. I asked him if he could knock up some ideas, so that I've got a video to play back behind her, so he took a DV camera and did loads of scenes of London, and we'll have this to run in parallel with the tape."
Out There
Steve Levine offers guidance during the recording of 'Devil', while Engineer David Graham keeps an eye on the desk.
Although the point of Get Your Act Together is to give promising unknowns an insight, and perhaps an entry, into the music business, it is anything but an exercise in turning their ideas into bland, 'commercial' music. Levine, Meehan and Zickus are creating the backing track for 'Devil' using weird, distorted drum sounds, some of which are reversed, filtered white noise instead of cymbals, and an eclectic selection of real and sampled instruments including a grand piano, a trombone and a waterphone (see box below). "The core vibe is still the original concept for her song, but we want to enhance that," explains Levine. "The mere fact that we've got better samples makes a huge difference to the track. There's no faking — we're making the same decisions as we would make if this were a normal record. The only difference is that we have to leave here tonight with a mix, and if this were a proper record we'd probably want two more days, one more day to do a bit more tweaking and then do the mix as a clean day."
It's like Changing Rooms, Jim'll Fix It, Stars In Their Eyes and Dreams Come True, all squashed together in one.
Even though the track is being put together to be performed with a live vocal, Levine treats it as if he were recording a single. "I mix with the guide vocal as if it were a vocal, because it's much easier to get the balance — there's a certain level that you'll have for the vocal, and it's really hard to mix just a backing track. So we do the vocal mix, then just mute the vocal, as you would actually if you were making a record and you wanted a TV version. The camera crew like to have a version with the guide vocal anyway, so they can work out the camera angles without her being there. It's quite well scripted at the TV show — all the camera crew know what the song is, and it's pretty much done as a live show."
Apart from the piano, guide vocal and trombone (which is played by the multi‑talented Zickus), all the sounds on the track are coming from Meehan's Emu E4K sampler and Zickus' rack of Quasimidi synths. "I've been using Emulators for years," says Levine, "so when Paul made the decision to buy a sampler it was easier for him to get an Emulator, and so did Darius, so we're all completely compatible. So if this were a normal record project and we were doing several different tracks, as we do on some projects, we could double up on the work."
Levine and Zickus are very enthusiastic about their Quasimidi gear. "It's very under‑rated," says Levine, "I think most people are put off by the fact that the manuals aren't very good, but it's very easy to edit them, even if you take a patch and just go through with the filters as you're printing the track to tape, you can get something completely unique."
"That's the beauty of it," agrees Zickus. "Because just moving one knob makes a lot of difference, every person can use it in a unique way. The Polymorph is a very unique instrument, it combines a lot of philosophies and approaches to controlling the sound from the '70s and from the old analogue age with modern technology and DSP, so it's a kind of weird combination of the two, which works really well."
Home From Home
Steve Levine (right) talks to Get Your Act Together host Ronan Keating of Boyzone about Pippa's artistic makeover.
The unusual pressures of working to a strict 48‑hour schedule, while allowing free access to a large film crew, unsurprisingly necessitate changes to Levine's usual working methods. "If this were a normal record," says Levine, "I would have done all the pre‑production and recording at home, and perhaps just mixed it in this sort of studio. This studio's over‑qualified for this project — we are, essentially, doing a lot of programming here, and normally, I wouldn't do programming in a studio because it's just not cost‑effective. For this project, though, we need a control room that will accommodate the crew and the lights and not get in the way of our work process."
Despite being forced to work in different surroundings, however, Levine emphasises that successful production under such time pressures depends essentially on the availability of familiar equipment and personnel: "In a situation like this, you've got to work with programmers and musicians who know the score, and who you work with regularly — there really isn't any room for error." To this end, he's drafted in his regular collaborators, programmers Meehan and Zickus.
In a situation like this, you've got to work with programmers and musicians who know the score, and who you work with regularly — there really isn't any room for error.
Levine has also brought in much of his favourite recording equipment from his home studio. The track is being recorded on an Apple Mac G3 with an Emagic Audiowerk8 card, running Logic Audio, and four Alesis Type II ADATs, linked to the computer through a MOTU 2408 interface. "We get it running in the computer as we like it, and when we're happy with the parts we just lay them to tape," comments Levine. "I prefer that anyway, and that's what I do at home. I like having everything printed because if you have to come back to that project at a later date you can bring it back, you don't have to worry if you've backed it up, or where you've put it. It's all there.
"At the moment the ADAT is still hard to beat in terms of value for money, and ease of use. The Otari RADAR is a very good competitor, but not for the way that I particularly like to work. I don't need the random access, because I can put it into the computer, so that's not a problem, but I tend to work with a large number of tracks sourced down to the things I want, and you can't do that with a hard disk machine. On any project I pre‑stripe hundreds of tapes, and I can have a dedicated tape for whoever's doing whatever — it's much, much easier, you never run out of tracks."
The move from Levine's home studio hasn't been entirely free of difficulties, however. "We had a few problems with the computers because, as you know, as soon as you move bloody computers, cards just get a little unseated," he explains, "but it's still nice to use the stuff you're familiar with. What was great was that all the files are on an external drive, so when the first computer went down, we just moved it to the other one.
There's no faking — we're making the same decisions as we would make if this were a normal record. The only difference is that we have to leave here tonight with a mix.
"A month from now, we'll be moving over to the new blue Macs exclusively. It's frustrating," says Levine of the new G3s' lack of serial ports or built‑in SCSI, "but I can see why Apple has done it. It's an important to draw a line in the sand and say it's all going to be faster and better. We're pretty much running the current Macs flat out, because the demands I make on them are quite high. We're running 24 tracks of stereo audio — most of my files are stereo — and the drives can keep up with it, but it's a lot of movement on the data buss. On the new Macs, the internal buss is twice the speed, which is really where the bottleneck is at the moment."
Even though Levine has done his best to create a familiar working environment in the studio, he finds his work being disrupted by the process of filming: "Every time we do something, it takes a lot longer, because they have to film it, then film it again from the other side, and they're only using one camera. For me, it's very distracting, because, with the way the show's put together, I have to be in 10 places at once, and I'm the sort of producer who likes to be there all the time. If they're doing a bit with me, or a bit with Paul [Meehan], no‑one else can really work, because you can't talk. They did one bit with the three of us talking about what we were doing, but we can't focus on talking to them and working at the same time!"
It's fortunate, says Levine, that Pippa is not a prima donna: "When she's singing, she was singing the guide vocal and they were there filming, and luckily she was on a bit of a roll, so when they broke the cameras down and set the lights up in the control room we did two more quick takes. A lot of professional artists would find it really intimidating doing a lead vocal with people breaking up lights in the studio, but she didn't get fazed. She just got on and did it. I think a signed professional artist who's been in the studio a lot would have real difficulty doing that."
Waterworld
Programmer Paul Meehan is one of Levine's regular collaborators.The dark, eerie feel which Levine creates on 'Devil' is due in large measure to his unusual choice of samples. Particularly prominent are a range of unearthly swooping and moaning sounds which sound like Larry Adler performing whalesong. "That's a waterphone," explains Levine. "It's a thing that looks a bit like a trumpet mute, filled with water. Down the side are spikes which are chromatically tuned; they go all the way round, and you play them with a violin bow. As you hold it, you move it, and the water inside moves and that's what gives you the different sounds. The violin bow going round the thin bits makes the squeakiness, and then the pitch is determined by the water sloshing around in it. They use it on film soundtracks. They're quite odd things!"