Over the preceeding two years, we had trawled through our many songs, re-recording and mastering digital copies of our favourites.  Due to the age of some of these tracks (most of which now appear in the 'discography' section of this website) they inevitably sound a little dated (many would call them "eighties" sounding – a fair criticism, I would say).  In recent months, I have been endeavoring to open my mind up more to different styles and genres – from 1940s Inkspots tracks to Nu-metal, and in particular UK garage.  I wished to try and incorporate the very commercial (and slightly R'n'B) sound of UK garage into 'Hiding Inside Myself'.

Now, I cannot deny that two "synthpop" bands (I hate that term) are a very large influence on my songwriting style.  Having grown up to the Mancunian sounds of electronic innovators New Order, many of our songs (especially our older tunes) have their style of production about them – polyrhythmic, sequenced drums and synthesizer lines, mixing in with rock guitar chords and melodies.  I have often appreciated hearing tight and intricate vocal harmonies in pop songs, and as I have a very soft spoken and singing voice, my vocals often attract comparisms to the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant – a comparison I don't mind receiving, as he does have a very pleasant voice to listen to.  With 'Hiding Inside Myself', I wanted to keep those complex harmonies, as well as the (slightly) New Order-esque main vocal melody line – signified by a straightforward major-key tune, using notes fairly close to each other within the scale.

As this was the first time for a while that I had worked on a brand new track, I felt I had the opportunity to try and "disguise" these influences within a radically different production style.  I felt that the undeniably commercial UK garage sound which I have been hearing more and more on the radio of late would be an ideal backing to this poppy sounding tune (it's rare for me to write a tune in a major key!).  I have found the three "sarf London" DJ's that make up Radio One's Dreem Teem to be the real connoisseurs of the best in garage.  To hear the really good examples of the underground garage style, tune in not to their Sunday lunchtime show (which adheres to the ogre of the Radio One playlist), but their excellent three hour show in the (very) early hours of Monday morning (1am until 4).  On this show they feature an hour long set from a guest underground DJ every week, along with a UK garage top ten (compiled from sales figures from a number of independent British dance music retailers).  I personally find the most rewarding garage to be the instrumental and dark sounding pieces.

In September, 2001, I went with a friend to a UK garage all-nighter with the Dreem Teem's Timmy Magic DJing at The Empire nightclub in Bogor Regis (it finished at 5am, and I finally got back to the comfort of my bed in Cosham at 7:30am).  I can see many similarities with the rave scene in the late eighties/early nineties.  These new underground and mostly instrumental garage tracks feature very distinctive pounding basslines, quirky synth noises (possibly created using one of the many "virtual" analogue modeling digital synths released in the last few years, perhaps made using a snazzy PC soundcard).  The tunes were accompanied by M.C. Wizzard, a diminutive and frantically rapping white guy who was actually on the dancefloor with us (it's a very small capacity club).

The atmosphere and instrumentation has much in common with rave, but that's where the similarity ends.  Garage has a less "processed" sound, with very little reverb or delay added to the programmed drum beats, and no beak-beats being sampled.  Tight compression seems to play a key part in the final sound of the drum hits and basslines.  The beats are quantized in a distinctive "groove" or "shuffle" manner, with every even numbered 16th note in a rhythm being delayed by a few tiny clock timings to give the tunes a looser, more natural swing to them.  On my Yamaha sequencer, this is referred to in the quantize menu as 'swing ratio', and expressed as a percentage, with 50% being perfect and in-time 16th notes, and anything higher delaying the even numbered notes ever so slightly, pushing it ever closer, but not quite, to a time signature of 24/16 (or 12/8 to be more accurate).  'Hiding Inside Myself' used a swing rate of 60% to mimic this very important aspect of UK garage.

Other ways in which garage differs to nineties dance music, is its eschewing of the ubiquitous four-on-the-floor club sound, and the popular offbeat every-other-8th-note bassline.  I feel it has made club music more vigorous and energetic now, as more effort goes into the composition of the bass and rhythm sections, and the linked interplay between them.  Garage could be seen as the link between the frantic, clattering, complex beats of Drum'n'Bass, and the more melodic and straightforward trance music of the nineties.  In fact, former Drum'n'Bass producers such as Ed Case have turned away from their old sounds in favour of garage's more harmonic and fresh sound.

For a fine example of all these elements of UK garage, I'd strongly suggest listening to the eponymous debut album by former Soul 2 Soul member Wookie, which epitomizes the multi-cultural, and inherently British sound of this fairly recent new branch of R'n'B/soul music.

Obviously, trying to incorporate all of these elements into what amounts to a backing track for a pop, or indie song could take some doing – so far the only real crossover between these two genres has been the "Ed Case Refix" single version of Gorillaz 'Clint Eastwood', which was a massive hit earlier in 2001.  I wanted to keep the song structure of indie rock (I think this tune has the feel of New Order's 'Regret' to it a little) but crossbreed it with something fresh and new.

