Mix Analysis: TOURIST - RUN

Taken from his debut album 'U', Tourist's single 'Run' is probably my favourite release of 2016.

William Phillips AKA Tourist is a British electronic musician and songwriter. He has released a number of successful singles and EP's within the last four years, and he is also known for co-writing Sam Smith's 'Stay With Me' alongside James Napier in which he won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 2015.

I hadn't been introduced to Tourist until May this year when his debut album 'U' was selected as feature album on triple j. The first thing that struck me was the sheer talent and calibre of his songwriting, and it becomes even more significant when you consider that he co-wrote such a monumental pop/soul hit, yet this album is almost entirely instrumental. There's no real top-line in any of the tracks, however the seamless combination of the extremely well crafted, catchy vocal cuts and crisp production make it a very memorable listen.

'Run' is the third single from the album. It's an absolute journey that would fit on any road-trip playlist and summer house party alike, yet it's meticulous arrangement tells a beautiful story and keeps you engaged and smiling the whole way through.

Because I like this song so much, I'm going to pick it apart and analyse the mix from an aspiring producer and audio engineer's perspective. If you read my previous article on critical listening frameworks, this is where that post was heading!

Above is the (a bit NSFW) music video released for the track, which is an excellent bit of visual stimuli to get you thinking about the story Tourist's music tells. In an interview with Magnetic Mag, Tourist explained, "Run is a song about falling in love. This video is Ozzie Pullin’s interpretation of that track. I love this video because it’s so pure. It sums up the driving essence of what it means to be human.”

If you'd like to also have the track playing the background whilst reading through, here's a stream:

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Musicality

Length: 5:59

Released: 11/03/2016 via Monday Records

Key: C#Major

BPM: 126

Genre: House

Structure:

Spectral & Instrumentation

With a brief look at Ableton's Spectrum Analyser over the track (Screen-capped at the first chorus), you can see that it's a very clean and controlled mix. There's a high-pass filter cutting anything below 40Hz and a very aggressive low-pass filter cutting anything above 17kHz.

I'll start with the kick drum and work upwards in terms of frequency content. It's quite a short and tight kick that can be found throughout many sub-genres of house music, I'm thinking it could be recreated pretty well with Operator in Ableton. The fundamental frequency of the kick lies around 45Hz giving it that low thump, coupled with some significant harmonics around 90Hz and 140Hz to give it some added punch, 950Hz and 3kHz for a tight click to the top-end.

(Spectrum analyser on the kick drum, the multi-band dynamics tool is also used to isolate the frequency range).

Next we have the Lead Chord Synths. The role of the rhythm and melody created from this chord pattern is almost constant throughout the entire track. When it's not in it's lead/main form (plays on it's own at 5:05 so you know which one I'm talking about) it's low-pass filtered to build atmosphere and allow other elements to tell the story, or replicated through vocal choir sounding synths. The vocal choir element sounds like it was possibly made through a single vowel 'o' sung note, and then put into a sampler where it can be played as chords.

The main chord instrument sounds very big, and has that epic feeling which conveys a sense of soaring vastness throughout the track. It definitely took a lot of meticulous layering of different synths and shaping of each element to design it's sound, as it has such a full character to it. The fundamental bass frequencies are around 50 and 90Hz, with harmonics reaching up to the low-mids at 130, 210 and 280Hz. Between 280Hz up to 950Hz where another significant harmonic lies, has been EQ'd to allow the vocal samples to cut through and fill that space. There's a lot of top-end frequency content as well (which only really comes into play at the resolution of the song) from 1.6kHz to 6kHz to give it that shine and chunky attack.

Vocals

In 'Run' and throughout the entirety of the LP, Tourist uses a multitude of hand-crafted vocal ad libs, phrases and words both male and female to add a human dimension into the mix. The way he has used spacing, delay and long-decaying reverbs to allow the vocals to melt into the colourful production contribute majorly to the aesthetic and emotion created in his music.

