Recreated: Justin Timberlake's Justified - 3 Loops

We're back to recreating tracks but this time it's going to be a little different. I'll recreate three tracks from Justified (2002) by Justin Timberlake.

Why three tracks and not one full track? Well, Justified is packed with great tracks because it was mainly produced by the successful hip-hop/R&B producer duo Chad Hugo & Pharrell Williams a.k.a. The Neptunes. Other tracks featured more personnel but the ones I'm focusing on were written by Timberlake with The Neptunes and produced by the latter.

A lot of the tracks on Justified are also heavily loop-based so getting the loop down gives you like 80-90% of the whole track.

1. Señorita

We'll start with the first track from the album, Señorita. As the name implies it's somewhat latin style influenced. Tempo is 98 and the key is E♭ minor.

The main loop of Señorita

Listen to my recreation:

The main element is a jazzy electric piano riff. It starts on the dominant B♭7 with a descending melody from flat 9 (C♭). It resolves on a E♭m9 but quickly transitions into A♭13 just by changing the bass note. The ending chord G♭13 features a F♭ which brings some more excitement into the harmony progression.

The bass is where this gets interesting since it flips around the whole chord analysis. It's a sub bass sine-like sound in a supporting role, but the note choices are peculiar. During the B♭ chord the bass plays D♭ to E♭ which is the tonic. During the E♭m the bass plays B♭. This is all flipped around, what the hell? Further, while the keys play the 13 chords the bass shifts these a whole tone up, B♭ and A♭.

You could analyze the chords based on the bass notes but that would be unnecessary. Let's just take it as it is because ultimately it sounds great. This is one of those examples in music where it looks weird on paper but works fine in practice. I'd wager that if you mirrored the keys exactly in the bass the loop wouldn't work as well. The end result has a forward momentum because of this intentional harmonic mismatch. You want to hear it resolve but it never gets there.

The drums play a beat which accents the final G♭13 with an open hihat. There also a couple of different shakers doing 16ths and a cowbell with triangle doing straight quarters. The hand clap joins in on the quarters from time to time. The percussion emphasis on quarters contrasts nicely with the other elements which are more rhythmically diverse.

2. Rock Your Body

The sixth track on the album, Rock Your Body, was a huge hit. This disco-funk style track was originally intended for Michael Jackson (along with some other tracks on Justified) which you can imagine by listening to the chorus. Tempo is 101 and the key is E minor.

The main loop of Rock Your Body

Here's my recreation:

There's a stabbing electic guitar or clav type sound playing the main chord progression G11 (F/G) - A11 (G/A) - Em. Note again the usage of non-scale notes (F) which makes it more interesting and provides forward momentum.

Supporting the stab is a piano+synth pad combo playing a sparser version of the chords. The synth pad has a longer attack so you'll hear it fade in on the longer notes.

A bell type sound is used as a transition between the bars 1-2 and 3-4 which is a nice little hook.

The bass lick brings to mind CHIC's Good Times or Queen's Another One Bites The Dust because of the similar 3-hits-on-quarters rhythm on the first bar.

The drums are played disco style, with some open hihats on offbeats and having some snare hits with the bass drum. Otherwise the bass drum is following the rhythm motif from the bass.

When you get past the somewhat exotic 11 chords this is a fairly simple loop overall. And it works.

3. Let's Take A Ride

There are more popular tracks on Justified I could have recreated but I chose Let's Take A Ride because it's one of my favorites. This R&B track plays at 90 BPM and its key is B♭ minor, I guess.

The main loop of Let's Take A Ride. Synth and Pad play during the chorus.

Here's the verse loop:

And the chorus loop with additional elements:

The main element is an acoustic guitar pattern played over 4 chords. For each chord the root is played with the third and seventh, with the 9 thrown in there as a melodic effect. There's a two bar pattern of minor 9 chord followed by major 9 chord one semitone up. Bars 1-2 start on F and bars 3-4 start a fourth up on B♭. Note again the usage of flat second (C♭).

The guitar is sweetened up with a phaser effect and some additional effects to widen/beef the sound.

