TN:174 Danny L Harle

Hello, welcome to State Notes. Just before we get into this week's episode, we've got an announcement for our extended players premium over on Patreon. We're running a brand new giveaway featuring an absolutely stacked bundle from Goodhurts. We're talking about the Wolf Compressor Mastering Edition, the DC-19 Delay, Tube, Wow Control, Mega Verb and Lossy with a total value of $660. These plugins have been mentioned on the podcast so many times. Lossy, especially, I think, was pretty key on tracks from Lord, Bastille, Lawil-Kana and Mahalia, just to name a few. So if you're into characterful musical, slightly magic plugins, this one's definitely worth entering. Full details on how to enter are up now on the TakeNotes Patreon page at patreon.com/taintnotes. Now, onto this week's new episode and it really is a special one. I was joined by Danny L. Harle, who dived deep into his tracks from his new album Cerulean. He gets properly into the weeds on sound design, arrangement and all the wild little production decisions behind the record. He's such a musical polymath, I think, really. He has such incredible knowledge and enthusiasm and the combination is fantastic. We've had Danny on the show before when he produced Ole Alexander's Polari, but it was brilliant to hear him break down his own music this time, loads of amazing insight. One thing to mention, you might notice a squeaky chair and some enthusiastic foot tapping in the background, but when Danny's making tunes like this, staying still wasn't much of an option. I think I might be the culprit on that. I'm so sorry. You can watch the full video episode now on Patreon and we'll be dropping highlights and clips over on YouTube soon. Thank you to all of you who supported on Patreon as well as the full video episodes. Membership to Patreon gives you behind the scenes content, merch discounts, detailed gear lists, the chance to ask our guest questions and entry to our monthly gear giveaway competitions, among many other things. Huge thanks as well to our partners at Tape It, the brilliant iPhone recording app for musicians. They've got a new plug-in announcement coming very soon, a VST version of their D-noiser. We've had to play with it already and it sounds seriously good, so keep an eye out for more on that. But now, without further ado, let's get started. This episode is being supported by Tape It, the iPhone recording app for musicians. As many of the fantastic artists and producers on Tape Notes have mentioned, recording voice memos, field recordings, capturing ideas on the go is crucial to the creative process and Tape It makes it effortless. With Tape It, you can record straight from your lock screen. Capture ideas in stereo, choose between multiple recording formats, drop markers to highlight key moments and create shared mix tapes with friends and collaborators. You can even view your recordings on a map so you'll always remember where inspiration struck. Whether it's a quick melody or a full song idea, Tape It helps you stay creative without the clutter. So, click the link in a recent episode. Show notes or head to Tape.it/Tape Notes to download Tape It for free. And for even more, check out Tape It Pro and use promo code Tape Notes for 20% off. That's Tape.it/Tape Notes. Now, on with the show. Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music. Every episode will be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio. So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath. Hello, I'm John Kennedy and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes is Danny Elhal to talk about how he wrote, recorded and produced the album Cerulean. Danny Elhal is a British producer, artist and composer. Coming from a creative family, Danny's passion for music came into focus at age 12 when he discovered bands like Slipknot and Madness, inspiring him to pick up the bass guitar and eventually leading him to study classical music at Goldsmiths University of London. While at university, he reconnected with A.G. Cook, a former schoolmate and the began to experiment with sounds, merging their shared love of electronic music. This collaboration deepened his interest in pop songwriting and production, laying the foundation for his solo career. His debut single Broken Flowers, a track infused with 90s dance partner Stauja, was released in 2013 through A.G.'s fledgling label PC Music. Danny's debut album, Hal Caw, arrived in 2021, released on the label Mad Decent, the album earned a claim for its gloriously over-the-top revival of 90s rave sounds, colliding hard dance, Euro dance and hyperpop in a rush of euphoric self-aware escapism. Over the years, Danny has become one of the most sought after producers and songwriters in music. He has collaborated with numerous artists notably producing and co-producing albums for Caroline Politech, Jua Lipa, Ok Lou and Oli Alexander as explored in Take Notes episode 152. So, Julian, Danny's latest album, arrived in February 2026 on Excel recordings. The record distills Hal's signature mix of rave energy, classical harmony and hyper-detail production into a singular sonic universe. Today, I'm at premises studios and I'm joined by Danny and what better way to start than by hearing something from the record. This is Ireland. [Music] It is Ireland by Daniel Harle from the album Cerulean and I'm very pleased to say that we've come to premises studios and Danny Harle is here. Hello, Danny. Nice to see you again. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming back on Take Notes. Very excited about this. So, Cerulean is the new album. Am I pronouncing it correctly? You are correct. And in a Cerulean? I always think that one of the great things about talking to you, Danny, is that we're going to learn a lot. It's so educational in so many different ways. Already we're starting with Cerulean. So tell us the album title. Why choose that word? Okay, so when I was making this album, I intentionally approached it just from the perspective of making the music first. So the album I made before was sort of quite concept-led. And the statement I wanted to make with this one was a musical statement. So I had to kind of work out what it was that I had made after I had made it. And I just noticed these themes that turned up in the music and that it was really a lot about emotion and just the way it made me feel. And I just started to explore kind of half abstraction and just things that I felt like were in conjunction with the type of emotion that I was striking upon with the music. I noticed this kind of thread of what I call euphoric men and collie sort of linking together all the music, this sort of feeling. And then I kind of landed on this color that sort of seemed to encompass all of these things. So it's this color as a very deep blue and it's the blue of the ocean as well as this sort of blue that's associated with this kind of melancholic feeling. So it just seemed to be an all-encompassing and necessarily abstract word that just sort of feels like the album. Very interesting. And it's interesting because I think in some ways I mean for many of the people who have heard some of the songs already from the album, no, we're talking dance floor, we're talking pop music, we're talking about a kind of joyful uplifting pump your fists in the air kind of reaction to some of these songs. But at the same time, they're a beautiful instrumental majestic kind of tracks on there as well without vocals. And so there's these two polarities in a way to what you've done. Yes, I'm really glad you say that because that's exactly what I was trying to do. I