Producer/DJ Cosher releases his latest single Think I Might featuring Cape Town’s own Jimmy Nevis.

Those of you who have been watching and listening to the releases from Cosher’s upcoming album Certified will be pleased to know that yet another hit is on the cards from the album.

This time Cosher teams up with one of Cape Town’s and South Africa’s biggest artists at the moment, Jimmy Nevis, who features on this new release titled Think I Might.

The writing process for the song started in Cosher Recording Studios with Cosher, Jimmy and Composer Ross Rowley screening through guitar samples to find the best starting point. It was decided that the song should be a mix of both Cosher’s latest uplifting and commercial dance sound (which is very inspired by international artists like Sigala), and the 70’s and 80’s pop and R&B style which is characteristic of Jimmy’s sound from his latest album Chimera. The verses would show off the “Jimmy Nevis” sound and style while the “Cosher” style would be represented in the choruses.

Once the chord structure and bass line was laid, Jimmy, spent some time writing lyrics while Cosher was focussing on structuring the track. Jimmy showed his typical lyrical prowess when he worked in the memorable line which became the namesake and focus for the song, which also served to create a perfect pre chorus link between the two distinct styles.

The lyrics which he wrote speak to the feeling of meeting someone for the first time and immediately feeling a strong connection, or being able to see someone who has been a friend for a long time from a completely different romantic perspective.

It’s uncommon for a track to be done in a day, but the same day that Jimmy came in to work on the track, he and Cosher stayed in studio and thanks to some serious inspiration giving them the drive to keep going, they had finished the majority of the track by the early hours of the next morning, leaving only the final mix and mastering to be done later that week by Cosher.

From the listeners point of view, the track begins with a mid range guitar riff, with some added side-chain compression, which also gives a little bit of an indication of tempo. Over this riff you can hear Jimmy’s voice soaring with a long reverb, which creates a beautiful spaciousness to the intro. The vocals come in with the bass, and throughout the first verse there is a distinct modern R&B feel, with halftime kick drum and reverb snares keeping the same open feel which is apparent in the intro.

Halfway through the verse however, there is a touch of dance chords which sit in the background. These have a slight delay effect on them, and they have affectionately come to be known in the studio as “the Deadmau5 chords” because of a similar instrument being used by the famous Canadian in many of his more progressive tracks.

This continues until the pre chorus mentioned earlier, which has a mix of 80’s inspired synth line, and Jimmy’s vocal line “I think I might love you”, which prepares the listener perfectly for the buildup, which has that same line mixed in with some light vocal chops, a high marimba style line and light piano chord line which shows that Sigala influence.

The first drop comes in with a mix of chopped vocal loops, a driving bass line with a commercial style dance beat giving it movement. Before it drops back into the second verse. The second drop subtly changes up the feel, adding a piano chord line with supporting bass line in the low end, and a touch more marimba style instruments running right on the top line. This creates consistency and uplifts the second half of the track, with the vocal loops that Cosher created from Jimmy’s original lines, keeping the main vocal line in the mind of the listener.

All told this track is set to be a success on the airwaves and dance-floors around the world

In the recording world, there are a bunch of terms which are thrown around, but when working with audio the most common ones are Seps (Separates) And Stems. 

Seps and stems are used in the mixing and mastering process, with dry audio being given to a studio to mix, master or both.

What’s The Big Difference?

Separates

Sometimes called multi-tracks. Every time you work with a producer or start producing your own track,  you will create instruments and vocal channels, essentially making a new line of music for either singing/vocals or instruments and drums.

Simply put, each new line of music which you add is a new ‘separate’ piece of audio to the things that came before or after.

So let’s take drums for example – The kick, the snare, and the hi-hats are separate. 

When the audio from a track gets exported, if you export each instrument and each vocal line out in full, then you have a batch of separates, which can then be mixed and mastered or have various FX applied to them like reverb or autotune.

Stems

Stems are a slightly different type of file which is similar to seps but different in that instead of each separate instrument, you are using instrument groups, which can be mixed down into mono or stereo files.

