The "How did LP make that sound" Thread - Research

Anybody know what that wind effect is on Valentine's Day off of Minutes To Midnight? It's one of my favorite songs of all time but I've always been curious about it. I remember reading somewhere back in like 2007 or 2008 that they recorded a broken air conditioner at that Houdini House place and put it on the album, so is it that? The wind effect BTW is clipped on longer on the end of No More Sorrow and then flows into the actual Valentine's Day track.

 

The broken air conditioner is the metallic clanging/knocking noise heard throughout No More Sorrow. Not sure about the wind in Valentine's Day.

 

His list of equipment is massive at this point, but here are the main ones I can list:

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Random assortment of Hardware/Software
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ProTools - His main DAW since forever at this point
Native Instruments Machine - I think he uses Machine Studio, main sampler.
Ableton Live - This was seen in his Beat Making video running Native Instruments' Studio as a plug in, I know Joe uses this too. Mainly for beat work I guess? (Edit: Also used live by the band, easy to trigger backing tacks and work with Midi)
Akai MPC 2000 - Been a while since I think he's actually used this, Machine I think has replaced it now.
Logic Pro - I know Joe used this at some point, it's another DAW but unlike ProTools it's OSX only
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Plug-ins
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A bunch of Waves Plug ins - Almost every LP song, I can bet has been touched by one of these
Auto-Tune - Yes. LP uses autotune, much like every professional recording artist ever
Standard Protools Digidesign/AIR Plug ins - Standard stuff that comes with ProTools

I can probably update this with more info later.

 

Mike's keyboards also include

Dave Smith Prophet 6
Moog Minimoog Voyager
Access Virus TI Polar
Nord Electro (not sure which one)
Roland Juno 106
Open Labs Miko
Korg Arp Odyssey
Korg Triton

Samplers

Akai MPC (1000, 2000, maybe more)
Native Instruments Maschine
Ableton Push
some old Roland keyboard sampler

Guitars - There's a member that pretty much knows every guitar Mike's ever used so I feel useless bothering but I'll try...

At least this is his main stuff live

Gibson SG Standard
Gibson SG Faded or Special
Fender Stratocaster (American Standard?)
PRS Custom 24
PRS Single-cut (not sure which one)

Software

Mostly Protools and Ableton Live

 

At the very beginning of War, there's a buzzing sound that sounds just like a FL Studio plugin. The problem is I can't find the plugin again. Can someone find it for me? Thanks.

 

Thats actually the sound of an amp.

 

I know it's an amp, but there's a specific plugin that sounds exactly like it, and I'd rather use that than try to hook my amp up to my laptop and put the sound in from that.

 

Try "iZotope vinyl". it has a similar sound.

 

The plugin I'm talking about isn't a download, it's one of the ones that comes with FL Studio

 

No, it's not. It might be in the packs section. It's somewhere in there, I know it.

 

After listening to Nobody Can Save Me a few times, I started wondering what kind of effects they used on the vocal samples in the intro. I've tried achieving the same kind of sound before but never got such a clean sound. Anybody got any ideas?

 

sounds like pitch-shifting+delay/echo to me.

 

I also wonder how they manipulate vocals. In Ableton, if you just increase the pitch of a vocal track, it doesn't sound as "smooth" as the sounds I hear in Nobody Can Save Me, or the breakdown in Sorry For Now. Any good plugins/hardware specifically for helping make stuff like the Sorry for Now drop, or even the breakdowns in Blackout/WFTE/LITE?

 

The break down in Sorry for now I don't know. But the breakdowns in Blackout and WFTE are done with an MPC and the one in LITE is regular question.

 

Nobody Can Save Me manipulated vocal thing is almost definitely done with Melodyne. If you compare it to the regular vocal track, it's actually in the same octave, no pitch shifting. Specifically they would have used the Formant Tool and/or Sound Editor functions to change the vowel shapes and overall timbre of the vocal track without changing the pitch.

 

Btw. Can share the last bass guitar pack
which i used for my music project.
https://www.lucidsamples.com/house-sample-packs/216-guitar-house-mafia.html
U can recommend me some web's with bass guitar samples
too.

 

Are there sample files of Chester's Blackout screaming anywhere?

 

That'd be very interesting to see because Blackout is one of my favorite LP songs.