love dance pop music. I love beautiful melodies. I love really nice chord sequences. I have a very specific approach to all these things. And kind of I wanted to showcase exactly how I want music to sound with this album. I also like much more complex chord sequences that have these kind of sequential modulation things that go on in them. Just the way they make me feel is just sort of like nothing else. And they need their own space to breathe. You can't really put that into dance pop music, but I wanted to find a way of putting it in the same universe as the sort of dance pop that I like. So you can hear me exploring that stuff on some tracks. And you can hear me exploring maybe fragments of those chord sequences and other tracks, but also and you can hear sort of throughout history different sort of composers have tried using these different sort of harmonic techniques. And there are certain composers, especially from the Elizabethan period and the Italian Renaissance that I really like. And I just wanted to see if I could incorporate that sort of style of harmony into what I do and translate the sounds instead of being on classical instruments being in this sort of electronic world. There's nothing new as well. This is something that producer would do for a long time. I was quite startled by the lack of terminology there is for this stuff though. A lot of the terminology people have for it is quite undermining or just inaccurate a lot of the time. So so ambient music is used a lot, which is not undermining or inaccurate if it is ambient music, but it implies a style of listening, which is not necessarily the case if it's all sort of instrumental electronic music or electronic orchestral, but you could call it in terms of say Wendy Carlos's music or that William Orbit album pieces in a modern style, all sort of things that effects twin square pushery have done in this world. And yeah, I just was quite surprised by the the terminology that that currently exists because beatless is thrown around as well. And that's just defining something by what isn't there. It's quite exciting really that there is still it shows how electronic music is still kind of in its infancy to a small extent that even though it's been around for quite a while now. But that sort of thought that that was an interesting part of writing this album, realizing that it's actually quite hard to express what these sort of moments are in between the songs because they weren't instantly, they're designed to be listened to and engaged with directly as pieces of music, it's just exactly as you've described. So I'm really happy that communicated to you. Yeah, that was definitely my first impression. It's interesting already it's educational and you're raising lots of really interesting topics and really interesting issues. And I think we should head straight into the music because I'm sure that the music will help articulate these really well. It should be self-explanatory really. We just heard a little bit of Ireland. But the first song we're going to look at in depth is La. So maybe if you could give us a blast to the master of that and then we'll find out more about it. [Music] [Music] So that is just a little taste of La from Cerulean by Danny Elhal. How did this start? So you can hear that it's got that big spacious intro with a large sense of scale. I'm really sort of contending with the sort of a lot of the fundamental premises of this album in this track to find a way of having this kind of material shifting harmony that then finds a secure place to start repeating itself because in order to make successful dance music less of the time or the kind of dance of music that I like, you need to repeat yourself. But I also wanted to experiment with this sort of shifting harmony. So I thought it would be nice to have this kind of big cloud of a of mccurial harmony that then finds a place with the help of this melody. And I found this way of doing it in this piece like yeah it's just quite satisfying really. I think after I sort of figured it out harmonically and melodically I realized it's sort of needed something else and it sort of to me sounded like the weirdly sound like the birth of the album in a funny way because it sort of combines these two things I was trying to do. And I had this voice note on my phone of my daughter Nico singing just sort of absolutely singing. I think what she was doing is just looking at the wave form of her voice on the voice notes or the tape it. And then just sort of just seeing what comes up. But then there was just this one lard that she sang which sort of caught my attention because I don't know what it is but I just have a kind of instinct for when something is like communicates sonically. And I don't quite know what that means but I just know when it's the one. And I'm just like yep that one. I'm very good at making decisions like that when it's case when the question is like do you like this do you not like this it's like yep nope yep yep so so I was just like listening back to some sort of yeah voice notes and I found this one of Nico singing. I wonder if you can hear which lard is the one. I don't know whether I can. Anyone hear that anyone? Anyone who's the one? Which one was it? Maybe I won't tell you actually yeah okay I won't tell you it's for you at home this is a there's a cash prize for the winner of the identifier of the track. Do we get here again? If you want yeah there you go. And the competition is active. So there we go. So that so I found that and then there was one particular lard that really sort of spoke to me and that and that was like yeah great and I love the lyrical lard it's really good lyrics I think the lyrics particularly good in the song. Because it's just like yeah it just feels like it goes with this sort of the sense of it like being the birth of the album the birth of the sort of of of sound and like singing I really enjoy that and then the fact that yeah I sort of I tune the lard to different notes to fit the new keys that the tracks are modulates and I found that sort of quite an amusing thing and yeah it's as usual with all the tracks on the album like every every sound is sort of like in me trying to make my point using that sound as old music made by everyone is like sort of this is the kind of thing I like to hear this sound play that's really what like making music is a lot of the time. So kind of like when you heard when we had island at the beginning that kind of like that that saw that bendy saw synth that is a sound that I so love in electronic music and have done my entire life people can associate that with the sort of Alice DJ better off alone synth or something like that but specifically the sort of the bendy one turns up in different different music and I guess it's sort of my my gesture to to that stuff but I but you can't just copy it you have to sort of make make it your own in that way so I sort of found my own way of using it and that's part of what I wanted this album to be is just this statement of all the things that I love right now okay so you've got LAR and you love that yes but then you're trying to use that to create a song a piece of music oh yes so what do you do next I mean do you start playing that on your keyboard or are you writing other sounds to go with that LAR yeah so with LAR the process was more me doing this harmonics study and then working out this moment where I could repeat a small section of this harmonic study and create dance music out of it and then the addition of the LAR was kind of like a cherry on the cake to glue the whole thing together and then at