Hello friends, how are you?
Hope everyone's stay healthy.

I fell in love with this song.

I saw on YouTube many people giving tips to make City Pop music like this (instruments wise).
But I haven't found how to approach the music production in mixing and mastering in the box of course.
Or maybe I missed it.

Anyway, is the mixing and mastering process the same as we do mixing for other retro music like this?
Or do Japanese music like this have a different approach?
For example, from the Reverb, Delay, EQ, and Compressor used.

Maybe some of you have experience or have thoughts about this and can help me.

Thank you in advance.
Have a great day always for all of us.

Edit : I forgot mentioning about how noticable sibilance vocal in this song. Is that normally?

 

It's been a while but a lot of vocals used to sound like this, as in clean and not lo-fi, sibilance and all.

 

I see, so I assume sibilance in this genre is normal.
Many thanks for your response.

 

Their (Asian) voices are bitch to do-ess, that's the reason really

 

What a great song.

At that time late 70s into the early 80s new digital recording was putting increased clarity into recordings and one has to remember that Japan was the world leader in this field, the work NHK, DENON and SONY did pretty much set the tone and trajectory for digital recording, PCM standard, first 48KHz recordings. This increased fidelity was different from what came before it and it was desirable. There is still distortion but the engineers tried to eliminate it as much as they could, it was the era of Hi-Fi and with the tools they had they tired their best to make it as clean as they could, and that sound is what they came up with.

Contrast that to the heavily colored stuff that came out on the lesser labels of smaller pop Idols in local markets and you'll hear an intentional difference.

This philosophy of sound makes it out into the broader world as high tech Hi-Fi you can hear it on middle releases of Western singers like Sade and even later ABBA recordings, sibilance and all. Tastes change and marketing changes minds, people emulate success and find reasons to justify it as artistic direction.

The story of humanity.

I hope that's humor and not some of type of stereo. typical bigotry aimed at the Pacific Islanders of Japan. Honestly, I can't tell the difference anymore. Sad world.

Yes, but the one thing is that the Japanese in this particular time were innovating into new boundaries and they were doing it with simple popular music and not esoteric classical music. It was a time of exploration for them.

I agree though that most serious large studios and production houses were all kind of looking for the same thing, this was the peak of the age of high fidelity.

 

Why is one or another and can't for the life of it being that they have particular character to their delivery, what is strange about it really, why is offensive to say that there's more to de-ess there. It's harder to rap on my native language, we have some strange pronunciations, unique letters and hit some of those in our own particular way. It's even harder for non native people to emulate them, they just can't hit them right, always too soft and closest to something they have in their own language, it seeks years of hearing and speaking to actually get a grasp of how to actually pronounce it correctly and you would probably need to change your whole talking habit on the way, phonetics and all that.

 

Really nice song.

I can't say much about Japanese, but as with usual 70s vibe song, i have few suggestions. The mixing approach is more to embrace the dryness. You need to be careful with the usage time based FX. When setting up delay or reverb, when it feels right, bring down a little bit more until it cant be heard at all. The delay faded out nicely, shorten the feedback and length a bit. Use the "small" or "tight" of room simulation for the space, but keep it minimal, short as possible.

Everything is getting the tape roll of treatment on the high end. The money is at the presence area not the Air like modern music these days, kinda have to fight with the harshness and play at the edge there. You add Air or anything, make sure to LPF the highend after to remove the excessive high end. I don't know what is the right word in English, but the song need to have a lot empty spaces in the stereo spectrum, if it make any sense. Like a lot of unused space, just empty. I wish I could explain it better.

One super important thing is. Every instrument needs to sound real, full body, expensive and vintage. No artificial high end added. If the instrument is dark in nature in real life, it has to be dark in the music, maybe can boost a bit but do not exaggerate it. I can't really describe it but you kinda need to have an idea how a epic vintage Ludwig kit would sound like at its best, dry without the help of FXs. Doesn't mean dont use FX at all or truely dry, but it had to appear dry sounding, so be creative with FX usage. How to make the Stratocaster sounds expensive, without all the washy time based FXs. The distortion has to sound right too. How to make the snare sounds like it was from the 70s. You know when you put shirt on the snare during recording for dampened sound. While modern music is more like how the ambient/space interact with the instruments, for this type of vibe, it's how you make every instrument sounds full body in a tight space. Tight but still a warm beautiful space. A lot of famous instrument's sound we know and love these days aren't out yet at that time.

