Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Fraser T Smith : November 2009
In this article:
Ben Allen  Mixing R&B  Babydaddy • Dan Grech-Marguerat The Scissor Sisters' first album, recorded in a Manhattan apartment, sold 3.5 million copies worldwide. The follow-up sees them expanding their horizons, while keeping their DIY ethos very much intact. Artist/Producer  Writing & Producing With Robbie Williams Despite his best efforts, Stephen Duffy's solo work never quite made him a superstar — but it did get him one of the best co-writing gigs around. Producing Kasabian & Arctic Monkeys  Yellow Magic Orchestra goes Latino Yellow Magic Orchestra helped pioneer the use of electronic instruments and sampling. Now Uwe Schmidt, aka Señor Coconut, has used the same techniques to render their greatest hits as Latin dances, with contributions from all three original YMO members. Recording Morph The Cat  Folk Music For The 21st Century The idea of bringing folk music up to date is not a new one, but few people have taken it quite as far as Jim Moray. His material may be traditional, but his approach to music technology is as modern as it gets. Andy Jackson David Gilmour's chart-topping solo album was recorded on his own Astoria houseboat, a floating slice of studio heaven. Engineer Andy Jackson describes the making of the album. Mike Elizondo  The Current State Of Affairs What can we, as engineers or musicians, do to prevent our recorded legacy being lost? Record Producer  Richard Aitken of Nimrod Productions  Writing & Producing in LA The success of Avril Lavigne's debut album Let Go catapulted The Matrix to the front rank of songwriters and producers. Since then, they've moved in ever wider musical circles, culminating in their work with nu-metal pioneers Korn. Producing Hip-Hop Miami is now a hip-hop centre to rival New York and LA, and Cool & Dre are two of its most active beatmakers, songwriters and producers. Craig Bauer Craig Bauer has been part of Kanye West's career from the beginning, and as a mix engineer on the smash hit Late Registration album, he had to marry West's artistic perfectionism with his own technical standards. Roy Thomas Baker  John Fryer  Harry Gregson-Williams  December 2009
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Other recent issues: | Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Fraser T SmithArticle Preview :: Inside Track: Tinchy StryderPublished in SOS November 2009 People + Opinion : Artists/Engineers/Producers/Programmers Producer and songwriter Fraser T Smith has made the unlikely journey from prog rock to grime. With Tinchy Stryder, his broad experience has paid off in the shape of three massive hit singles.
With American artists still dominating the hip-hop/R&B genre, it’s gratifying to see artists from different nationalities beating them at their own game. East Londoner Tinchy Stryder is one case in point. He’s known as a grime vocalist, though the subtle distinctions between grime, UK garage, breakbeat, hip-hop and other sub- and sub-sub varieties of the urban genre will be lost on the masses. To the uninitiated, Stryder (birthname Kwasi Dunquah: he’s of Ghanaian descent), simply makes urban-sounding pop. The 22-year old rapper’s rise to fame this year has been dramatic, with three successive major UK hits in ‘Take Me Back’ and chart-toppers ‘Number One’ and ‘Never Leave You’. All three hits can be found on his second solo album, and first major label release, Catch 22, released last August. A central role in the making of the album was played by Fraser T Smith, who co-wrote, arranged, played, mixed and produced many of the songs, including the three above-mentioned hits. Smith is currently making big waves in the UK urban scene, winning the 2008 Urban Music Award, but urban music was not always Smith’s metier: in fact, he was previously best known as a prog-rocker who played guitar with Rick Wakeman, most notably on 1999’s Return To The Centre Of The Earth. For Fraser Thorneycroft-Smith, as he was then known, this experience was as much a milestone as a millstone, which needed a few years, and a name abbreviation, to live down. The now 38-year-old Fraser T Smith recalls how he took the long and winding road from old-hippy prog rock to trendy urban youth music. “My first point of entry in the urban music scene was a remix I did in the mid-’90s of Drizabone’s ‘Let It Out’. After playing with Rick I went on to work with Craig David — from 1999 to 2004 — and that really made my name in the urban genre. I played guitar for him and we produced one track together on his first album, Born To Do It [2000], which sold millions. I also did bits and pieces in the studio, writing, co-producing, and so on, on his albums Slicker Than The Average [2002] and Trust Me [2007]. In addition I co-wrote the track ‘Broken Strings’, by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado. But really, I’m not from an urban background, I’m a jack of all trades. So I was very pleasantly surprised to receive the 2008 Urban Music Award. I thought Mark Ronson was a shoe-in.” Philosophy Of Everything
‘Jack of all trades’ is a modest description for someone who can play, write, arrange, program, engineer, mix and produce. Smith spent his teenage years studying the guitar, attended a guitar college for a year, and entered the London session scene at age 19. Encounters with the recording side of things sparked a fire, which went on to burn more and more brightly. “Even when I was playing in bands I was always recording, and learning the craft of production and mixing. I grew up with a four-track and a drum machine, and mixed things down on C60 cassette tape. When I did studio sessions as a guitarist I asked engineers endless questions, and after I did a few tours I realised that I loved the studio so much that I quit the whole session guitarist thing, and concentrated on writing and production. I had my first studio in a room at the Roundhouse in London, with a Logic setup and some analogue bits and pieces. The essence of what I work on has always been a drum machine, a guitar, a keyboard, and some way of recording it. That’s still the same today.” In Smith’s MyAudioTonic Studio, where all the Tinchy Stryder material he was involved in was written, recorded and mixed, the drum machine is an Akai MPC4000, the keyboard is a Yamaha CX2, and the recording is done in Pro Tools. His workspace holds API 512, Chandler TG2 and Avalon U5 preamps, Neve 1073, API 550 and Manley Massive Passive EQs, Dbx 160, Urei 1176, Empirical Labs Distressor and Alan Smart C2 compressors, a Crane Song HEDD valve/tape emulator, Focusrite ISA430 and Avalon 737 voice channels, and Lexicon PCM70 and MPX1, Eventide H3000, Roland SD330 and Lexicon MPX1 effects processors. There’s an Apogee Big Ben clock and a 32-channel Chandler summing unit, and the monitors are Auratones, Yamaha NS10s and Genelec 8240As: the last are tuned to the room and Smith calls them “brilliant”. The musical instruments lying around include a Roland Juno 106 and SH101, a Korg Polysix and a Yamaha DX7. Perhaps surprisingly, he also owns an Otari MTR90 MkII 24-track analogue tape recorder. ...
Published in SOS November 2009 
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