that point I had to find this way of taking the whole song on a journey when I had this initial sort of build and then the first drop I wanted it to sound like this kind of this sort of odyssey of a song and so I had to sort of find ways of recontextualizing it and sort of and reframing this this LAR and like yeah the the pitching of it to the different keys I think was a fun way of doing that and are we able to hear the harmonic study I'm not sure I here we go it's just opened here so here we have the logic file for LAR this is what the harmonic study sort of section looked like let's see let you can see all the automation is quite extreme here because I just wanted to hear certain bits at certain times and certain instruments playing sort of more up-hegeated moments some some of playing sort of just bass notes got these pipe strings here as I called them I always had to sort of come up with different names of these things how much is very useful here we go so if I I could just solo this slot without the sound effects of the LAR and are these all sounds you've designed or are these things straight from a keyboard or these are sounds that I have designed basically I often have a jumping off point from a preset or something like that but I usually sort of send it into complete oblivion and then come back but I do like bouncing off a preset so I mean because we're hearing lots of different elements in there exactly the brass in there and there's these spells and strings and yeah there's a lot going on so there's a sort of core of it which is sort of these sort of string like and you can see just like you can see that pattern here just like visually that is sort of going down like that going down like that going down like that because this is sequence it's the same pattern but there's a kind of pivot point where it kind of the end kind of goes back to the beginning but it's actually in a new key every time because if it was the same every time it would just be the same thing every time this is going upwards and that's to me what gives a sound of it like pushing forwards in the sort of that sense of adventure and sort of honesty to it and you can hear at this point the song we've reached our kind of equilibrium where the melody is started and the melody really helps ground it into this sort of like repeatable moment because at the beginning it's like there's a sense of where are we with this sort of beginning yeah beginning moment so that was a sort of that was that initial process there and then the uh where's my where's my flute there we go we have our lead synth here from my very trusty very trusty instrument steam pipe possibly one of the greatest instruments of all time that was just made by reactor here we have the do we okay so here look here we can see how how the sound is sort of achieved really because when a synthesizer is playing the lead instrument you can't just like play just like a most of the time you can't really play just a pure electronic sound on its own or like some preset lead synth there has to be some sort of human element to the performance otherwise it just sounds quite sort of uh blank and sort of unemotional and I find tuning is a big part of that so this automation line at the bottom here is the tuning it's the pitch bend basically and I use it to sort of uh often just play melodies on it so if you look it in fact if I just like get rid of the pitch bend here we'll listen to this first note but then with this pitch bend on it there's just something that there's inflections sort of the ornamentation gives the a sense of like of an uncanny that humanity and it's when there's that uncanny humanity but also with emotion it for some reason that is what I want to hear yeah yeah but it but it sounds like somebody's actually blowing that yes then and they happen to be using a deeper breath at that point yeah exactly it's the kind of inflections that you get in a inner performance but um there's something about that kind of mechanical sort of robotic performance that I just really enjoyed so that is what's happening in the lead synth we've got a bunch of buses and sends that we're going through there it's some absolute classics here now we've got pro r2 here which is my absolute favorite and I think honestly think this reverb is like one of the secrets there's something very beautiful about that specific reverb the um character that the chorus of it and the fact that you control the length of a certain frequency so it's rather rather than just controlling the EQ of the input or outputs of the of what's sort of being reverberated is it's you this sort of EQ looking thing on the top is how a lot it looks like an EQ but it's actually sort of controlling how long these frequencies these specific frequencies will last and I sort of like landed exactly on here for how long I wanted these to last and then put loads of the sort of chorus-y effect on it there and that's sort of how we landed on this sort of sound that I think actually like although quite subtle gives it this sense of like alien beauty yeah so that's that and then as we progress into the track there is quite a dramatic moment after the first chorus so yeah so now it's just the reactor warming up there but there's a lot going on there too I mean because in a way you've got those power cords and then it breaks down and then you know something smashes a sub of the head and then that melody comes in and how are you creating all those different things what tools are you using that is a lot of different things there let's see if any of these have been left as synths here I think the only synth that aren't balanced at this point is the razor bass yeah that'll be razor which is the which is that just creates the low end of it but this is the interesting bit I believe that's just a bunch of fun distorting sort of square waves that would be plasmonic plasmonic is the synth that I absolutely love it has its own particular relationship with high end that I really like and you'll see it throughout the album and that was the sort of this moment here and when you're initially doing all this are you kind of whacking all these different ideas down that in one go as if you're playing the the machines as it were or are you slowly building these changes and moments up over a longer period of time because it always the tracks always feel as if there's a spontaneity to them as if somebody's just going "bish bash bosh" yeah but is it like that because obviously there's a really strong layer of sophistication and enhancement going on a lot of labored processes tweaking yeah um there's some things you know how to do it when you get to a certain point of being a producer where you just know what sound is that you want and you know the means by which to do it so there's an extent to which some of it comes together really quickly but then sometimes you're reaching for a thing that is the unknown and that you know sort of what it has to sound like you don't know how to make it and that can be a very actually very painful and laborious process so it's a mixture of the two you have to live in this very strange time world as a musician where you're constantly fighting against how long it takes to make things that seems spontaneous so it's like a really it's it's it's sort of paradoxical existence it's also um yeah funny from a sort of live performance perspective as well because often a musician who's touring a album will be in the middle of writing their next album and they'll be touring material that they wrote six years ago or something like that so they so so your all musicians are living in a very strange sort of time warp they're living in the past the present in the future it's like a Christmas Carol basically that music edition and permanent um so with this there is a sense of spontaneity with some of it like for example with that reactor 808 I know that it just needed some support in the bottom end I mean everybody uses it knows how to make that so it's so that just comes about really quickly so I can sort of form the skeleton of what I want and I need the rhythmic atmosphere of what I wanted to sort of create this like half time sort of larger scale feeling because we've got this kicking, *2 Doof Doof Doof Doof Doof Doof* in that first action and then *2 Doof Doof Doof* *2 Doof Doof Doof* *2 Doof Doof Doof* Gallant, just like create that large scales sense of, of double time or half time, I can never quite work out the difference between these two things. UM so- You can give us a burst-of-it, I feel about this for more. So it goes- *intro music* * sticks to the start of next tracks hood and crane truck door? and it's not coming either?