I think you have your own reference but the one I could think of right now is the famous song below. I think the whole Anderson Paak album is mixed with modern approach for 70s vibe which still keeping the vibe but making it fresh and can survive the modern playlist style music listening these days without getting eaten by modern song. I would suggest to not referencing song's from that era for the sound as your music will sound old and made by old man which remove a lot of cool factor from it. City Pop is about young people! lol. This is for mixing/mastering. Keep it modern, fresh but old vintage vibe, that's more appealing for the listeners I believe.

Also listen to what the Kush Audio guy saying on his youtube channel, watch them, his mixing approach is 70s style.

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2024

Sometimes the esses do something really good for female pop vocals. I've heard it taken advantage of in more modern pop productions for sure. It's that fine line between where it sounds like nails across the blackboard versus when her Sss's give you that ASMR goosebump feel, you'd definitely want to keep and highlight that if you can.

If it's too raw, you could still work on it with a de-esser, but with a goal to allow it to stay kind of "silvery" sounding, prominent Sss's but with the very tip of them dulled/broken off by processing so the vocal starts sounding like little clanking silverware bits at those moments.

If it suits the track's vibe that can be a powerful aSsssSset.

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2024

My take on "sibilance": the more you care about it, the more you spot it, the less you care about it, the less it captures your attention. What's the best compromise? It depends mainly on the engineers working on it and their taste. I'm no pro but I can say that the "sibilance" on the voice here doesn't bothers me at all and my ears are really sensitive to highers frequencies. The sax solo, on the other hand, is a bit painful to listen to.

 

Regarding mixing/mastering, the key difference with City Pop compared to western pop of the same era, is the forward, single vocal with a cold, almost mono reverb. If you listen to Junko Ohashi, Kaoru Akimoto, Yasuha, or anything produced by Tatsuro Yamashita, you will notice it. City Pop is also mixed/mastered with more mids and less bass than current western pop/disco/synthwave.

I've got an interesting reference for you, it's a french DJ/producer that tried to recreate the City Pop sound. Nailing the style completely is quite hard as a lot of those songs were harmonically complex, with good session players recorded, and the specific taste and mindset of the engineers at the time. But this guy did it pretty nicely imo :

 

Hello, Melodic.
After reading further your explanation to JMOUTTON, I think in another view perhaps it could be a reasonable factor that impacts the vocal sound.
Although it may seem that technological factors and tools at that time (1979) did not allow for De-Essing.
I'm still learning about this.

Hello, No Avenger.
You mean that in terms of mainstream stuff, right?

Oh no, I missed that.
Perhaps because of my lack of knowledge about music production in that era, so I missed it.
Thank you for letting us know.

Hello, JMOUTTON.
What do you think makes this song great?
I'm interesting to know from your point of view.

I see.
So they were the ones who started 48KHz recording for the first time. Cool.
Thank you for letting us know. This is valuable information, at least for me. Especially about NHK, DENON, and SONY. Seems familiar name for me except DENON.

Were all countries competing/pursuing for this (Hi-Fi) at that time? Or did the tools of that era support better than before?

Okay, I assume that the bigger the label at that point, the more clearer the audio quality, right?

Ahh now I understand.
Artistic reasons may never be wrong for some people I think.

Many thanks for let me know. I apreciate the information/story/anything about it.

Hello, Stevie.
What do you think makes this song nice?
Somehow I'm interesting to know.

Noted.
Would an emulation of 70s Reverb also help? Algo vs Convo for this case/song.
I thought about old Plate Reverb emulation for this case. Do you agree?

Gotcha.
I think I understand what you mean.
Maybe with an instrument density that is not too dense. Can intense separation come close?