So, for instance, in the case of an orchestra you might have high woodwinds, low woodwinds,  high brass and low brass instead of each instrument separated  individually. This aids in cutting down the amount of instruments which are being processed when a track is being mixed and mastered. What usually happens with stems is that each instrument group will be mixed, and then the track will be exported as a dry stem without any FX on it so that it can be added to all of the other instrument or vocal stems to be finally mastered.

Wet vs Dry

When we talk about wet or dry, we’re talking about having audio FX added to the track that has been exported.

Wet comes from talking about reverb, one of the most common effects which is added to most vocal audio. When there is a wet channel, it means that there are digital or analog effects on the channel.

Obviously the opposite is true for a dry channel, meaning that a dry channel is audio with no digital or analog effects on it.

The general rule for seps or stems that are going  to be used for mixing and mastering, is that they should be exported dry, meaning that the channel has no effects on board, unless a specific artist idea has been used by the producer who created the track initially.

What You Need To Remember When Using Seps Or Stems!

The one important thing about both of these types of music files, is that there may be areas of silence in the track, at the intro for instance where most of your instruments may not yet be playing. In order to properly mix and master them, the audio engineer that receives these files for mix and mastering, needs to receive those silent parts too, so each separated file incorporates all of the silences as well as the recorded audio. What it essentially means is this – each file should be exactly the same length, even if it’s something as basic as a single kick at the 2 minute mark which is silent for the rest of the track.

Formats are also important, so you need to be sure that you know a few things.

MP3 vs WAV – these are your most common audio file types. MP3 is a file type which is compressed (the file itself is compressed, not the audio) meaning that it maintains a lower size to take up less space. A WAV file is a format which is raw, uncompressed audio. Most often you will be asked for WAV files to mix and master, this is because they are the closest to the sound  which was created on the original audio software or hardware being used originally.

The last thing to look at when talking about the setting of audio you’re exporting is kilohertz and bit depth. Bit depth, relates to the dynamic range in audio. In slightly more detail, the bit depth is the number of ‘bits’ of information in every single sample. The more bits, the more dynamic range. The sample rate, in a nutshell, is the number of samples per second in a piece of audio. It is measured in Hertz (Hz) or Kilohertz (KHz). The Industry standard export settings for WAV files are 48khz and 24 bit.

We talk a bit more about separates and when they are applied in the music production process in our video series, which  you can watch here, and here

If you are looking at doing a music project and you have stems or seps that need mixing and mastering, then whatsapp our business music line on 060 763 4698 or email [email protected].

In part 1 of this blog series we went into what we as artists can do to start the process of creating music from scratch. This part 2 is all about what we can now do once we’re gone through the process of writing the initial track.

So you have a basic idea which now needs to be fleshed out to make a fully fledged track ready to be recorded, what’s next?

We get quite a few people into Cosher Recording Studios who come in with ideas and work their tracks to a fully produced piece with a very minimal idea at the start. This process involves many parts, chord structures, arrangement etc.

Arranging In Short

So what is musical arrangement actually? In layman’s terms, it’s how a track is laid out, so you could decide something like this – I have 4 chords which go over 8 bars, so I’ll do 16 bars in the verse, then 16 bars as chorus, repeat this and then add a bridge, and lastly throw in another chorus.

This is called structural arrangement, because you’re looking at how the structure of your track is going to work using chords and music you’ve already thought of. 

Chordal arrangement is similar, it basically goes – I have this vocal for my verse, and that one for my chorus, and so I now need to work on the chords.

Essentially it’s not important whether you have chords or vocals or even just a short idea on either, you can still find a basic structure that works.

As a performer, artist, singer, songwriter or musician we primarily work on freelance basis, we are our own bosses and our music (product) is our business. And yes, we have said this many times before, you have to treat your music career as a business.  This means that much of the work we do comes down to us, how well we can market and punt ourselves and how much hype we can create around our brand which is not always an easy task. We need to know the costs of creating music and we need to know how we need to calculate our return on investment.

Probably one of the most important things we have to know as a freelancer is when we’re going to actually see some of that all important money that we’ve earned or are owed, and sometimes we can find this a daunting task.

One of the main sources of our income comes from royalties.  However, it can get confusing as we hear a lot of terms thrown around like “intellectual property”, “creative property”, and other things like “publishing and performance rights”. Beyond this there are other terms like “master copy” and other terms which we as artists HAVE to know.