* * music * it's interesting in a way because with this style of music there's an anticipation that it's gonna change and be full of surprises at the same time there's also an anticipation that it's gonna come back to something that we will connect to and start jumping up and down again or whatever exactly your reaction would be when you hear that song yeah and that's the dialogue that you have to that I enjoy playing with because I don't want everything to be unexpected and you have to I want to be given a certain amount of what I expect but then also like the the necessary amount of new things that are exciting or like confounding expectation when we get into the second chorus * music * we have some sort of like backup harmonies there so I'm pretty sure this is this is sort of like chord material without the drums and stuff for the first chorus * music * so you can hear and then for the second chorus it's slightly more that's slightly more sort of richness and depth in the chords * music * there's this sort of extra layer of like rubbing harmony that I put on it and then added even more * music * that's what I added * music * I mean that stuff where like if you're just listening to it wouldn't necessarily just like doesn't stick out but it just gives it a different feeling maybe slightly more emotional when it comes back so I quite like playing sort of almost an emotional trick I mean music is a bit of an emotional trick as a thing but also just this feeling of like you think it's just come back but you feel different when in fact it is just slightly different and it's the talking at your heart strings slightly more subtle yeah that's part of the art isn't it? you're cleverly changing things and the listener doesn't know what's happening to them but you are affecting them that is very much the intention so yeah that's that's that section there and then for the moment after that chorus I decided to go quite extremely sort of minimal * music * * music * so lots of space * music * I started breaking down into nearly nothing and then it's a sort of gradual buildup we have to laugh the whole way through as this sort of anchor * music * and then I'm I'm way back this is obviously the unmixed version this is a version I sent off to be mixed and something that we hear in that breakdown is a thing that sort of turned up in this music for this album that I just started just hearing more and more and just sounded really correct in nearly every track which is the sort of processed sound of the sea this is surprisingly unprocessed I just took off some of the sort of fizzy top end of it but for some reason it just felt like it really it is the gave it an emotional sense that I felt like just was very necessary yeah interesting and those waves were recorded by you I think yes so where where do we always recording making these recordings wherever you went have you done a lot of travelling or just um yeah I think this I think I was in in Cornwall I think and I do do a lot of recording on my phone and I don't think about it really and then just occasionally just unthinkingly just listen to all of them I think I think it's good to preserve the ability to be unthinking when you're making music because it's just for me very emotionally led so just to have the voice notes thing so there's loads of like useless voice notes in my phone but you never know what's gonna happen I'm just constantly just recording and then then I look back on it and I don't even know what some stuff is just because I was just recording it all the time and it almost gives it a quite magical context sometimes when you sort of hearing these sounds you don't even know yeah but from I was quite disappointed when Apple started giving things the name of the location that they were recorded in sort of removed it gave it too much context you know yeah but um I talking about context with sounds as an interesting one because I do there is something I like and do find emotional as well about decontextualized sounds like just a voice just hanging there in this in the middle of music or something like that there is something very beautiful about that and it's obviously like a given with dance music that you just hear this vocal just sitting there or whatever and I think for many people they think of it is just like oh a person singing but for me it's like a voice just like beautifully existing and that's something that I think I've only recently appreciated it is something that I just like love about dance music as a form I remember I'm being really confused when I started being in the sort of songwritery world when I started starting out and people were really differentiating like dance music from sort of songs because for me dance music is the best form of songwriting like they are the best songs because if a lyric is good enough to repeat over and over again then it surely must be really really fucking good so yeah I don't know I honestly think like better off alone by Alistair J it's like one of the greatest songs written it's yet because it's the conciseness of it the necessary conciseness of it is what sort of guides its brilliance really and when you've trimmed it back to the essence with love love is the ultimate forms yeah arguably not even a lyric but it was also nice on the album to have like a dance track which was sort of like a place where I could explore more production stuff when there's a vocal and a melody and lyrics there's a certain extent to which the production has to sort of cradle those things so you can hear what's going on so if you just got lie you can do what you want yeah totally I guess we should round up the creation of this song maybe we have some of the ending or is there anything else that you want to highlight before we move on I think we've hit on it I think yeah the reason why I just wanted to talk about it is because it has this transition from this song sort of cloud-like beginning bit one one extra thing that I'd like to hit on actually is this very controversial subject which was brought up on my Instagram stories recently based on a question that someone asked of okay Lou which is arpeggiators because there's a certain type of producer that loves arpeggios and composer as well that loves arpeggios and some people see us as a as a frowned upon thing to use an arpeggiator which is a process by which it plays the arpeggio automatically and you can choose the frequency of that and all sorts and my response to that was that I just sometimes do use arpeggios arpeggiators when necessary to make an effect like that so