Yes, got it. I'll try your advices.
That means the way we mix also has to be limited, right? Like we used real Console (Channel Strip) in the past.

Right.
The sound sounds vintage and expensive.
I think I understand what you mean.

Thank you for the advice and references to broaden my horizons about production 70s/vintage music.

Hello, Satai.
Right, that's make sense.
I think with the certain reverb and process, it will be nice assssseet.
Thanks for share your thought about this case.

Hello, Djord.
Right.
Maybe because the Sax is too dry and sharp?

Hello, Fowly.
Do you have any ideas about what emulation of reverb would be suitable for a genre like this?
I'm thinking old Plate Reverb emulation. What do you think?

Wow, the vibe I feel in this reference is almost close to Miki Matsubara's song. On this reference I heard the sound was a little clearer but still sounded vintage. Nice.
I wonder how he did it.

But now I think, if I didn't use expensive vintage-sounding equipment, would the production process use so much sound manipulation to make a song like this?
I was thinking about saving up to buy a 70s era secondhand bass and guitar.
Or maybe using modern instruments but I give it a lot of processing to make it sound vintage, does that make sense and can it approximate the sound of instruments from that era? It will sound the same?

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2024

This song is incredible. im confused as to what blew it up recently? tik tok or something? did it get a placement in a movie or ad?

It seems like it has a lot of traction recently, almost 300 million streams on spotify, while the rest of her songs are near the 10 mill mark.

as far as mixing tips go, Stevie pretty much covered all the bases. I do think there is a niche for sounding "old" though as well. Especially with some of this lofi trend lately. But i agree with stevie in that a "modern" approach to this style will resonate with a broader audience. Maybe find a middle ground, where maybe the drums, bass, are more "lofi" and synths, guitars and vocals are more "modern".

 

For sure, but main complaint I heard from anyone that do actually have to deal with raw vocals in that industry today is that they have to do lot of more work in de-essing department, it's not some fictional stereotype or any other unrelated social issue, there's whole branch that deals with different languages on science level, dunno, it's not like something unorthodox or new really, no reason for anyone to get upset over that, we are on audio forum talking about production techniques and challenges.

Over-doing de-essing probably would sound totally unnatural too, so that's why it's a pickle to handle it right, also fact that in that market people have higher threshold of hearing it and it's not a big of a deal that much in that context. So yeah, picking right mindset to go about it is solid choice from your side.

Have a blast and hope you will gather as much as useful info here to help you further in your creative adventure.

 

I was sitting here trying to work out if mono was part of the esthetic

 

Haha, for me personally it reminds me of my childhood. Grew up watching a lot of Japanese superheroes series so it's nostalgic. Music-wise I think it connects nicely even on the first listen straight away, feels like listening to this the first time, but I think I might have had listened to it before, but can recall when. Feels like going out to town on the weekend and create some trouble.

Vocal performance is classy in a way, it's not singing, it's story telling. It's not exaggerated, it's carefree, feels like freedom, convincing when she said "stay with me".

All the instruments also sounds nice, I'm kinda particular about instruments quality and their whole sound character in a song. This one ticks all the boxes. Bass, drums just nice, simple and vibey, arrangement is super cool too.

Doesnt really matter algo or convo I think, for reverb, some that comes to mind
1. Lexicon or Bricasti style "Tight Room", "Tiled Room",
2. EMT 140 or 250 for the vocals. I like the 250 for this type of vocal.
3. Ambience type of reverb, Valhalla Vintageverb has some good ones, or just the AMS style Ambience. Play a lot with Amb and Reflection.
4. For snare maybe need some gating.

Slate Verbsuite Classic has pretty much everything needed. Valhalla Vintageverb if you like to do it manually. Experiment with the short reverb. Also need to make sure the reverb isn't too HD. The Arturia's Lexicon 224 is nice too.

I think you are free to mix the way you like as long as everything isn't sounding too over-processed. Using vintage colored channel strip could help sometimes but everything depends on what you comfortable with. Doesn't mean you cant use Soothe or all the modern processing, but the goal is more about getting things to sound natural and not too shiny like modern music.

