Pro Techniques from Roger Manning

By Randy Alberts

Secretly or not, any kids from 18 to 81 would dig getting in their daily aerobic workout the way Roger Manning does. Known as "Malibu" to friends and locals, Manning gets in as many ollies a day as he can with his 35-inch Sector 9 and a large custom vert ramp in his Woodland Hills, California, backyard before every recording session. Answering the phone breathless after a good skate, Manning has but two things on his well-focused mind at this moment: The evolution of the waveform and the sharing of his Pro Tools tips with fellow users.

"The waveform in today's hyper-compressed records has reached the point where it doesn't move anymore, it's just a rectangular block with hardly any dynamics left in the sonics," says Manning. He's been Beck's main keysman and a Pro Tools guy since Mutations with a 12-year list of credits that includes recent Beck, Air, and The Vines releases, as well as Blink 182, Nikka Costa, Shonen Knife, and Ringo Starr, among others. "[The waveform] serves a sonically exciting purpose but now it's just making everything sound so homogenous. Every project I've been involved with has been about appreciating that stuff but also doing what we can to push the sonics in another direction while still sounding like a pop record. I'm always after an 80's-style sound with updated modern sonics for my current projects."

Vintage Sounds, Modern Capture
One need look no further than Manning's credits, vert ramp nirvana, and sound carving tools list to feel his updated '80s vibe. His "gear manifest" of 214 vintage pedals, keyboards, drum modules, and recording gear includes a modular E-mu synth, two ARP 2600s, and his Pro Tools|HD 3 system. Every piece is being put to good use on a new '80s-influenced rock synth band he's about to unleash with Brian Reitzel of Red Kross and Jason Faulkner, the latter his former fellow bandmate in the original Jellyfish.

"[It's] heavy on the synths and guitars, but the songs fluctuate a lot," Manning says of the Vince Clarke-, Wire- and Buzzcocks-inspired new side project band. "There's guitar stuff and then some songs with completely sequenced drum machine and keyboards with just a tiny little guitar part."

Manning recently finished keyboards, remixing, and some behind-the-board help on upcoming new releases from Beck, Air, and Johnny Cash. Working with Beck has always been a good challenge for the multi-disciplined "Malibu," including their latest work together with producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead) at the helm for Beck's new record.

"One minute I was playing an upright piano, the next severely manipulating some soft synths with the GRM Tools [INA-GRM] plug-in," continues Manning. "Every skill I possess is called upon [when] working with Beck. Studying jazz, learning how to work a modular synth, programming a drum machine, or arranging vocals. It all comes back to help me with him." Speaking of help, ere are some great Pro Tools Pro Techniques Roger has generously offered. Each uses Grid mode in interesting ways to create unique results. Listen for his work on the new Beck, Ladytron, and other releases in 2002 to hear best what he describes; and we'll pass along any requests from those wishing to learn more about installing an approved skate park in their backyard.

Pro Technique 1 —
Livening up old drum loops in Grid mode
A good part of Manning's time is spent chopping up his vinyl collection — the sampled loops from it, that is. He's done remixes for Air, Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Beck, and Jamiroquai and he savors a scratchy old mono drum loop as much as the next person, but one of his favorite tricks is to use Pro Tools' Grid mode, subtle pitch-shifting, and the stereo field to teach an old loop a new trick or two. Any digital delay could do the same, but the results are "not even close" to the following tip, says Manning.

"I like to duplicate a mono loop I've lifted from vinyl and offset the two parts like a stereo pair. Like a lot of people remixing, I'm trying to make samples I've taken from other sources and make it sound like an original recording by doing some techniques. Start by setting the Grid to a quarter note or an eighth note or what have you; I'll do it to the 1/64th note and just take one side of the sample and move to the right on the Grid by a 1/64th note. So I'll have the left-hand side of the audio right on the Grid mark and the right side delayed by 1/64th or whatever fits the song. I've found that 1/64th seems to be a number that works best regardless of what's going on tempo- and feel-wise in the track."