you can see what's going on there that that is playing all the notes very fast if you look at what that looks like it's a static chord there with this sort of melody moving above it with these different voices but what's happening is that it's actually playing the notes in a very fast arpeggio and then in the silence it should be going 100% into a reverb and so it's playing it up and down repeatedly in an arpeggio and then it's going into a reverb so that's what creates a sort of cloud of sound you can hear some going up and down so that's the context in which I really think arpeggios are perfectly sort of reasonable to use okay can we hear it down the reverb? oh wow yeah you want to hear my nude arpeggios arpeggiation sorry oh well there you go that's a marked difference yeah you can see why I've got that reverb on it so an example of when I personally my stuff would want a sort of artistically handwritten arpeggio is after this section so I wrote the notes of this because yeah I just think it's really necessary if you are someone like me who loves arpeggios to really being control of the contour of it and at what point the voices are somewhat melodic and the way in which the end of it connects to the beginning of the next bit so just draw my line in the sand regarding arpeggios and arpeggiators that is that so I guess maybe the issue is that for some people by going and using the arpeggiator if you're not able to write your own arpeggios as you are it's an easy option because it's like oh I can cut it and also sometimes it sounds really good yeah it's ultimately just about what sounds good in the end but in fact I just care so much about arpeggios I kind of like I forced myself to learn how to write them and exactly the ones that I want to listen to and it's like if you really like something you should sort of learn the internet about works really and sort of to make it your own yeah amazing so should we listen to the end of this one? yes let's do it I am intrigued by the use of brass on the end of the track because that adds such a different contrast to the rest of the music yeah because it takes us more to the classical world yes it does yeah there's Nico at the end of the bit of a sort of submariney sound there yeah the brass I really like the brass just coming out of nowhere there's something about this sort of yeah the like lone digital trumpeter that to me just feels like quite an emotional thought and I specifically like this kind of like digitized trumpet sound that isn't a sort of real trumpet player yeah it just it just worked and this is some lone trumpet player turns up on other tracks as well so it really had enough of an effect but there's a tone of the trumpeter there a hero of the album exactly right yeah yeah it is interesting because I start picturing them in a cathedral of course no playing yeah no it's a digital trumpet and yet I think it that it and it it gives a it takes the tracks in another direction entirely it's really interesting so that's our trumpet turret at the beginning there it's he's being doubled by this kind of tingly little plasmonic thing here these brushed strings but yeah that is that so shall we move on yes so that was large and the next song we're going to look at is facing away yes we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back with that okay the next song we're going to look at is facing away but before we start on that I want to ask you one of the questions that's come through via Patreon hello to Tara Passphere who says how do you approach adding ear candy I really like that on Mix With The Masters he showed that you edited these very creative delays sweeps and reverb throws for the vocals on Caroline Polychex fly to you they are very unpredictable yet they work perfectly how would you go about doing something like this to experiment freely until you find something that works or do you have quite specific ideas for it it sort of relates to what we were talking about earlier which is that funny relationship between a spontaneous spontaneuity and these kind of longer processes that it takes to make these things that sound spontaneous on flight to you that track that's being referenced it all sounds very like everything is bouncing off each other in this kind of lighthearted way the way in which I sort of come up with ideas like that for reverb, throws and things is that you just get a sense of way you'd like to hear something so it's like if someone is singing on the downbeat like 1, 2, 3, 4 ooo, like on the downbeat then maybe it would be exciting to hear something on the sort of 16th note before that downbeat so it's like 1, 2, 3, 4 hey, ooo, like that's just sort of a kind of rhythmic excitement thing and then it would have its lay on it so this thing would go 1, 2, 3, 4 hey, hey, hey, hey, hey and then that would bounce off the melody or whatever so I think about it like that so I hear where I want to hear something and then I experiment with what that thing is and then sometimes I use plugins one of the good things about Logic I would say is that it's quite chaotic and sometimes it produces unexpected results especially with the flexi tools it sometimes makes things play at different pitches or stretches things unnecessarily but it's actually in its jankiness that some of the creativity can come out of it so as a result sometimes when I try and make a reverb throw it'll come out at a different pitch and then that pitch would actually go really interestingly with the song so there's an element of in the process some of this ear candy stuff is sort of discovered but it comes from a skeleton of a sort of spontaneous response that I've had really interesting right, facing away is the next song we're going to look at we could have a blast of the master of that a master in coming and then we could have a blast of the master of that lyrics that I then wrote for it that could serve a kind of different that something else could be brought out of the song and for this particular album it just felt like this iteration of it it just felt like this iteration of it it wasn't quite right but I'll play my sort of but I'll play my sort of trance edit of sure line as it was at the time when it was just me and T.D.J. writing [Music] [Music] [Music] that was the track that I did with T.D.J. but I just felt like there was something more to it so I wrote this kind of I just felt like the there was just a way to make the melody and lyrics just be slightly more showcased maybe and that they just needed a bit more room to breathe and so I wrote this sort of slower version that is not really meant for a pitched vocal and where the production was even less present than it was in that trance version but then the production sort of like comes in at the end and provides a sort of a sense of like musical ascension where sort of sounds like a voice memo it sort of turns into this string accompaniment which then ascends into this digital choir which takes you off into the sort of mountains of the imagination so yeah along came these this sort of different backing for it and this is just the instrumental for the end section [Music] and here we have 12 ensemble coming in which is real strings [Music] we actually have a trance riser there which is a trance thing [Music] and then we have a digital choir bringing us out [Music] and we have a C recording that gives us the digital out so then the vocalist that I really wanted on this track the only vocalist that I heard on this track was Vash Dibanyan the sort of focusing on his album Diamond Days I think is absolutely incredible and I'm just an enormous fan of hers