The drums play a syncopated 16th beat with claps doubling the "rimmy" snare sound. There a reverb effect on the last snare/clap hit as a fill. A couple of shakers are again added to the mix.

The bass is a sub bass type sound and it doubles some of the bass drum hits. On bar 3 there's an interesting break in the bass drum which leaves room for a nice sub bass fill. The actual notes here were quite difficult to determine, I had to resort to the spectrogram on this one.

The verse loop is simply the guitar, bass and drums. In the chorus we have two additional elements.

First we have a short synth playing mainly B♭ which creates nice harmonies with the chords. It switches to a C on the B♭m chord. I love this hook, it sounds so great.

Then we also have a vintage sounding synth pad playing longer notes, staying strongly rooted on B♭. I really like the B♭5 on C♭maj9 harmony which results in a sharp 11.

Closing words

There you have it, 3 tracks deconstructed and recreated (or at least partially). I hope you enjoyed this and let me know if you have any suggestions for future recreations.

Recreated: Sade - Cherish The Day

Sade's album Love Deluxe was released in 1992. It features a bunch of mellow tracks including one of my favorites, Cherish the Day. I'm gonna recreate it, meaning every element except for the vocals.

The track was produced by Mike Pela with the band. The official video version is a bit different with some extra overdubs, but I'm going to focus on the album version. Listen to it below.

And here's my recreation:

General stuff

This 80 bpm track is somewhat minimal in its composition and arrangement. It has a programmed drum beat throughout with a static C minor bass riff and only four chords on the synth pads. The arrangement feels electronic especially towards the end with repeating loops but it's contrasted with a loosely phrased guitar and Sade's warm vocals.

Intro

A mellow synth pad plays four one bar length chords: Cm7, Dm7, Fm7 and Gm7. The shape is the same for all chords which brings to mind that this could have been done with sampling a single chord and playing it with different pitches. Or it's a synth patch with the chord built in. Maybe it was composed like that, jamming around with presets or a sample. Notice the A note in Dm7 which adds some excitement as we shift from dorian mode (Dm7/C) to natural minor (Fm7/C).

I don't recognize the original synth/patch so I tried matching the sound with a couple of different layered pads.

Synth pad chords

On top of the chords there's a clean electric guitar line with only two notes, C and D (three if you count the half bends to E♭). These go nicely with the chords, D being a ninth on top of Cm7 and the D to E♭ bends occur on on Fm7, sixth bending to seventh.

There's some reverb on it which makes it more floaty. The rhythm is loose at times and the following transcription is approximate.

The intro guitar lick

I spot some classic sounds in the drum track! There are hihats from the Roland TR-909 with clave and maracas from the TR-808. The clave has a nice long reverb. I don't recognize the kick and snare, but most likely they are from a period drum machine also. I reproduced them with something that sounded similar.

The drum pattern, a combo of 3 different drum machines (most likely)

There's very little variation on the drum loop throughout the track. The claves go on and off periodically and the hihats and maracas are muted during some fills.

As the first verse starts there's a short bass fill and the highs on the drum track are omitted briefly. See later for the bass transcription.

Verse 1

You're ruling the way that I move…

The first verse has just the drums and the pad. There's a drum fill in the middle which substitutes snare for an 808 clap, first hit dry and second with reverb.

At the end there's a subtle hint of the intro guitar riff, maybe just the effect track without the dry signal.

Chorus 1

I cherish the day, I won't go astray…

The chorus (or at least the part I interpret as the chorus) is short, only 4 bars. The chords change to Cm7 - Gm7 - Fm7 - Gm7 for one cycle.

After the four bars there's a verse, or a post-chorus, maybe? I don't know, the song structure is not that traditional. Anyway, during that bit the bass enters.

The bass line is a four bar loop in C minor pentatonic and every now and then there's a jazzy fill played higher up.

The bass line, starting with the fill

Before the next part there's a simple but genius drum fill with a pitched down snare, the normal snare and the reverberated clap on 2nd, 3rd and 4th beats respectively.