Immediately on play you can hear the main vocal "Run". Through it's heavy processing it's difficult to tell whether it was performed by a female vocalist or a male singing in falsetto, however I believe that since it sounds like it could be either, (or both with layering) it attributes to the fact that the song is about falling in love.

This lead vocal cut is layered with some kind of reversed delay in which the speed and pitch of the delay is constantly being automated; it gives this kind of slowing down tape player effect to it and it's f***ing awesome. The frequency content for this lead vocal is a fundamental at 550Hz in C#4, with harmonics at 950Hz and 1.5kHz. The male 'ohhhh' vocal in the pre-chorus and in other parts of the track have very similar content as well. Between 0:30 and 1:00 there's another set of vocal layering which melts into the filtered chords and isn't immediately noticeable as it mostly just adds atmosphere and character. It's probably one of my favourite elements in the song though as it pulses and glides seamlessly with the chords and square-wave synth keys to form a pretty stellar intro.

Other synth elements & FX

At the breakdown after the intro, the tail of the "Run" vocal cut is repeated through the use of a sampler to simulate the note being held infinitely. There's no delay on the vocals anymore and in it's place is this 'wind' sounding effect which does the same reverse delay 'tape player' effect. Layered with it is some white noise build ups and a big evolving brass pad.

There's also these popping/click sounding square-wave key stabs which as mentioned above glide in unison with the ambient vocal cuts and chord progression. All of these elements come in and out of the mix dynamically through the song which brings it all to life and builds tension.

Percussion

The percussion elements in 'Run' are pretty simplistic which allows Tourist's sound design of synths and vox to shine through as the hero of the song. It consists of a shaker slightly panned to the left, single percussion hits, a classic 909 open hat in the centre and a really wide and satisfying clap. The clap sounds like it was doubled and hard-panned left and right with a delay of about 10ms between them. Not only does it give it a wider stereo image due to the Haas effect but also gives this 'swiping' effect over the kick drum with a slightly slower attack to allow the click of the kick to cut through the clap. The majority of the frequency content of the clap and percussion lies above 1.2kHz with the clap filling out the lower high-mids and the open hi-hat reigning from 7-16kHz which really adds to the sparkle of the track.

Dynamics & Stereo imaging

When importing the track into Ozone, which features an RMS (Root-mean-square) meter as well as a peak meter. The RMS is the overall dynamic range of the track, which is the difference between the loudest and softest sound. When playing through the chorus it was moving around between -3.5 to -5dBFS of dynamic range. There's always a lot going on through the course of the track and by looking at the waveform above in this article you can definitely see that reflected visually. However the dynamics and imaging in 'Run' sound incredible. Elements are pulled in and out of the mix and the track is constantly evolving and changing with lots of volume, filtering and EQ automation to create a very well crafted and organic mix. Track also loses next to no energy when played out in mono. The chorus at 1:47 actually sounds almost identical (apart from the shakers getting slightly pushed behind everything) in mono as it does in stereo. Summing the main parts to mono is probably how the many other elements when layered over the top as the track evolves sounds so great, because they've been given ample space in the stereo-field to breathe.

Above is a sound-stage diagram I designed to help illustrate the stereo image of the track. The double ups of words indicate the width of that particular element, for example the clap is very wide so the words indicate where you would hear that sound source in terms of depth in the mix (distance to the bottom/front of the image) and stereo width. If you try and concentrate on the clap, the delay between the two sound sources is just great enough that you can almost distinguish it as two seperate sound sources. So when you think about it in those terms, this diagram makes even more sense.

Closing comments

There's a real defining element to Tourist's work over the album, and it's especially prevalent in 'Run'. You can hear a LOT of hours has been put into the sound design to craft a very appealing sound palette and overall aesthetic in both the single and the entire LP. This coupled with an extremely talented songwriter, makes for one of the most engaging love-stories told through electronic music that I've ever heard.