we tried to get in touch we didn't get a response about it she's kind of retired isn't she it's somewhat yeah I'm still just an endless fan of hers and then I was in LA working with another artist and I just went to see Clara as a show because I've always been a big fan I've worked with Clara much earlier on in both of our careers I produced a few songs and she actually featured on a song of mine which is a sad Christmas song called Blue Angel which to me sad Christmas songs are one of the best genres of music I'm still very proud of that song but I was just talking to her about it and I know that Clara is a big Vash Dibanyan fan as well and then it sort of occurred to me that actually maybe Clara is the only other person that would be able to sing this song that I would like that I would sort of I said it over to her and she loved it and just sent over a vocal and was sort of very like sort of up for saying like I do want me to re-record it this way that way but as soon as I heard it it was just like this is absolutely perfect I think it's yeah with some vocalists just their first version of it it's just absolutely flawless and it was I was to really like bold over by what she sent and as you can hear like it's the raw vocal here on this track and I feel like for people listening to this album this will probably be a lot of people's favorite track on the album because it just has a sort of clarity to it and have vocal performances just so so just purely emotional and in a way that I found that I basically didn't need to do anything to sort of draw anything from it it's very rare that I don't have a vocal but this song is a very sort of unique thing on the album and I felt like yeah maybe quite a new step for me where the only sort of engagement with a sort of element of escape is my fantasy comes towards the end of the song and yeah it's one of the songs on the album that is exploring new territory for me I have no idea it was just my perfect decontextualized disembodied voice arriving texted to me had you given her any instructions absolutely not it was because I just knew she would get it and she just did and that's the total luxury of working with people who you have these kind of ventiagram alignments with me they like the same thing about this sort of melody as you do so I just yeah and what was she referencing was she just looking at the words on a to what you share the ttj yeah I think I shared the original demo with her and sent her however the lyrics as well and she just really liked it and sent over some some versions of it in fact in fact I've sent fantastic experience really so we can have a listen to the vocal here very cheeky harmony I put in there there's something I quite like about this track sort of loudness to that sub the vocal kind of like vibrates against it and I frequency way so I mean you can really hear those two things that are like combining stacking frequency wise and then the harmony kind of like fries with the vocal so there's some cheeky extra harmony I put in there that one in particular is the only one that you properly hear this one here and context it sounds like this but it almost just feels like her voice is like expanding in this funny way and it's like it's like it's like the voice is like expanding in this funny way it's not like a kind of accompanying choir like audible BVs there's a sort of interesting dryness to it and yeah it's a very unique sound world yeah yeah totally I guess it's a one reference it's song to the siren by Tim Buckley I'm very very happy that's listening to it the way we are now that's what's coming to mind which is interesting something I like about that song in particular is that there's not really a final version of it there's a song that sort of he struggled with because it was obviously so such as sort of a difficult maybe subject matter for him and that he recorded it multiple times over his career and also lyrics changed as well and it almost feels like a sort of yeah folk song in the way that like sort of ever-resonant idea yeah no that's that's such an amazing thing the lyrics are interesting the weight of sin is something of sin yeah yeah yeah I literally just wrote them and had no it's always a emotions first thing with me so anything that's being said is just like based on how it feels really interesting in contrast to facing a way that we're going to look at is starlight featuring pink pantheris the next song we're going to look at from Daniel Harles Surilion no no I failed I know I've asked you all right so imagine it as a knife of the realm Sir Rulion Sir Rulion the next song we're going to look at from Daniel Harles Sir Rulion is starlight featuring pink pantheris but before that I've got a couple more patreon questions that I want to ask you Danny so one comes from Aniki Beniki please showcase an example of a great sonic boom and reveal its secrets this one's pretty good in terms of revealing its secrets there wouldn't be secrets if I revealed them that's what you get for this is a good example thank you for that Aniko Kay says how do you organise your sample library so I think this is a really important question for example drums do you keep a drive with lots of different libraries or do you search and select new for every project any tips on how to organise files efficiently God Do you have a system I'll tell you what the good system is learn to make something like a kick drum so you don't have to save it as a sample so I use kick 2 or kick 3 for making kick drums a lot of the time or like razor for a sub base and if you just know how to make it then you can just make it every time and you make it slightly different every time as well which makes it even better but something that I think is a really good part of a process as well is in terms of if you are saving stuff as samples if you make something that's good you just save it as a sample if you make a clap or kick drum or something like that and also just to sample your own tracks as well I think that is actually a yeah the kick drum in star like is just sampled from a kick drum that I made for a remix that I don't think ever came out for another artist that just that sound there I've done a lot of stuff to it but it was something about the the way the transium worked really sort of bounced well with the other synth so I can't actually help you be more organized but it's a good solution but what I can do to to make you more disorganized is to just say just like if you're in the presence of producing a song for another for a remix or for one purpose and you stumble across a good sound or something like that you think oh that's pretty good you just save it as a sort of one shot as an isolation thing and have that as part of your process so you accumulate your own sounds in that way so I guess it would be learn how to sort of artisanally make your own the sounds that you like the most and also if you make a particularly nice one save it as a sample and then try and amass the library like that and then you can do more organized because I'm not very organized but that's good advice nonetheless and it links nicely into starlight featuring pink pantheros which is the next song we're going to look at maybe we could have a blast of the master yes oh i'm oh it is a little taste of starlight featuring pink pantheros there so how did this one begin I worked with pink pantheros quite a lot throughout sort of the whole various projects we've been doing and this song just came about and it was an example of one of these songs where there was something quite special about it but we couldn't quite place where it should go