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A version of this article was originally published in Issue 006 of Vintage King's PLAYBACK magazine – read the full issue online.
Since he moved to the US from Turkey in 2001, two-time GRAMMY-winning songwriter/producer Oak Felder has built a solid career crafting hits for artists like Demi Lovato, Alessia Cara, Kehlani, Chris Brown, Nikki Minaj, Alicia Keys, and Rihanna, to name a few. It’s an impressive discography, and it all began in a small recording studio in Atlanta, Georgia.
Oak tells us, “The studio was in a little hallway behind a tax office, but I surmised that the person who owned the tax office didn't actually do anybody's taxes; maybe it was a front for some other stuff, because nobody was ever in there! [Laughs] It was just a little project studio; I would burn CDs that had beats on them, go out to concerts, and just hand them out to people because concert goers tend to be music lovers. My number would be on the CD, people would listen to the beats – I had watermarks on the beat, so they couldn't actually use them – and then people would be like, ‘I like this beat, is there a way that I can use this?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, just pay me 500 bucks, come to my studio; I'll record it and produce it for you.’ So I did that sort of as a side mission while I was in college.” The side hustle paid off. One of Oak’s demos caught the ear of music industry legend L.A. Reid, and it was off to the races.
Today, Oak talks to us from his hitmaking Los Angeles-based Su Casa Studios, and is joined by Trevor Brown, Zaire Koalo, and Keith “Ten4” Sorrells, members of the production group The Orphanage. Oak is very clear on why The Orphanage was set up and explains, “I've been in the industry long enough to have been in situations that weren't necessarily set up to be a nurturing space for creatives. It's usually set up so that people can sort of exploit or take advantage of an individual's capability for monetary gain. My goal in setting up The Orphanage was to make it so that people could feel safe in a creative environment and be able to have a music career without looking over their shoulders and worrying about whether or not their situation was hospitable to them.
The flipside of that, though, is that if you try to nurture people who don't self-motivate, then you just get somebody who's going to take advantage of the situation. The best thing about these guys is that they are so self-motivated. All of the guys on this call have that person in the back of their head that's like J.K. Simmons in the movie Whiplash – just constantly coming at them and telling them that they need to be better. Everybody on this call has that person right there in the back that's like, ‘What the hell are you doing? You can do better.’ It's about finding the right person who has the mindset to be better individually, and that helps us set a goal of making everybody better as a group.”
What also makes the group better is that each individual has a clearly defined strong suit. Trevor tells us he loves a good riff, “I like to bring riffs to songs – just something that catches your ear right away. That's my favorite thing, and I really enjoy finding it.” Zaire considers his ability to connect the dots and facilitate a room to be his biggest strength, in addition to his ability with drums. Keith reflects wryly, “I don't know if it's a strong suit more than just torturing myself, but I feel like I definitely am really particular about how things sound and come out, especially on the final bounces at the end of the day. I maybe go a little bit too into the details, but at the same time, I just want the artists and writers and everyone to get something out of that day that sounds exactly like how we all heard it. It’s definitely torture, but it's fun.”
Their mentor adds, “I'd say my strong suit is typically being the oldest guy in the room. [Laughs] That's my biggest skill right there! I say that as a joke, but on the other hand, having the experience and going through as many sessions as I've been through, and working with as many people as I've worked with, has given me the perspective to be able to adapt very easily. I'd say in terms of technical skill, my favorite thing to do is vocal arrangements. I could sit and do that for hours and hours and hours, and I have sat and done that for hours and hours and hours.”
With a love for vocal arrangement, Oak quite naturally has a favorite microphone and a go-to vocal chain. He tells us, “I love the Upton 251 microphone, which is sort of an emulation of the Telefunken ELA M 251. It’s one of my favorite pieces of gear that I purchased from Vintage King. It's such a great microphone! People are going to crucify me for saying this, but in a lot of ways it's better than the OG Telefunken 251 in my opinion because it incorporates modern curves in the upper frequency, which I think is really cool.”
His go-to vocal chain begins with the Upton 251, a Neve preamp, and a Warm Audio “LA-2A style compressor.” He elaborates, “Once we go into the box, I've been using this plug-in by a company called Nuro Audio called Xvox Pro, which has de-essers, a compressor, EQ, and some other effects in it. Essentially, it takes all of the plug-ins that you would typically have on a vocal and groups it into one plug-in so that you can then create a preset. So, for example, if I have a preset set up for Demi's voice, I can just pull it up and go from there.