We’ve decided to go through a list of these terms, make  them relatable, and tell you how this relates to you receiving your royalties. We also want to let you know HOW to apply for your royalties.

First, lets list some of the common terms you will hear when talking about royalties:

Author – The creator of any work that can be copyrighted. In the music realm, this usually pertains to the person who creates the lyrics of the song 

Blanket License – A type of broad license that allows the end user (such as a Radio station) to use any or all of the songs in a Performance Rights Organization’s library, as much or as little as they like. Licensees typically pay a large annual fee for the license.

Catalog  – All the songs owned by a music publisher considered as one collection. If a songwriter has not assigned or licensed his or her own works, they are considered to be the songwriter’s catalog.

Commission – Percentage of income paid by musical artists or actors to their representative.

Composer – One who writes the music to a song or for an instrumental track.

Composition – A musical work; the art of writing music.

Copyright – The exclusive rights granted to authors or original creator/s of a song.

Copyright Infringement – The unauthorised use of a copyrighted work. 

Exclusive Publishing Agreement – A written agreement allowing a specific music publisher to publish some or all of the songs by a songwriter or composer for a certain period of time. 

Intellectual property – Intangible property that is the result of creativity, such as patents, or copyright.

ISRC Code – A unique number assigned to each new song which is officially released for tracking purposes

Master – The original master recording. The original media type or form, from which dubs or copies are made.

Mechanical Rights – A right given, allowing a musical piece work (song) to be legally reproduced onto different mediums such as CDs, tapes, computer hard drives, cell phones, Mp3 players, on-demand streaming services  and other forms

Mechanical Royalties – The payment from a record company to a songwriter or publisher when the mechanical right is used 

Needletime Rights  – Needletime Rights are record labels and recording artists’ rights. Needletime Rights royalties are royalties paid to: recording artists for the public performance of their commercially released recorded performances; and record labels’ for the public performance of their commercially released sound recordings.

Performance Royalties – The income earned from a song on radio, television, concerts, and other public performances of music.

Recording Artist – A person that performs songs in a studio-like setting for the purpose of recording songs and releasing them to the public. A recording artist usually performs music created by other songwriters and composers (e.g. A Hip-Hop Artist recording on a beat – Drake). However, a Recording Artist can also be a songwriter and create and perform their own music (e.g. Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran)

Royalty – The income earned from the sales of the record or song.

Songwriter – A songwriter is someone who is involved in creating a song that usually focuses on lyrics and a melody

Now all this may seem a little bit overwhelming, but really there’s nothing to be afraid of, in fact, these are some must know terms, so get used to them now and learn them well .

So now we know what royalties are, let’s just delve into that for a second – Royalties exist so that when your song is used, or your film is shown,  you get paid for that artwork being put into a public space, and unless you have given permission for it to be done for free, a company or individual is liable to face legal action if they did not pay you for it.

So How Do You Apply To Get Your Royalties In South Africa?

We have 4 organisations who handle the types of royalties for performing and for creating music.

RISA (Recording industry of South Africa) is the first port of call. These are the people who handle the creation of ISRC codes, as mentioned above, the unique code given to a song or album released for public consumption. The code is a form of an identifier to the song and is used to track where songs are played, especially when streamed, downloaded or played on radio

Next up is SAMRO (South African Music Rights Organisation). These guys deal with performing rights and royalties and handle the payment of money owed to artists and collaborators whose music has been on radio , TV, film or other media in the public space. A Radio or TV station has to let SAMRO know that a song is added to their roster, and they will pay a blanket license fee to ensure that the artists are paid for their work being on air.

SAMPRA (South African Music Performance Rights Association) is the organisation which handles needletime rights and royalties, which pertains to people involved in the production of a song such as the recording artist and record label 

CAPASSO (Composers, Authors and Publishers Association) deals with Mechanical Rights and Royalties. They are an organisation that administers the mechanical right in the composition’s copyright (i.e. the right that arises when a musical work is reproduced or transferred from one format to another) and distributes the royalties to their members

Next Step – Sign Up!

Now that you know some of the important terminology regarding music rights and royalties, the next step is to sign up to all of these agencies so that you can protect your music and to start receiving royalty income.