Use a lot of tube compressors and tape machine can help too. Dont push or over saturate everything, keep it super low. Even when things dont really need compressing, just put it through a fairchild with 0 compression so it gets a bit of that tube stuff. all the NEOLD, Fuse audio plugin, the old emulation, just make the signal goes through them a bit here and there.

About things to sound vintage and expensive, just going through videos of product demo on youtube can sometimes give you an idea.

I sometimes watch this : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6gRE6x7kQfqDOL8TbdM8qRZR1i5op9hC

just to learn things. Good luck.

 

1) I am a big fan of the sound of the Japanese style of Jazz as it takes from normal Jazz but it has it's own character as well and the quality of the session musicians in that recording have all the hallmarks of those trained musicians that Japanese art schools produced in great numbers back then. I still appreciate artists and bands like Fumio Nanri, Sadao Watanabe, The Seatbelts, Kyoto Jazz Massive, Akiyoshi's Cozy Quartet. So while the song itself, the words don't do anything for me I like the shape of the sound it is something I enjoy.

2) Hi-Fi was the trend of the time, people were investing in expensive stereo equipment and wanted recording that could take advantage of the extended capabilities that they invested in. In recording studios as well as in homes people were looking for what they thought was the best reproduction they could get, the speakers, the receivers and amps were big and the aim was clarity. Entire store fronts were specialized in Home Hi-Fi business all over the world and at that time many of the top brands were Japanese. LP Disc jackets and even tape had all kinds of jargon and labels to indicate to the consumer that this particular recording or song sounded more real and better than all the other ones that came out before it. This was the style at the time. So on both sides of the recording process people were trying to make advances to reproduce sound at least to the level one could hear it in a medium sized concert hall.

3) I don't think it had as much to do with the size of the label but with money and in-house ability to produce the tools be create the recordings. It was very common at the time to create a studio that was the only studio that had a particular tool or console and if someone wanted they sound they got on a plane and rented that studio. Bigger companies had the money to make those tools and if you thought a recording was going to make money you could invest in the unique stuff. This wasn't just in Japan, famous studios like Abbey Road had equipment that was only available there and that was the draw to rent those spaces.

De-Essers were available but just not very common the Orban 516EC was common broadcast applications from the mid 1970s but might have been a bit too expensive for Pop production, but in Engineers were already using side-chained inputs with a HP or BP filters to trigger standalone compressors to achieve this effect. Not too long after that in early 80s the dbx902 came out and it was a price point and size that every studio worth it's salt had a pair on offer. I think the first purpose build De-Esser was build by Warner Brother in 1940 and was a proprietary opto-vca comp with a feedback loop at full modulation for use on motion picture and radio applications.


4) DENON is a rather old and established company, I am surprised you do not recognize the name. what we call it here maybe you know it by a different name. You can Google it but it is about as old as it gets 1910 or something like that. I will copy and paste the name of it here in Japanese from their website, maybe you can recognize that or use a search engine to find out more.

株式会社デノン

I am sure I've forgotten a bunch of stuff but with the internet now you can just look it up, it's an adventure that the younger generation has that was not available to us back in the 80s and early 90s.

Cheers.

Look here Hoss, I think you are good guy and most of the time I am right there with you but I am going to have to disagree with you on all of that. I a fan of most of the stuff you say, most of the time but when you have to resort to special esoteric language knowledge stuff that nobody else but only a few people know and that nobody else will ever understand argument, I am going to make a stand on that particular one, because I care about you and consider you to be a person that wants to share good knowledge with others because it makes the world a. better place. If I didn't care, I would have just rolled my eyes, decided you were to dumb to even talk down to and. not worth the time.

I also really find languages fascinating, and I like the sound of different languages. Maybe that has something to do with relieving the exploits of my younger days, either way I digress. Lets Dig in.