Post-chorus/pre-verse and the next verse

This is the same as the intro with the guitar. It sounds like they didn't bother varying the guitar lick and just used the same recording again.

The verse continues with the same stuff, but for the bass there's a break and the jazz fill before the next part.

The "Flute" Solo

The flute patch sounds like an FM synth and I found something that sounded very similar (with some tweaking of course) from the FM7 legacy bank for FM8.

The patch has legato activated portamento which means the pitch will slide between keys if you don't lift the previous key before pressing the next. This is clearly heard on the second phrase.

The flute solo

Melodically the solo clings to the note F which is wise because it works on top of each of the chords. The starting D on Cm7 creates an open and sustained feel. The C♯ before it is a nice ornamental leading tone which makes it sound jazzy.

Chorus 2

We move into the second chorus, but you'll only recognize it by the vocals, since the synth pad chords stay the same and won't play the variation from the first chorus.

Interlude

I'm going to call the next bit the interlude because it's quite different from the rest of the track.

The synth pad takes its only break in this track for 4 bars, then plays a 3½ bar long Gm7 which creates a Cm11 feel because of the bass.

The drums have some reverberated snare hits on 4. Then there's an interesting fill with something that sounds like a time-stretched piece of a drum loop sample. This is very hard to reproduce without knowing what the source sound was but I took a hihat loop and mangled it to something that sounds similar with time stretching, pitch & frequency modulation and EQ. There's a tom fill also, with a tom sound that has some snare/timbale quality to it.

The next 4 bars substitute the normal snare with a lower pitched one, and finish of with a low snare - snare - reverb snare drum fill.

The bass plays the same loop, breaking on the final fill.

An electric guitar with wah-wah effect plays muted chops during the first half (with an subtle delay effect) and a short melody line on C minor pentatonic during the second.

The wah-wah guitar during the interlude

To the last chorus

You show me how deep love can be…

Again, I don't what the next part is since it's only a couple of vocal lines. A very short verse? Pre-chorus? Anyway, it's the basic loops again with a bass fill in the middle.

Then we move on to the last chorus and this time the chords change, again for 4 bars only like in the first chorus.

Outro

For the rest of the track the vocals repeat the main hook from the chorus.

In the outro we get something new and something old. The new thing is a 1 bar loop consisting of a low-pitched crash cymbal on 1 and a muted electric guitar pattern. This combo might be an actual sample, or it's just engineered to sound like one.

The old thing is 3 repeats of a part from the wah-wah guitar lick.

After this it's back to the intro guitar lick and a fade out.

Final words

I like this track. I don't know what's the magic here. It might be the sample-based composing and production combined with nineties electronic aesthetic and the beautiful vocals. While the production might sound a bit dated today it's still sophisticated, smooth and enjoyable.

I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions for next tracks to be recreated.

How to analyze and transcribe a song perfectly

Transcribing a song thoroughly is hard and time-consuming. If you are only interested in the main melody and chords, the task becomes easier, but what if you need every part of the track for a perfect reconstruction?

Let's face it: most of the transcriptions out there are wrong. Take any track, look it up on a tab site and you'll find a variety of transcriptions. Some are very simple: chords only with no indication of rhythm, some are full reconstructions done with a software like Guitar Pro. The quality can be anything, and if you have any musical knowledge you'll notice who knows what they are doing and who is just guessing. (/rant)

If you're analyzing a popular song, you'll have a better chance finding a decent transcription. It's still a good idea to verify it yourself.

Here are the things that will help you analyze and listen to your track for that perfect transcription or recreation.

1. Use a good pair of speakers or headphones

Listening requires good equipment. Use high quality speakers, monitors or headphones that have a good resolution, meaning that you'll be able to distinguish between different parts in the mix better. Don't forget the rest of the chain either: you'll need a good amp or audio device also. If you're into music, you should have these things sorted out already.

2. Use your DAW/audio editor

Import the track in your DAW or use an audio editor (e.g. Audacity) where you can easily skip around, start and stop repeatedly, loop parts and apply effects.

