N.E.R.D | Old Money, New Money

Jun 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef

NOT CONTENT WITH MERE MILLIONS, THE BILLIONAIRE BOYS CLUB OF PHARRELL WILLIAMS, CHAD HUGO AND SHAY AIM HIGHER, BRINGING N.E.R.D BACK TO ITS RAW BEGINNINGS WITH BUCKETS, SYNESTHESIA AND A CAN OF RED BULL

DID WE MENTION BUCKETS?

By now, it's clear the secret weapon behind many of N.E.R.D's tracks (as well as Neptunes' productions, including Gwen Stefani's “Hollaback Girl”) is Williams' generous use of bucket drumming to enhance programmed rhythms. From Los Angeles' Record Plant and Miami's South Beach Studios to N.E.R.D's Hovercraft Studios, Williams maintains a sizable bucket collection to match every sound in his arsenal of rhythmic drum wizardry.

“Every studio we go to Pharrell asks, ‘Do you have my buckets set up?’” Coleman says with a laugh. “He uses anything: a paint can, a big 50-gallon drum, trash buckets. Pharrell typically plays 20 buckets at once. He'll use one like a deep trash bucket for the kick sound, then one with a sharper attack for a snare sound, metal buckets for a percussive feel. He will go from bucket to bucket. It's not like he's playing all the buckets as a kit. He will program a kick and a snare, then we will go behind that and use different bucket sounds to add to the programmed sounds. We put buckets on everything, even recent tracks with Missy Elliott. Sometimes we just empty the garbage from the bathroom trash cans and use those in the studio. It's almost a secret, but it's just buckets, man. It's really hype, and it's really raw. It is what gives their music that crazy raw feel and a lot of attack.

“Pharrell will also do a couple tracks just improvising,” Coleman continues. “Then we will pick the best eight-bar loop from what he did. I use the vocal mics on the buckets, usually a Sony C800G into the Avalon 737. We will even grab one kick-drum bucket or snare and replace it with a programmed kick to make sure it is tight. I might align the buckets with the tom fills sometimes using Pro Tools' SoundReplacer plug-in. You can analyze a tom track and set a threshold of sensitivity and actually set a trigger point so when Pro Tools sees that attack, it will use whatever sample or bucket sound you want and play it at the same exact time. You can have a tom hit; then the bucket hit is triggered by SoundReplacer. So if you have a kick drum you are not happy with, you can use SoundReplacer and demo any kind of kick that you want.”

Williams' buckets matched with Fawcett's live drums are the meat of N.E.R.D's rocket projectile sound. Seeing Sounds leaps out of the speakers, its collective energy and exceptionally clean presentation the exact opposite of many commercial releases. But the N.E.R.D camp took as much care in recording the live drums as with Williams' banging buckets.

“Eric plays drums on all tracks,” Coleman says. “Usually I put a Sony C800G waist high pointed at the kick drum but a little higher, aimed at the middle of kit. I call it a front mic. I've always done that; I did it on the Justin Timberlake record. It's like you're standing in front of the drummer as he is playing. It captures that vibe like you are sticking your head right in the middle of the set. I also close-miked the snare with a Shure SM57 and put an AKG D 112 into the hole in the bass-drum head. For mic pres, I use a Neve 1073 or 1081 on the kick and snare, an Avalon 737 for the front mic, a Purple Audio Biz for the Neumann 47 fet on the second kick-drum mic (room mic) and a Shadow Hills Gamma for the 57 on the snare. Finally, I use a John Hardy M-1 Dual Preamp for the overhead Neumann KM 84.”

Again, as with Williams' buckets, Coleman will extract a perfect loop from Fawcett's recorded drum track, or not. Varying the approach track by track, with Williams in close attendance, Coleman makes judicious cuts.

“We'll loop a portion of Eric Fawcett's drum track or use the whole live take, depending on the recording. On ‘Spazz’ and ‘Killjoy,’ Eric played the track six times top to bottom and we grabbed a good tight eight-bar loop for the groove. Then any type of a fill he'd play, we would just grab that fill off of a playlist and insert it in the track to give it more of a live feel.”