Not all Asian languages sound alike and Asia is made up a lot different countries, ethnicities and nations. Saying all Asian voices have a sibilant character is false and your assumption that Japanese is very sibilant language is also incorrect, it's about as Sibilant and English. While some dialects of Chinese with 4-6 tet sounds are very sibilant and are not even inteligible without context if you remove the sibilance. However if we just stay in Asia - the continent, standard Burmese is one the least sibilant languages in the world being with only 2 sibilants the common sibilant /s/ alveolar(tongue on top sounds like the s in snake) with the alveolar aspirated variant /Sh-s/ (tongue on top while sucking air in go from a soft SH to a soft ess) and a palatalized silent post-alveolar /ʃ/ which most non-native speakers struggle to even hear at first.

Let's not even delve into Indo-Iranian and Semetic family dialects (ALSO ASIANS) where the local expression of all sibilants is either voiceless or transliterated to different syllabic all together.

Hawaiian an Pacific Islander language and distant relative to Japanese has no sibilants at all.

Also that assumption that I can only speak/read in one language and are prejudiced by my phonic comfort capability is absurd. Because of randomness of birth and the circumstances of life and travel for work I am lucky enough to a be a polyglot with a rather larger than average collection of syllabic phonemes at my disposal and though I am sure I would struggle with enunciating some I can probably pick them out better than average.

My point it if you want to talk about a language, talk about a language, it could be Korean, Szechuan or Fuchanese but it's not Asian. When you say Asian and you mean the related languages of Sino central Asiatic plant you are erasing everyone else on the continent, be they Indian, Perso-Aryan, Khmer, Viet, Mongo-Turkic, Semitic and so on. Not all Asians look alike, and they don't all sound alike either. It's not cool, it's lazy in a technical setting, and it just erases people who never did you any harm off the planet like they don't matter.

That's pretty. much all I have to say on the matter and if I made a mistake don't hesitate to correct me, but my point stands as is.

Peace brother and be well.

 

Hey brother, understand your point and agree, there's more to it and using Asian generalization is simply wrong, so I understand my mistake and see how off base I really was, thank you for being informative, patient and friendly about it. I based all of my assessment from hearing particular experience from people that mostly work in Chinese audio industry, so yeah.

Have a great one brother and really appreciate your kind words and patience.

 

As a fellow professional asian human being, I didn't find your initial comment offensive. I find it okay to comment on how you perceive certain ethnic groups singing. It is music after all, so it's subjective. The thing is, I agree that a lot of recordings from eastern Asia are quite sibilant. But I also agree with JMOUTTON. It's not the language. I speak Japanese and I don't find it particularly sibilant.

My explanation for this phenomenon stems more from their musical culture than their language/voice. There is a distinct sympathy for generous high-end in eastern Asia. You can take a look at traditional instruments from there, and notice that a lot of them are quite bright (shamisen, guzheng, erhu etc...), and that bass instruments were not as common as in the western world. And still today, if you compare pianos from Yamaha and Kawai to the ones produced in Germany or Italia, you will notice that they are brighter, clearer, and with less low-end. It surely has an impact on how they mix/master their music. If you compare Tokyo Scoring Strings (recorded and mixed by Mitsunori Aizawa, a famous japanese engineer) to other strings libraries from America or Europe, you will also notice way more high-end than the typical western string ensemble, like if they turned up the presence knob on a guitar amp. And what's the most famous japanese microphone ? The Sony C800G. And how does it sound ? Very airy, sometimes sibilant.

It's a pattern that doesn't come from coincidences. It's just how they like to tune their instruments, and record/mix/master in this region of the globe. Some people may not like it, and it's fine. It's the kind of thing that makes music so diverse across the world. So when you say that Asian voices are a b*tch to de-ess, it's your western (I assume?) ears that don't like their mics and recording techniques. Nothing wrong with that

In my sound test playlist, I have a few K-Pop tracks that I specifically picked because of how extremely bright they were mixed/mastered. Those tracks require a playback system with a very smooth frequency response in the high-end if you don't want it to sound sharp and sibilant, making them great references to evaluate the performance of speakers or headphones.

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2024