Future Cut: The Logic Behind Lily
Don’t mess with Lily Allen. The chart-topping songstress has back-up, in the form of Future Cut Productions, the London-based duo who co-wrote and produced much of her debut album, using Logic Pro on the Mac.
It’s hard to believe Future Cut Productions churn out platinum-selling hits from such a small studio, but once you enter the Apple-logo emblazoned front door, it soon becomes obvious how much music production has changed in the digital age.
Future Cut Productions are Darren Lewis and Tunde Babalola. They met ten years ago in Manchester, where they both DJ-ed on the drum ‘n’ bass scene. Rival promoters, their mutual love of music bought them together in a creative partnership. Since then, they’ve worked with Goldie and Roni Size, and were in the band Un-Cut with Jenna G, until they chose to focus on production, songwriting and remixing. Still not familiar? More recently, they collaborated with the outspoken queen of MySpace, Lily Allen, co-writing, producing and mixing half of her debut album, including the number one smash Smile.
Lily is recognised for successfully using the internet to promote herself and attract an audience. Apple technology has also been instrumental in her success. Future Cut employed a Power Mac G5 running Logic Pro to create Smile in a small studio with an even smaller vocal room. “These days, you don’t need a huge studio to have a big hit”, they explain. “Smile was written entirely using Logic on a Mac; it just started with a sample we had”, says Babalola. “We’ve tried a few applications in our ten years of making music, but Logic has it all in terms of the tools we need for studio-based writing and production”, adds Lewis.
Lewis is particularly impressed by the breadth of tools in Apple’s flagship music app, which covers the gamut of creation: recording, MIDI support, virtual instruments and plug-ins. Babalola is equally impressed by Apple Loops, which he describes as “amazing”. “You can find the loop you need in a couple of minutes, rather than spending half an hour rifling through them. It lets you work fluidly and fast”, he explains. And they both like Logic’s stability and the way it encourages collaboration. “When people send us projects on CD, we just open them up and we’re ready to go”, says Lewis.
To start with, record label reps visiting Manchester (where the pair were based at the time) were perplexed by the compact studio. Lewis explains: “That was one of the best things about it all. Labels were struggling to understand that we made the music on the Mac. They couldn’t connect the dots, but that’s music-making in this day and age”. It is obvious to them both that music creation has changed dramatically in the past decade. “Eight years ago, we switched from a platform where you had to download lots of plug-ins for different jobs”, says Lewis. “We moved to Logic and found the facilities were already there. Today, we’ve got no mixing desk, no real outboard gear — it’s all done on the Mac. What you create can potentially end up on a released record, and that says it all for us”.
Mac OS X keeps creators creating. “You don’t need to be a computer whizz to learn your way around the Mac”, observes Lewis. “Its rock-solid performance boosts any creative attempt, and the last thing you want when you go into a session is for the equipment to crash. When we get in here, we can have a song written — some of Lily’s are good examples — in minutes or hours because we know Logic on a Mac is reliable. We can build tracks as fast as we can think of the ideas”.
It’s a far cry from music production in the pair’s early days. “Nowadays, production isn’t about knowing how to programme a synth for two hours to get a unique sound, because the sounds are already great. It’s not about what sounds you can get anymore, but about how you use them”, says Babalola. “It’s like production has gone back to the music again”.
“Nowadays, production isn’t about knowing how to programme a synth for two hours to get a unique sound. It’s not about what sounds you can get anymore, but about how you use them. It’s like production has gone back to the music again.”
Lewis agrees. Mixing desk levels, recording to tape and volume level adjustment are in the past — the Mac and Logic help capture the moment. “When the art is in the flash of the creative moment, spending two hours chopping a sample and then having the computer crash is where you lose it. [With Logic], if someone sings something and you want to get it going, they can just put it down”.
The ease-of-use and breadth of tools within Logic mean ever more musicians are working with Macs. This also means Apple’s application has “defined a sound”. Babalola explains: “10 to 15 years ago, the 12-bit sample rate defined a musical genre. You could hear the dirtiness in the beats. Now I can hear a tune and recognise the effects”, he reveals.
According to Lewis, that recognition creates a loyalty towards Logic among music-makers: “There’s a feeling for working in Logic that people used to have for working with synths. You love it the same way you loved your old Moog. You feel protective over it”.
Both halves of Future Cut own MacBook Pros, which they use to collaborate on songs, sharing loops using Bluetooth. But there’s more: “iTunes has become really important to us; we use it like a virtual record shop when we’re looking for samples”, says Lewis. Their iPods also keep them creative on the move. “The iPod is a brilliant tool”, enthuses Babalola. “All the demos we get, I just rip them to my iPod. I can listen to all the stuff I need to hear and get a plot on it when I travel”.
Both men travelled with Lily on her recent UK tour, performing live at numerous dates, including one in full fancy dress at Bestival. They used a 12-inch PowerBook to provide the backing tracks. “We were asked to help put together the live shows and we decided to run the backing track on the PowerBook. It meant we could add or subtract real musicians, depending on the budget or the size of a specific show”, explains Lewis.
This unique collaboration between technology and music means that, with creative people choosing Macs, iTunes, iPod and Logic, Apple now has a complete ecosystem — not just for music creation, but also for distribution and playback. “We make it on Apple, we sell it on Apple, we listen to it on Apple”, the two agree. “Without Apple and Logic, we wouldn’t be where we are now”.
