The Icelandic composer Olafur Arnalds talks about his song “The Bottom Line” how he composed it and which tools he used in his Pro Tools session. As an inspiration he started with a melodic pattern on a kind of muted upright piano, which sounds very minimalistic with a few changes to it. It’s a quite simple chord structure. He thought a lot about the sound of the piano, which became a synth sound later on. As a light background he added 2 or 3 voices of string arrangement with viola and cello. In this process he quite likes to be able to visually see the midi notes, because you can see how the music grows. What you can also see is the dynamic. This was basically the arrangement and all the strings got recorded then in the studio.
As a recording technique for the string quartet, he used two AKG C12a microphones in medium distance to the strings as a stereo pair room mic which is mostly represented in the recording. There is also a pair of ribbon mics arranged in a blumlein technique which means that two figure-8 microphones are set up in a 90-degree angle to form a stereo image for a realistic field. Also, there are of course close mics for each instrument. He created a combination of the different microphones and also animated changes throughout the song.
As a reverb he uses a real plate reverb where metal plate in it vibrates and the sound comes back out as a reverb. He mixes this together with a digital reverb.
He says that you can’t finish an arrangement with just the samples. You have to know how the strings are playing, what articulations, dynamics and so on. He spent two days just on the string recording, including the rehearsing. They talked about a lot and experimented with a lot of different takes. That’s why it sounds so unique in my opinion in the end. When the song gets intense there are seven strings playing at the same time, but he faked this by recording the quartet twice. What he did is that left the microphones at the same position and repositioned the players as if they were new instruments.
As a textural background he uses a Korg synthesizer as an arpeggiator. A kick drum is side chaining with this organ like sound.
He spent 5 days mixing the song. His EQing is very precise or “embarrassing” how he calls it. He even animates the EQ throughout the song. He gets a very airy and transparent string sounds by removing all the bad resonances that occur.
Why he doesn’t use the sampled string quartet? If you compare a single sample with a real recorded instrument you probably are not able to say which one is which. The main difference is that they don’t feel the same. There is a layer that we don’t really can describe, its emotion, playing with intention and delivering a message with it. The samples are not doing that, they just play the notes you input.
