I just read this in an email from Michael Laskow the CEO of TAXI and thought it was really good.
Michael runs TAXI at http://www.taxi.com
I'm totally re-posting this without permission, so please understand that all rights are reserved by Michael Laskow and TAXI, and NOT me. Thanks.

*****************
I don't write to you about music and production often enough. I'll try to do that with a little more regularity in the future.

My wife and I went to a fundraising banquet for a charity we donate to every year. Singer/songwriter Colbie Caillat was scheduled to perform, but she didn't show up because she had a throat infection. As we were leaving they were giving away some of Colbie's CD, Coco, that came out last year.

I listened to it in my car. I cranked it up to eleven and let it rip. I was pleasantly surprised. The further I got into it, the more I missed working in the studio. It's been a long time since I've produced or engineered.

When somebody's record makes me regret that I'm not still working in cold, dark rooms till all hours of the night, it must be good. I quietly wished I had made Colbie's record as I listened.

When I heard the second track, I realized that there was a lesson to be learned from this album. It was an exercise in sounding current. Currency, or the lack thereof is something we hear a lot at the TAXI office. There are many artists who write great songs, but the finished product sounds somewhat dated. Colbie's record sounds fresh and modern.

Teaching somebody how to sound current is difficult at best. The production can sound great, but still dated. So, what makes Colbie's music sound modern and current? Let's examine her song, The Little Things and figure it out together.

It's a pretty simple song, but it truly is the little things that make it sound hip and current.

The very first thing that popped out for me was the bass sound. It's got a lot of low end, and it almost sounds muted or truncated. It's unusual. Not what I'd call a classically great bass sound, but it works really well with this track. And that's what matters most. The CD is in my car, and I'm too lazy to go get it right now, but I'd bet that it's a Moog bass on the record.

The acoustic guitar in the intro (and carries on throughout the song) is clear and sweet, but doesn't have a lot of top end on it. It's not deficient on the top, but the register it's played in and the tonal quality add up to the right sound for the track. Often times the engineer's job isn't to make each individual instrument sound perfect by itself so much as it is to make it sound right for the overall texture of the song.

Also notice the snare drum. It's dry and it sounds like the snares are very loose. There's quite a bit of rattle, but the snares sound as though they are truncated or gated. There's a texture on them that makes me think that they might have triggered some sort of grainy beads or dried peas in a gourd-like shaker and added them to the snare's overall sound. I'll have to call Colbie's very talented producer/engineer Mikal Blue to find out for sure.

Colbie's voice is smoky... nearly monotone in the verse, and that clearly adds to the mystique of the track. Notice the subtle electric piano pads under the vocal. Unless you look for it, you'd hardly notice it's there. But it adds texture and supports the melody nicely.

It's not until Colbie gets into the second half of the verse that she reaches for higher vocal intervals that add some life and import to the words she's singing. Going to those higher notes builds interest and telegraphs the chorus which is about to come.

You'll also notice that Colbie's voice sounds like it was recorded fairly close to the microphone and the compressor on it is used almost to the point of being an effect. It's squashed just enough, but not enough to become a distraction. Add up the smokiness, the utter lack of reverb, the proximity of her mouth to the microphone and the key she's singing in, and you get one more subtle combination of textures that makes it sound cool and hip.

The most obvious thing that makes this song sound modern is clearly the beat. Colbie and/or her producer have taken what most people might consider a very straight-ahead singer-songwriter acoustic song and added a light hip-hop beat to it. That's the kind of thing that takes real vision and ultimately takes this song to a whole other level. It's modern sounding!

When Colbie heads into the pre-chorus, she changes up her vocal phrasing to add yet one more layer of interest. She goes to a syncopated vocal rhythm, emphasizing the upbeats with harmonies and adds some really cool melodic intervals that punctuate her most important words. Also look for the added texture that the Hammand B3 adds very subtly in the pre-chorus.

And for the big payoff in the chorus, Colbie brilliantly goes into vocal accents that fall on the downbeats to completely flip things around and "ground" it, as my colleague Robin Frederick would say. Also notice how the B3 and the background vocals go into nice legato pads to give the chorus a completely different feel from the verse and pre-chorus.

When you put it all together, Ms. Caillat's song is a great example of how you can take a song that's not profoundly deep or lyrically amazing, but still very much rises to the occasion mostly because of the great melody and the cool beat. We humans respond very viscerally to melody and beat. Clearly, Colbie and her producer Mikal Blue understand that and capitalize on it from the first note.

There's so much more I could write about this song, but I'm running out of real estate. Thanks for letting me share a little of my love for great creativity. I hope you listen to Colbie's song and use it as a guide to becoming more modern if that's what you are seeking.

Talk to you soon,
Michael