Image Credit: Four Tet (Press)
Four Tet on How He Made “Looking At Your Pager”
In the latest episode of the Tape Notes Podcast, Kieran Hebden, also known as Four Tet, breaks down the production of his track “Looking At Your Pager”. In this article, we will delve deeper into his ideas and creative process on how to work with minimal elements & Much more.
Four Tet is known for his creativity and minimal approach. In the most recent episode of the Tape Notes podcast, he explains his Ableton project for the track “Looking At Your Pager,” released under his second alias “KH” in May 2022. This track has been a huge hit and has been played by many renowned DJs around the world. Producers such as Solomun and Chris Lake have also officially remixed this track. Four Tet started the “KH” project to release tracks suitable for clubs and festivals, with the first track, “Only Human,” released in 2019.
The podcast begins with a discussion of creative freedom and Four Tet’s latest album. Later in the podcast, Four Tet talks about KH and opens up the Ableton Live project of the track. He starts the topic by discussing how he was preparing a set for the Lost Village festival a week before and wanted to make something new. He added-
“I wish I had something new I was like I need to make something that everybody just understands straight away and you hear it and it’s like got it’s like you’ve heard it before but you’ve never heard it before “
Kieran mentioned that he began the track by using time-stretched vocals. The track is about 140 BPM. He also added grooves to the vocals by chopping them. The vocals used in the track are sampled from “3LW’s No More (Baby I’ma Do Right)“. He then incorporated a kick into the track, explaining, “I heard this and I thought, okay, I can imagine going to the show and hearing that vocal with the kick drums in time and everything.” The main groove of the track originated from a drum loop Kieran had created years ago on a drum machine. The drum loop includes some offbeat hi-hats that give it a swing.
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Plugin Deals
Kieran used a preset from Omnisphere called “Swaggering Around,” combined with some sub-bass for the bass. Additionally, he used melodic instruments such as melodic keys and arps, all from Omnisphere. He stated, “I added a couple of melodic things, including this sound which is now the Omnisphere preset, just to give it a lift. It’s all very basic, just presets with very little bits of EQ.” In total, he employed 14 MIDI and audio tracks in this project.
Now talking about the arrangement, The Track starts with sampled vocals and a drum loop. Then the bass and the first chorus come in. After the first chorus, some melodic instruments are introduced. For the buildup, rolling claps are used to create suspense and tension. Four Tet mentioned that to make the track interesting, he deleted a few kick drums to refresh the looping idea. Additionally, he did not pan any of the drums because the bass was wide, so he kept everything in the middle to prevent clashing. He also didn’t use heavy processing on the elements; mostly, he used Fab Filter Pro Q3 and stock Ableton EQ Eight.
Four Tet’s approach to creating any track is straightforward; we can learn a lot from him. Some of these lessons include:
- Sound Selection is the Key -Sometimes, you just have to choose the right instrument, and that’s it. If the instrument aligns with the rest of the track, then you don’t have to put in a lot of effort to make it fit into the track.
- Less Is More – We can see how minimal and simple his project is, It only contains 14 midi and audio tracks and that’s it.
- Heavy processing does not always work – Four Tet used EQ to cut and boost frequencies and a volume fader to improve the dynamic range of the sound.s.
- Little Changes to make the loop interesting – He mentioned that he made the loop more refreshing by deleting some kicks and adding rolling claps for build-up. This simple change added an interesting twist to the track.
And, for more detail, you can check out this clip from Tape Notes below:
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