I kept it simple at first: the demo featured a repeated drum pattern, quantized to a 60% swing ratio, and an electric piano sound (used an awful lot in garage) playing the basic chords, but embellished with many additional 2nd, 4th and 7th notes added to make the chords more soulful.  The chord changes in the chorus are loosely based around the main piano section from Angelo Badalamenti's 'Laura Palmer's Theme', from television's 'Twin Peaks', to give the song an emotional, almost reflective feel to it (to match the 'looking back' context of the lyrics).  A single semibreeve bassline pinned down the root note of every chord.

In August, Fraser laid down two guitar tracks: a mic'd up track of acoustic strums, and another, direct inputted track of electric guitar playing single chords (which was later mostly deleted – apart from the middle "wait for one day" section and the last six bars of the song).  With this in place, I left the song for a couple of months while I enjoyed the late summer pub crawls and a vacation in the bleak Shetlands.

In the week before finishing the track, I added those distinctive 8th note triplet bass drum and snare drum fill-ins to the song (which turn up throughout Wookie's album) to move the song along more smoothly and dynamically.  I've also turned the bassline into a low down and crunchy organ line, based around the corresponding tonic and dominant notes of each chord, and also quantized to a swing ratio of 60%.  This bassline took quite a while to perfect (being an important aspect of many club tracks).  Two electric organ sounds were used, each with different 'rotary speaker' simulation effects rapidly panning them slightly left and right.  Both sounds also had slightly different stereo chorus effects mixed in, then both sounds were combined and very tightly compressed on recording into my Roland hard disc recorder.  You can see these sounds represented on stereo channel 'C' (tracks 5+6, virtual track numbers 5 & 6) on the VS-880 track sheet image, below.  There are also my handwritten notes on details of mixer settings, and notes on where all the original elements of the tracks are stored, with a view to the slightly different versions I intended on mixing.

A very quiet, yet heavily compressed sine wave (from my Akai S01 sampler) was added playing the bass notes to give the organ a 'sub-bass' low end boost.  With the vocals carefully balanced and mixed, effects such as reverb and delay added to the whole mix, the guitars blended in with the song, and the sequencer and synths clicking away in time with the MIDI code emitted by the VS-880, I mixed down to DAT a five minute long original version of the tune.  A compressor and enhancer were added on mixdown to tighten up the dynamics and frequency range of the entire recording.

After recording this full-length version, I mixed down a four minute edited version, which will enable people to quickly download the song from our website as an mp3 file.  The VS-880 allows quick and easy editing of each audio track, which (if done accurately enough) has undetectable cut points (unlike early forms of tape splicing, which could be very haphazard).  I quickly finished this more accessible version of the tune (which is the 'Edit' that appears online).

Over the next six days (and nights) I went back to the song, trying to extend it while at the same time stripping the production down to give the song a looser, more club-friendly sound.  The intro this version (the 'UK Garage Remix') is partly the instrumental middle section I removed from the original version when making the edit.  In a minor key, and with different bass notes being played, it builds the song up with a more authentic underground garage feel.  The "Don’t stop, don’t stop, keep it goin' now" and female vocal ad-lib samples (taken from a copyright-free Future Music cover CD) greatly enhance the club feel of the track.  The middle "wait for one day" section has the lyrics removed, to avoid the melancholic distractions of those lines, and the happy ending is transposed over the top of the D minor and G minor chords of the introduction, to give the "always hiding from you" resolution of the song a darker feel.

Although some sections of the original version are missing from this extended remix, I actually prefer this version, as many of the synthesizer lines have been stripped away, which I feel benefits the song - such as the soft strings present in the chorus, which I deemed unnecessary for a club mix.  Also, many of the drum fill-ins have been simplified, leaving just the bass drum performing the 8th note triplet fill-ins, and therefore less clutter in the mix.

All three mixes of 'Hiding Inside Myself', can be streamed and previewed in the 'discography' section of this website, with the full-length original version appearring on the 2003 album 'Younger Than Some, Smarter Than Most'.  The 'Edit' and 'UK Garage Remix' feature on the 2002 'Hiding Inside Myself EP'.  Both of these releases can be ordered from this site's 'links'.  To hear a short preview clip of 'Hiding Inside Myself' click here.  To read the complete list of the equipment Trust No One use to make their music, click here.

For more information on my recording processes and practices, refer to the tongue-in-cheek 'Masterclass' section of Fraser's website www.F-zone.co.uk which is mostly accurate, apart from referring to a non-existent "studio booth", and having fictional band members – a long, long story which I'd rather Fraser was asked to explain…

© 2001 Andrew Morrison.