Manning says to make sure the new stereo loop pans are hard left and right to avoid slap and flam, especially with loose-fitting loops. He suggests bringing the left side down by 1.5 to 3 dB to make the listener's ear first hear the left loop signal, noting that the right side will actually sound softer now because it triggers just after the left side signal. The fact the delay is only a 1/64th note and the left side of the loop is a couple of dB lower than the right is what Manning loves about this tip.

"That tricks the ear and minimizes your mix from sounding too left-heavy and just makes it sound more equal and much more even. Offsetting it makes that loop's soundfield really wide and gives it a sort of 3-D element. It's a really quick, easy way to widen a dull, one-dimensional sounding loop and make it stand out in a remix without having to always sound lo-fi and scratchy when featuring old vinyl-based loops."

Manning goes on to suggest implementing the added use of subtle pitch-shifting with this Grid technique when working with harmonically oriented samples. Not just a guitar, sax, vocal, or synth loop anymore, Manning loves to play his twisted sample like the new instrument it is.

"A wah-wah guitar part works really well for this," he continues. "You can take one of the sides and pitch-shift it up or down 20 to 30 cents to give it a chorusy sound, but again since it's so wide it's not doing traditional chorusing. Typically, you'll want chorusing to be rubbing with the original so it choruses, but I usually find that that sounds too extreme and too synthetic. I still want everything to sound organic even though all I'm doing is manipulating and splitting it wide across the stereo field. You can experiment with the dB level offsets, the pitch-shifting amounts, and the pan fields until it sounds like it was actually played along with the drum loop you started out with in a track. You get everything working together in that way with samples. It's a good way to re-inject life into old recordings."

Pro Technique 2 —
Creating random polyrhythms in Grid mode
Any bored musician seeing a successive line of flashing left-hand turn signals has surely seen the shifting polyrhythm in it all. Call it chaos or just idle time at a long light, but people such as "Malibu" Manning see musical genius just waiting to be tapped. In lifting lots of rhythmic patterns from records, he's come to enjoy using Pro Tools' Grid mode to create random polyrhythms out of nowhere.

"Let's say I have a two-bar drum loop and the rhythm section is playing chords," says Manning. "I'll duplicate the loop again, line it up with the original, then take my copy and stagger it to the right by a quarter note, half note, eighth note, etc., in Grid mode. So I'm instantly making duplicates that are going to be in time with the original, but now I'm also getting all these sorts of polyrhythmic things going on with snares, guitar hits, and bass lines that are doubling up on themselves depending on where I set the loop point."

Manning explains that if a loop he's working with has a drummer playing eighth notes on a hi-hat, then there's usually also different accents the drummer is playing in the loop. He staggers the loop's left side by an eighth note, which creates entirely new accents when played back along with the right side's unchanged eighth note accents.

"Now you've got the two hi-hat parts adding up differently and there's suddenly this whole third world of accents that the original drummer never intended, but you're still getting his sonics and his character. In doing just this very simple thing you can create this whole new loop with a totally different swing, and the feel is changing over the course of the segment depending on how long the loop is. Experimenting with this, you can now try moving the duplicate drum loop back two and a half eighth notes or something more wacko than that. You'll get a different vibe, feel, timing, and accents no matter how you change the offset of the left and right sides."

As animated as Manning gets about changing swing vibes with polyrhythms, he's even more so when it comes to doing the same thing with melodic instrument and vocal samples. "This tip gets even more valuable to me when I'm working with guitar loops and keyboard loops or other instruments. Let's say a similar one- or two-measure loop is of someone playing just one or two simple chords. Just like the drum loop stagger I mentioned, you now stagger those one or two chords to varying degrees — think about it! It gets really musical and bizarre and interesting very quickly. And flying around the Grid in Pro Tools super-quick like that you can tell right away if something will work or not for you."