You can analyze a song from your music player also but you'll get frustrated pretty fast if there are difficult parts that you need to listen over and over again.

3. Use a similar sound when transcribing a part

It makes sense to use the same instrument when you are figuring out a part in the song. If there's a piano, use a piano sound to play along. You could also try to tweak your sound to match the original with EQ and effects.

If you're working in a DAW, record or manually program your best guess of the part and start A/B comparing it with the original via muting and soloing. If your sound is similar to the original, you can hear the differences easily and iterate your guess.

If your goal is to recreate the whole track, transcribing and recreating can be done in this same step. You just need to figure out the tempo of the original to perfectly align with your DAW grid.

4. Use EQ/filters

If you're analyzing the bass, apply a low-pass filter. If you're analyzing the hihat, apply a high-pass filter. If you're analyzing the vocals, apply a band-pass filter or an EQ boost in the mid frequencies. Focus on the stuff you are listening to and try to filter out the other things.

Sometimes you'll need very sharp filters. One example is to isolate the bass drum from the snare drum. They can share a lot of frequencies so it might be difficult to tell if there is a bass drum under a certain snare hit or not. In this case, take a very sharp (high Q or resonance) filter and focus on the boom of the bass drum.

In iZotope's Ozone you can sweep frequencies with a narrow band easily by pressing down Alt while using mouse.

5. Use mid/side channels

Using different channels might work if you have hard panned elements. Listen to left and right separately. One extra trick is to use mid/side processing.

Middle and side channels are just a different way of encoding the usual two channels: left and right. The mid channel is the sum (L + R) and the side channel is the difference (L - R). If you think about this for a while, you'll notice that the mid channel amplifies sounds that are common between left and right (i.e. centered things) and the side channel amplifies sounds that are different (hard panned or stereo-effected things).

Fun fact: simple vocal removers (that usually don't work) use mid/side processing by reducing the middle channel. This works on the assumption that the vocals are centered, but is also reduces any other centered material in the mix.

Some parts that are difficult to analyze in the original mix might be very audible in the side channel.

In Ozone you can solo the mid/side channels separately

6. Use time stretching

If you have fast or difficult parts, slowing the whole thing down might make it easier to analyze. Be sure to use time stretching (which retains pitch but changes speed), not resampling (which alters both).

For a good result, you may need to tweak the time stretching parameters or the algorithm used. For example Ableton Live has different algorithms for drums (better transients), tones and complex material.

7. Use a spectrogram

Instead of using your ears it's sometimes better to use your eyes. If you struggle with identifying note pitches or the number of rhythmic hits, use a visual analyzer.

In a spectrogram (like Sonogram SG-1 here) you may see things like drum hits and melody lines more easily.

A spectrogram visualizes the frequency changes over time, so you might see things like melodies and drum rhythms more easily. Analyzing the picture requires a keen eye though: because most of the sounds have a timbre that spans a lot of ground frequency-wise (i.e. they are not composed of a single frequency component like a sine wave), you won't see a single line but many repeated lines.

A spectrogram may be useful where you need to compare relative pitches a few hits or bars apart. If they occupy the same horizontal line in the graph, they are the same note.

8. Apply your knowledge of music theory and different instruments

If you know at least something about music theory, analyzing songs becomes so much easier. Knowing basic things like keys (circle of fifths), chords, scales, common chord progressions (I - IV - V) etc. will help you immensely. Know the difference between a G sharp and an A flat.

With your musical knowledge you'll be able to "fill in the blanks" without analyzing every single note. You'll recognize some chords and melodies immediately. Transcribing becomes faster.

If you know how to play a specific instrument, you'll be better at analyzing it. Learn about different instruments: how they are usually played, what kind of sound do they produce, what is their range etc. Learning to play more than one instrument is never a bad idea.

Transcribing a song is a skill that improves by doing and practicing (no surprise). If you are a beginner, learn some theory basics and start with a simple song. Study the transcriptions made by others (remember that most of them are wrong, find the errors). Listen, sing along, play.