Teardrop/Massive Attack (Circuit Rhythm Version)

This week’s track is the ever wonderful ‘Teardrop’ by Massive Attack. Time to light a few candles, run a hot bath and get ready to chill out…..

I first attempted a version of this a couple of years ago in Logic after seeing the excellent breakdown by ‪@GyuBeats‬ . See his video here;
   • MASSIVE ATTACK - Teardrop - How Was It Mad...  

Try as I might I still haven’t perfected this, but I thought it would be fun to do a ‘proper’ version using the Novation Circuit Rhythm. I’ve chopped and loaded as many phrases from the accappella version of the track as I could fit in the sample memory of the Rhythm. I think the Liz Fraser vocal is what makes 'Teardrop' so special. You can find the vocal track here (not sure how ‘official’ as it claims to be though)…
   • Massive Attack - Teardrop Official Acapell...  

Everything you hear was programmed into the Circuit Rhythm and played live without any extra effects or synths.

I hope you enjoy my recreation (and on a Circuit Rhythm for a change). Check back soon for more tunes.

More details for synth nerds.

As ever the challenge of fitting this whole track into any of the Circuit machines is polyphony and pattern recording space. My ultimate cheat for this track was to forgoe trying to play the piano part as a MIDI sequence (I was going to get round the polyphony by splitting it into an upper and lower monophonic line on a Piano track each. Instead I played all 15 piano chords on Arturia’s Piano softsynth and sampled them separately. I then triggered each chord when required at the right point in the song! This left me with a whole track for sound effects (vinyl crackle, and that strange ‘noise’ that starts the song that the band deny they know where it came from – the latter is the only sample [apart from vocals] I lifted from the original instrumentation.).

The vocal was chopped into phrases and triggered at the correct time (takes a bit of trial and error to get them just right). For some I needed to place the start of the phrase using the micro-steps to get them as close as possible. I didn’t have sample space for the 2nd verse ….I did think of adding the Circuit Tracks just to get the benefit of another machine’s worth of sample space but I thought it neater to fit it all into one groovebox!

The bass is played on a distorted 808 bass sample, the ‘ostinato’ pattern is played on an excellent free hammered dulcimer sample by Kevin Kemp (designed for the fantastic soft sampler, Decent Sampler). I tried various harpsichords but couldn’t get any of them to sound decent. Link for the dulcimer is here (needs you to setup a free account),
https://www.pianobook.co.uk/packs/lit...

The ‘choir’ is a sample from the Arturia Mellotron emulation softsynth. The drums and other various ‘beeps’ and ‘reverse piano swell’ sounds I found in free sample libraries online. I’d recommend you check out Freesound in particular as it is a complete treasure trove of samples…hours of fun and a credit to the community who upload sounds there.
https://freesound.org/

I’ve been listening to the track carefully for a while so had a short list of the sounds I needed to finish the projects. It’s the background minor effects that get you just that little bit nearer to a finished sounding tracks – the ‘icing on the cake’ so to speak.

I knew it was time to leave the track alone when I found myself editing ‘crackles’ on the vinyl sample to get them in time with the ruhythm…….madness.

TRACKS
76BPM
1- '808' Bass sample bassline (note mode)
2- 'Hammered dulcimer' playing ostinato repeating sequence (note mode)
3- sampled Arturia Piano chords (played as 'one shot samples x15)
4- sampled Liz Fraser phrases (one shots)
5- Bass drum sample
6- Hihat and rimshot pattern
7- sampled Arturia Mellotron chord (played in note mode)
8 - vinyl crackle loop and 'chgaaaa' (!) sample from OG track....

The end result is far from an exact replica but I’m happy that it captures some of the essence of the original. I think it gets close enough that I’m happy for now but I’ll probably listen to it again in a few weeks and decide it all needs doing again.

Let me know if any questions in the comments and thank you once again for watching.
Stay tuned for more tracks soon!