The public parts of my notebook.
Video: Justin Bieber, Diplo and Skrillex Make a Hit - The New York Times
Unusually, the animations in the video are not just window dressing, but clever explanations of how the music works.
“This is wrong, PooBear. And he’s like, ‘No, it’s wrong right.’ I just had to get used to it.”
“The voice and mouth and your whole skill structure is like an organic synthesiser.”
“Anyone can copy any synth now. But if you manipulate vocals, it’s something original.”
“We added natual harmonies because we didn’t have anything from [Bieber] so we created our own harmonies. Like this one goes down a seventh.”
“When I do MIDI I usually just draw it in.”
“The drop has an A and B part. The first part’s simple: kind of a hip-hop bass. The second part goes double-time.”
“[On sound and drum sound making.] If you compare it to a painter, so much of the process until the eleventh hour is just getting colours right.”
Skrillex: “It was finding that one little thing. Which was the dolphin sound.”
Diplo: “Everyone wants to know what the violin/flute sound is.
Bieber: "Der-de-ee-oh. That’s actually my vocal that they took and messed with.”
Skrillex: “It’s pitched way up, distorted, bounced and re-bounced, so it sounds worse, almost.”
“You took a little pattern and created it into a whole different sound, but it still has the elements of some human thing. A warmth in the track.”
“It’s so cool that we’re still in an era where people think that people have no talent if they make computer music. It shows how young it still is.”
#notebook