and I think the thing that has become clear as it was more in my world than it was in her world would you like to hear the original demo? of course she was happy with it she sort of I think you put it on a video on tick-tock and stuff as well oh wow oh wow oh oh so you can hear that that's yeah that's really quite different nothing it's very different but there was something about that melody that really worked and it just sort of stayed on my mind that track and then there was this moment where I did this DJ performance at the PC Music 10th anniversary concert thing and I just thought it'd be fun to make some live material from it so I just I just really like that melody so I just thought I'd write some new chords behind it I just heard some sort of like additional vision for it so I just put this behind it maybe it was something to do with the fact that I was wearing a suit of armour for that performance as well that inform these chords maybe that was the origin of Sir Rulian then could be yes yes you can see it's starting to be contextualised more into my world here and then yeah it sort of progresses in a similar way you can hear that that drop there sort of really relates to the second drop in what turned out to be starlight but at that point it was just the chorus melody that existed Vicki was actually at that PC Music 10th anniversary concert she heard that version and she liked it and so I suggested that I could put the song on my album that she was very excited by that and she then I was very happy to write some verses to it which she did and sent over and they were just absolutely perfect her writing is just so brilliant and so mysterious as well I always really like how there's it's a bit unclear what she's talking about but she's speaking very specifically and that's something that I always really like in lyrics and I think there's a particular talent that some people have for that handling of figurative and abstract bluric style so in came these verses and then I just started just placing it all and finding different places in the song to her play with different things structurally, harmonically and give them some material space to breathe we have this first drop as it were with this first synth that comes in [Music] [Music] I think this is my friend steam pipe here again [Music] you know I think we modulate here briefly [Music] so yeah how are you making that initial synth sound and what's going on with the tuning yeah I think this is a pretty simple massive situation here that's how I like [Music] here we go we've got a nice bit of tuning there [Music] and if we remove that tuning there those sort of like little inflections there [Music] yeah it is great though because it really does end up sounding like somebody's playing that instrument yes and you were talking about when you hear the trumpeter it sort of evokes the space that the trumpeter is in the fact that this is a sort of unidentifiable instrument but it sounds like someone's playing it I think yeah what that does to one's imagination I absolutely love then we have yes steam pipe takeover my [Music] my good friend [Music] steam pipe takeover when that does sound like a burn name [Music] [Music] we have all the sort of beautiful reverb and steam pipe there and then it goes into the second verse which builds in a very similar way to the first one then has a kind of the EDM sort of structure of chorus where it's sort of in the build up to a drop but then the drop after that is quite different and then goes on quite a sort of tangent a sort of production tangent [Music] [Music] moving to trancey well there [Music] [Music] so there's any curiosity about what my processes for making this stuff is like I sit in the studio and write stuff like this all day [Music] one note at a time yeah [Music] doing that [Music] so the thing the kind of thing that I find particularly satisfying is the the way that this loops so nicely the way that that just [Music] the way the end just loops back to the beginning repeating sort of repeating cycle is just one of the greatest things for me [Music] and and and and just that relate to automation or upediation and this one it's all just pretty simple the thing that this synth sound does that allows me to not have to do new that is as it plays the sort of cut off the sort of ADSR of it changes the texture dramatically depending on the length of the note so you can hear there's a big sort of big sort of textual difference between the sort of held note and this really short one [Music] there's some added sort of like extra sort of frying high end on the long ones so and I felt like that was sort of pretty much finished without having to do too much in the and anything like that this yeah it's more melodic than it is a sort of arpeggiated thing there and it's playing alongside this thing which I think is [Music] that's squilchy thing what is that? so this is Predator which is a beautiful synth by Rob Papin which has a lot of that kind of um super kind of FME [Music] sort of LFO-y sort of filtered sound to it [Music] there's a lot of like yeah really nice digital resonance that kind of almost feels like it's in a completely different sonic place to that that flute so that flute can go through the middle of the sound sort of anchoring it and this can sort of fly around that flute [Music] so you can hear both of them at the same time a lot of production and mixing is just about things occupying different places in the sort of frequency and in the sort of stereo image [Music] that's quite a sort of dramatic moment in the whole thing uh where these sort of I guess you could say some sort of hard style you kick comes in but I spent a long time sort of carefully carefully carving that out that sound [Music] could you explain that's what I mean? how you created that? maybe um it's that's one of my favorite moments on the album because her voice fits so perfectly over that thing and it does a thing that I really like it that happens in a lot of like that sort of hardcore rave music where the job of the kick is to constantly build upon the previous kick that you've heard in sort of tech knows a good example or hard styles and other one where like this got to be a sort of like an energy that surpasses the previous kick with the next one and I feel like that kick does that very nicely it sort of like grabs you afresh but also feels like it's a continuation or a complete alien sort of divergence from the previous section so there's a few core elements to it that's basically like what the sub's doing what the sort of crunch is doing of it um I don't have the actual breakdown of it but I did it in layers [Music] and there's also a note that's a fifth above the sub [Music] which is just the sub uh tuned up a fifth and then put up an octave and distorted [Music] but there's also the sort of like clappy crunch and then it's all going through a limited to sort of squash it all together um otherwise it would just sound like a lot of things at the same time you need to sort of like saturate it all together nicely [Music] there we go and then that falls onto the next section [Music] there we go it's in this moment where it really feels like where the fuck are you like it's because like the energy then drops for this section but then sort of the rhythm kind of goes for this next I really wanted to have a moment of um navigational confusion um navigation weirdly another subject that just seemed to emerge from the album a lot sounds of navigation and this sort of words being like I'm lost and like looking for things and so the sort of sounds of navigation being things like