Pro Technique 3 —
Better Grid dropouts without automation
Carrying on once he's selected a new polyrhythym from the hi-hat example, Manning then uses Grid mode to further randomize the loop's act for its new 192 kHz home. Starting with the backbeat of the original loop, he begins muting or literally cutting eighth and sixteenth note dropout "holes" to match a track even better and make the loop his own.

"You can start taking out and muting eighth notes from either the original or the new duplicate side on the end of 1 or the end of 3 or the downbeat of 3 on the right side," Manning continues. "You can take out the 1 on your left side and not on the right, maybe also take out all of beat 4 but just on your new duplicate track, which, needless to say, is going to create additional changed accents even more. Once again, you've got someone else's performance and [you're] making it customized to sound like your own new instrumental and drum parts."

Manning suggests the following: Keeping the loop in Grid mode and assuming all timing within the song using Beat Detective or ReCycle has been taken care of, highlight two eighth notes and then do Command/Control + M to mute those. Continue this randomly (or not so randomly, if one chooses) throughout a drum loop doing the same with occasional sixteenth notes or 1/32nds and muting each on the left and/or right sides of the loop.

"This is so much better, more creative, and faster than trying to do the same thing by simply muting the left and right channels of the loop from within the mixer and just automating those mutes," states Manning. "And it's far more precise in that you can visually select the notes you want to drop out and mute them. A lot of people will say this is commonplace with drums, but it gets really interesting trying this with pitched instruments. If you have an eighth-note piano passage of a guy doing an incredible run and you use this tip, you'll be amazed at what you come up with."

Pro Technique 4 —
Flashier fills with Grid mode
Finally, Manning's last tip is another quick-'n'-easy bake way to create pop and sizzle on a disc with a Grid. Looking for another way to rhythmically catch a listener's ear when the all-important chorus approaches? Read on to see how he fans out a listener's sense of space with some simple tips.

"Let's say you have a drum fill that is all sixteenth notes and it lasts for one measure. I'll open up the panning window in Pro Tools and I'll do my pans in time with the tempo of the song, but I'll do them from small to large. In other words, on the first quarter note everything might be to the left, and on quarter note number 2 everything will be to the right. Then on beat 3 on the first and second eighth note I will again go left-right, and on the final quarter note of sixteenths I take each sixteenth note left-right, left-right, and make the pan field widen out as the fill increases and the song moves on. The first two or three quarter notes in the fill aren't panned very wide but then the next eighth notes get wider and finally the last sixteenths are panned hard left and right before going back to the song's original panning positions, of course."

Manning says the result makes any track seem more than it is. "An otherwise straightforward drum fill that you maybe got from a record can get really flashy and hyper for just the length of one drum fill. In a lot of ways, this is another dimension of what somebody like Fatboy Slim does with his vocal stutters. I have a similar approach but [I use] panning and widening the field over time instead of the vocal stutter cut. You could even have two or three elements going, like the drums may be doing it, the vocal might be doing it, or the keyboard sweep — all of it — but you're doing them all in time with some purpose in mind. This tip creates a really exciting moment that kind of jumps out of nowhere in the middle of your song."

To make sure all pans are in time with a song's tempo, Manning says simply to set Pro Tools to Grid mode. This overlays every interface in Pro Tools, including the Pan Edit window.

"Your fills might not be sixteenth notes; just use this to your best taste," concludes Manning. "The whole concept is to start out narrow and simple rhythmically. Your note durations are longer as the fill increases, and not only does your panning widen but your frequency of moving back and forth from left to right quickens, as well. That frequency may quicken to eighth notes or sixteenth notes, as opposed to the beginning of the fill when you were maybe only on half notes or quarter notes. Of course, the longer your fill the crazier and even more extreme you can get with this. But I don't do this in reverse, in other words from really wide to tight pans, because the whole point is to accelerate a song and that does just the opposite."

Roger invites your ideas for his new side project band's name at veggiecurry@attglobal.net