Beck Hansen (Beck) is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer who became well known within the music industry during the 90s due to his unique style of incorporated musical elements from a wide array of musical genres, from acoustic, blues to hip hop and pop, often including sampling techniques to cut between these styles to create his unique style.
Taking a look at Beck’s 1996 album ‘Odelay’, we can have a better understanding of how he acquired the success he has over the years, largely influenced by the pure amount of different relationships he had established with producers and musicians throughout the years. Though Beck was the predominant producer, he did collaborate with The Dust Brothers, Mario Caldato Jr, Brian Paulson, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf (Music Tech, 2014). Mike Simpson and John King (The Dust Brothers). Impressed by Beck’s ability to skip between different musical genres, The Dust Brothers consisting of Mike Simpson and John King wanted to get an idea of who he was, later to find out they share many of the same musical interests (Spencer, 2011). Inspired by the lack of pressure due to the presumption that Beck was a ‘one-hit-wonder’, the two parties felt a sense of ease when it came to the making of ‘Odelay’.
Seeing how Beck had approached the creative process on his successful 2013 album ‘Morning Phase’, a considerable amount of the included instrumentation is predicated on the involvement of a range of creative minds coming together. During the recording stage, Beck “recorded the basic tracks for most of Morning Phase [..] in three days of tracking”, whereby after he spent “almost half a year on his own” trying to figure it all out and thinking about “how to make it all work” (Frick, 2013).
Incorporation of Beck’s production approaches/techniques in my own production
Inspired by the way Beck approached the production process for ‘Odelay’, I very much want to replicate the idea of ‘sampling’; chopping up, editing and manipulating audio in a variety of different manors to achieve something new. I’m extremely excited about working with this technique; having a plethora of musical objects to which I can trial and error with. Seeing whether a cabasa could be placed within a particular section of the chorus, editing parts of collaborative vocals to see if a low hum fits underneath an acoustic guitar verse – just experimenting with the musical instances I have to create something I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of.
I will also be incorporating the collaborative efforts Beck introduces within his work to the production side of my tracks too. Most of the artists/creative minds I am working with for this project are all individuals I have known for years that know me, know how I approach music and are just enthusiastic minds with great ideas. I want to get a grasp of how they hear the music, what ideas they have and bring these ideas into the tracks, so they’re not just my songs, but the people that help support me as well. An instance of this can be found for example in Session #2 of ‘Sessions with Pete’, where I had heard a particular way in my head of how the rhythm of the drums would be for ‘Wait’, but I much preferred how Pete was playing it during the verse sections. The drums were originally supposed to be rimshots during the verse. but I felt his take on the verse was much better than mine, so we stuck with that. As Pete, Thomas and Anthony all have different musical tastes, they’ll all have different ways of approaching my music, based on their prior experiences, tastes, and emotions, so for me I find it important to incorporate these into my records in the same way Beck has over the years.
In terms of a stylistic approach, I love the clarity of the acoustic guitars on Beck’s ‘Morning Phase’ album, more specifically the song ‘Morning’. His acoustic guitar has a very smooth, even frequency response and was recorded incredibly dry, yet has a lovely reverb placed on it during the mixing process that compliments the low-end frequency content of the acoustic guitar. I am very much inspired by this, yet want a slightly more distant, relaxed acoustic guitar sound for “You and I” – so it’s not directly in your face, yet the top end clarity is clear and crisp.
References
David Frick (2013) Beck’s Long Road to ‘Morning Phase’. [online] Rolling Stone. Available from http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/becks-long-road-to-morning-phase-20131121 [Accessed 16 March 2017].
Music Tech (2014) Landmark Productions: Beck – Odelay. [online] Available from: http://www.musictech.net/2014/11/landmark-productions-beck-odelay/ [Accessed 26 February 2017].
Rex Otaegui (2014) Beck – Morning [HQ w/Lyrics]. [online video] YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvKbBkiYN9Y [Accessed 26 February 2017].
Roy Spencer (2011) The making of Beck’s Odelay: Dust Brother Mike Simpson’s track-by-track guide. [online] Music Radar. Available from http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/the-making-of-becks-odelay-dust-brother-mike-simpsons-track-by-track-guide-401512 [Accessed 26 February 2017].