just so in our and satellite and radar and things like that and that really feels and and the whole album feeling like some kind of received transmission just felt like very necessary as a it's kind of metaphorical thing because it is a sort of a communication and that sort of scrambled or interfered with transmission things that just felt like it kind of worked poetically with what the sort of album was and so this but this this is a sort of narrative that kind of moment of lostness in the song that I sort of really enjoyed [Music] one two three I sort of uh this section sort of divides into three [Music] I sort of like play a little sort of rhythmic trick there [Music] one two three so it's so it's actually sort of divides it into three but it bounces off the off beat of the fourth beat there one two one two three four so it's sort of uh offset the rhythm in a way but then ping-pong-thruist brings you right back on track just for the end of the track only for it to then modulate key right at the end as well so right at the end as well so just when you think you know where you are off the key goes somewhere else! There's the C to sign the whole thing off. Fantastic. Amazing. It's such a crazy track really. It's so intense at times and her voice is in such contrast to that and yet it's kind of intense as well because of the way it sounds that the range of her voice. Yeah and she to my memory wrote that melody that of this track and just her yeah her approach to melody and lyrics is just so completely unique it almost sounds like a sample when she sings it. It's like she has a really interesting relationship with sort of it's like she sings the music is an object when it's being sung out of her. It's not in a really good way. There isn't a sort of this like direct sort of relationship with it. It's almost like she can sort of admire it in a sort of a de-contextualized way like it's a song that she's listening to when she's singing it and that is a thing that I think really comes off really well in her music and is part of what makes her a very unique artist. Yeah definitely. We maybe should round up that track and move on to the questions that we ask everyone who comes on take notes but we do have one more Patreon question which I will ask you now. So this is from Bicco Bannerise. I hope that's how you pronounce your name apologies if not. What you'll most use plugins secret ingredients and do you have a top five. I mean this is a standard take notes question. It's a good one. It is a good one. For this album Plasma Nick, Razer and Pro R2. But I'll tell you what the best plugin of all time is is FabFilter Pro Q4. It's just extraordinary. The capabilities from what is ostensibly an EQ. I've never seen a better plugin really. There's so many things that you can do with that. Times of compression. Can you illustrate it and do you have it to hand? Let's have a look. It's quite hard to describe because often the effect of it is like a mixing thing as well as anything else. But I would say with Q4 not only is it like one of the greatest EQs and most comprehensive things that just makes perfect sense when you look at it. There's an accent which you don't have to get to grips with it. But also if you're interested in melodically removing stuff you can just press one of these notes and you get a little thing there where you can sort of get rid of an annoying frequency if you know what the note is. There's also the potential to spectrally remove just the protruding frequencies. So it's kind of like what that plugin sooth does but you can do it on a kind of within an EQ where you can sort of remove stuff on it in a more sort of blunt instrument style way. But alongside that you can also just dynamically compress it like it's a multi-band compressor like that and have a threshold on where you're compressing it and also control the attack and release of that. And even beyond that you can control what your EQing in terms of the stereo placement. So if you want to like completely remove what's coming through the middle of the stereo image you can just do that. And you'll just hear the sides of it. So with this applied you'll be able to have an instrument going right down the middle of the stereo image and it won't at all interfere with this this choir sound because this is just coming out the sides now if I bring bring it back you're here going through the middle. It's quite complex mixing thing that but in terms of making space for instruments for vocals things like that. That is incredibly useful but just yeah just if you learn how to use proq for properly you'll find yourself not really needing many other plugins. Fantastic so I'd say proq4 is my top five. I love that right our final question today advice. This is the second proper Daniel Harle album time as a lap since we last spoke to you. We asked you about advice before things that you might have learned along the way bits of wisdom that might have been shared with you or wisdom that you've acquired or learned yourself. It's really hard to give advice because I think what would I say to myself if I had the opportunity to say to my say stuff to my 14 year old self and it's like everything that I would say is stuff that I'll be like yeah whatever like if I heard at the time and also stuff where it only really makes sense once you've actually done it and then you're like oh yes okay just like because everybody says like do your own thing be confident or like. But then when you're actually doing it when you're young it doesn't feel like it feels like you have to play the game to an extent but then it's usually in a sort of some rock bottom moment in someone's career usually where they just like just trying to do something for fun or just like on the side or like just just for the hell of it as opposed to like trying to do something that will be. Like by other people where they make their best work because it's completely kind of unaffected by any sense of other people's ears on it this in that sort of moment of freedom where you usually produce your best work. So I don't know if I've said this before but like if you have a thing that you feel like is your main thing as an artist like your main artist project. It's really useful to have something else on the side where it's like just for you some sort of place where you can be completely experimental and free but you're not worried about other people listening to it and then that's probably going to be your best stuff. That's great. I think a lot of people will take a lot from that. We should play out with another selection from the album. What should we choose? Maybe Azimuth with my friend Caroline singing with the greatest artist in the world. Excellent. Azimuth it is then featuring Caroline Politek. Danny thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming back on tape notes and thank you for sharing so much about Sir Rullian. And this is it. This is Azimuth featuring Caroline Politek by Danny L. Harle. [Music] Thank you for listening and in particular thanks to all of you who have signed up to supporters on Patreon. I'm just one part of the team that brings you tape notes and it relies on your support. Access to Patreon includes the full length videos of new episodes where possible, add free episodes and detailed gear lists among many other things. If you'd like to join, head to the link on our socials or website. For pictures, highlight clips and behind the scenes content, head to our Instagram or YouTube channel and on Discord you can join the growing tape notes community. Once again thank you for listening until next time. Goodbye. [Music]