SEEING DOLLAR SIGNS?

Is Seeing Sounds the culmination of Williams and Hugo's magnificent 10-year career? With the duo's worth once estimated at approximately $155 million (as of 2003), it's hard to imagine that Seeing Sounds was designed as anything less than a total artistic statement. With that kind of cash flow, who needs commercialism?

“Ultimately, we just want to make people move,” Hugo says. “Seeing Sounds is in the spirit of hip-hop, and it resides in the classic rock/funk era. Seeing Sounds is dance music, driving fast music. It's pounding chicks music; it's getting high music. The last record was mostly getting high music as far as it being a sit-back, chilled and visualize type of thing. But this has a lot of rebel undertone, and that's the spirit of the first N.E.R.D [album]. You can really dig into where society is at. Not to get to deep, but look at what's going on in the world right now and then jam to this.”

GETTING N.E.R.D-Y
Seeing Sounds at South Beach Studios (Miami) and the Record Plant (Los Angeles)

Computer, DAW/recording software, interfaces
Apogee Rosetta 800 AD/DA converter
Apple Power Mac Dual 1.8 GHz G5 with Cinema Display
Digidesign 96i interface, 192 I/O interface, Pro Tools|HD 3 Accel, SYNC I/O

Consoles
Digidesign Pro Control, 24 channels with Edit Pack
SSL 4000 G, 9000 J

Synths, instruments
Access Virus TI
E-mu Systems E4XT, Emulator
II, Emulator III and Emax
Korg 01/W Workstation, Triton Extreme, Triton Pro and TR-Rack
Oberheim Xpander
Roland Juno-106, JV-1080, JV-2080 and XV-5080s (with expansion cards)
Yamaha Motif Rack
Drums, buckets

Plug-ins
Line 6 Echo Farm, Amp Farm
Plug-ins from Bomb Factory, Metric Halo, Sans Amp, Sony, Waves

Microphones
AKG C 12 VR, C 414 and D 112
Neumann U 47 fet, KM 84
Sennheiser E609
Shure SM57, SM58 and SM81
Sony C800G

Preamps
Avalon Vt-737sp “Baby Face Mod”
Focusrite ISA 430
John Hardy Company M-1
Neve 1073s and 1081s
Purple Audio Biz
Shadow Hills Gamma
Summit Audio TPA-200B tube preamp

Compressors, EQs
(2) dbx 160s compressor
GML 8200 Parametric EQ
Pultec EQP-1 EQ
(2) Teletronix LA-2A compressor
Tube-Tech CL 1B compressor
(2) Urei 1176 compressor

Drum machines
Linn Electronics LinnDrum, Linn 9000
Roland TR-808, TR-909

Monitors
Bryston 4B power amps
Genelec 1031s, 1037s, 7070 subwoofer
KRK 9000Bs
ProAc Studio 100s
Yamaha NS10s

SEEING VOCALS?

The care and feeding of Williams' vocal signal chain is no less complex than all the programming and bucket/drum kit recording. The Sony C800G gets the bulk of the workout, paired with Avalon, Tube-Tech or Neve mic pres.

“I run the Sony C800G into the Avalon 737,” engineer Andrew Coleman recalls, “normally setting a fast attack/slow release on the compressor. I try not to compress Pharrell's vocals any more than 2 to 3 dB — real minimal compression going into Pro Tools, if at all. Normally, I will have the preamp high gain on zero and the highpass filter set at 60 to 80 Hz. Sometimes I will vary the attack on the compressor. A lot of people say the Avalon is not fast enough, but for Pharrell's voice, either the Sony C800G or the AKG C 12 VR and that preamp works great on his voice. I will go to a Neve 1081 or a Tube-Tech CL 1B compressor occasionally. I use a little reverb, but Pharrell doesn't like to record with any effects. I put a little hall on it and a quarter-note delay afterwards to give it a little more oomph. He always asks to take the lows off his voice, which means rolling off to about 140 Hz, so it sounds a little crispier.”

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