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so i know it's not dubstep but i figured you guys would have some input about two of the strangest hip hop producers out now and their production techniques. clams casino and flying lotus have this compressed, sidechained, lofi, gritty sound that i can't figure out how to pull off for the life of me. it sounds heavily compressed but perfectly natural at the same time.

the two producers have this insane talent of designing the trippiest stereo images. they aren't just panning shit left and right, the whole stereo image seems alive and breathing. like sometimes they perfectly pan delays/reverbs that seem to sweep from left to right, etc. with the beat and i have no idea how they pull it off.

the hats in this song seem to phase with time, what the hell is he doing with them??
http://youtu.be/a3Sn8n0DOs4

the bass in motivation is distorted and so delicious, any ideas?
http://youtu.be/6yBQBFoKC1A

the reverbs in this are wild, and there's the distorted bass again
http://youtu.be/HyDMrxZLfPM


also, any ideas what kind of drum samples these guys are using? the gritty (maybe lowpassed ?) ones?

Clams has a very long RBMA interview where explains his production some. It's not very technical but you can assume a lot. For example "Bass" and "I'm God" were made from the same Imogen Heap sample. Clam's stretches/pitches out vocals for all parts of his songs I'm pretty sure, the bass is just a super low hum from a high note being pitched down and he might put a sub underneath it but I doubt it. I have no idea what he is using to stretch them to get his sound or I'd be doing it myself!
To get the stereo width try a sample delay, in logic it's under the echo plugins. This starts the left/right at different times and instantly shoots the sound outside of everything else. (Be careful though, it can sound really bad in mono)

Thanks for introducing me to the Clams - really beautiful music, makes me sad in a good way

just like to say that clams casino is dope. never heard of this kid before.

yeah he really deserves more recognition. anyone have any ideas about his sampling techniques or how he creates his textures?

welcome to what should i have sidechained

Clams is killer man! cheers for the link!

i can't really offer specifics but both of these guys base a lot of their tunes on straight-up sampling and manipulation. just cutting up a fairly common sample and pitching it way up or down can lead to some really interesting results, which i think is the case with some of this stuff. i know flylo likes to fill his tunes with all sorts of extra, unquantized percussions and one-off sounds, which can help with stereo image (having elements not hitting at the precise beat divisions as the rest of your instruments can go a long way in making a groove work and filling out the entire soundscape, and to me, it's a huge part of flylo's sound). i think like 3 minutes into "recoiled" is a good example of this, where there is just so much shit going on, but if you break it down into its individual elements, it starts to be a little more manageable.

i would try finding some interesting breaks and cutting them down to just a bar or less and looping them in-between the regular beats, just messing with it until you find something that's interesting alongside the rest of your tune. it sounds like sometimes these guys aren't even using breaks necessarily - just finding cool beats (with the entire tune still playing) and eq'ing out some of the bottom and then applying all sorts of effects so that they aren't quite as recognizable. once you start to build up enough of these you get a pretty wild sound going. layering with panning is really helpful here, as well, and offsetting the layers by a few milliseconds can fatten stuff up (the snare in "all i need" is sort of an example of this, as it sounds like it's two snares hard-panned left and right). the right samples with some cool effects-chains and reverb settings can go a really long way in making a track sound interesting and fat. if you listen closely to some of these tracks you can hear how short some of the loops they're using are - maybe just a beat or two of a shaker sample, etc - but the arrangement of them makes everything so rad.

i have no idea if that made any sense or was helpful but i love the tunes these guys make. i think clams casino lives like a half hour away from me which is crazy.

thanks man that post was really helpful. it's hard to define these guys' techniques because i think it fundamentally comes down to their unique choice of samples. but i agree, i think clams pitches a lot of samples way down and stretches them out. his textures are weird though and if you only pitch a sample down and timestretch it, it's not gonna sound like clams. i think he uses a ton of effects to make things sound gritty.

like in his song "natural" there's clearly some weird distortion going on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm8QqdTVgy0

i'm thinking he uses a ton of strange plugins like fabfilter's saturn. check out the 'smudge' feature at about 3 minutes into this...
http://youtu.be/dbMa8g_jV2I

hmmm i'll be messing around with timestretching and delays/reverbs. if i figure anything out, i'll make a new post

whoops, repost

I read in an interview that Clams is an avid Sony Acid Pro user.

mtl6 wrote:i'm thinking he uses a ton of strange plugins like fabfilter's saturn. check out the 'smudge' feature at about 3 minutes into this...
http://youtu.be/dbMa8g_jV2I

yeahhh that is a rad sounding plugin, i gotta invest in some good plugins soon