Outside of that plug-in, I'll use the SSL X-Saturator to give the vocal a little bit more grit, and then I'll throw Oeksound’s Soothe over the whole thing, just to clean it up a little bit. I'm sure there are purists who probably think I shouldn't be doing that, but hey man, I’m me! I'm 6’5 and 300 pounds; people can't stop me from doing what I want to do in that regard. [Laughs]”
Zaire adds, “We've used everything from the Neumann U 87 to the TLM 102. We have SM7s, which we use religiously to capture things in the room. Trevor and I also use Rode NT5s on our upright piano, which makes it sound amazing – not necessarily crystal clear, but it gives it a great raw feel. Also, someone was telling me about the Golden Age 251, which they said may be a bit better than the Upton 251, so I'm curious to try it out; that will probably be the next mic we pick up. And I’ve always wanted a Manley mic. I’ve never had one; I think they sound amazing.” Trevor is enthusiastic about the Townsend Labs Sphere LX, a mic modeling system that he loves because, “it's not just modeling mics, it's modeling the axis of the mic; it's modeling how close you're getting to the mic and how far… It's doing so much computing in a microphone, and I think it's really innovative.”
That reminds Oak of another one of his favorite mics – the Slate Digital ML-1. He says, “I use that bad boy religiously. It comes with software that'll allow you to emulate whatever microphone you like, and the best thing about it is that it really is a $5,000 microphone in a $1,000 package – actually, I think it's even cheaper now, if I'm not mistaken. People didn't believe me when I told them that I used that mic to record some of the biggest records in my catalog. It's so flexible and there are so many use cases for it. For instance, recording a lead vocal using the Sony C800 emulator that's in it, and then recording background vocals with the RCA 44 setup, gives you tonal differences and color differences. Shoutout to Steven Slate because I love that microphone!”
Oak gives Keith a shoutout for his preferred vocal chain and says his rough mixes always sound like finals. The vocal chain in question is the BAE 1073D, going into the AudioScape Pultec EQ, and then into the Retro Instruments 176 compressor, which Keith tells us, “I usually smash a lot. [Laughs]”
When it comes to their favorite pieces of gear that they’ve purchased from Vintage King, the list is diverse. Keith says, “The Apogee Symphony I/O changed the game for my room, so that's definitely my favorite. Shoutout to Patrick Carpenter for that!” Oak, having already mentioned the Upton 251, votes for the Apogee Symphony Special Edition as well. He says, “All of my bounces and mixes sound pristine and amazing. Like Keith just said, shoutout to my man Patrick at Vintage King who hooked us up and pointed us to the right stuff – he's such a genius.” For Trevor, it’s his Mellotron, which he says, “is such a specific sound that’s not really useful on most songs, but when it comes in, it's perfect.”
Everyone on the call is a gearhead to varying degrees, and they share how the gear they own feeds the creative process. Keith tells us, “You never absolutely need all of the gear to make a record, but if it's inspiring to you, then it's definitely very important to get it. I think rock as a genre has more gear involved in the making of it. Especially when you're recording live instruments, I think the results are way better when you have something going on before it hits your converter. So for all the instruments, just having something in front of it so that it's getting a little bit of juice in the analog world is really important.”
Trevor adds to that, “I think they’re just toys, and it’s great, especially for people who know what they're doing with these toys. If we're having fun with it, then it makes it feel less like work and more like goofing around, which keeps spirits light. Like Keith said, before it hits the converters, if it's going to inspire greatness, then we get it. So if the vocal is coming in crisp and clear, it’s going to inspire the best vocal performance, and that's going to inspire the best writing of the song.”
The song is clearly king for everyone in the group, and this becomes evident when Oak recalls a moment from a Demi Lovato session they worked on. He tells us, “We were trying to get a really specific tone on the bass, and typically, how you record bass is that you plug it into a DI. But Keith had this really cool idea, inspired by Korn, of putting the bass on the mic so that we could get all of the clanginess, the pick against the strings, etc. It made the most unique sound I've ever recorded in terms of bass, and I thought it was really cool.”
Oak continues, “We all come from such disparate backgrounds and have different influences, so the best part about working with these guys is that you get in the room and Keith will say something like, ‘Hey, you know, Korn did this; we should try the same thing and see if we can make it work for this project.’ Then Trevor and Zaire will have their perspectives, and I think that helps you learn because it gives you a viewpoint that you wouldn't have had otherwise.”
Another aspect of the process they all prioritize is speed and efficiency. When the ideas start flowing, everyone better be ready to capture them. Oak shares one of the ways in which he prepares to do that: “There’s this quote by Basquiat: ‘Art is how we decorate space; music is how we decorate time’. If a painter captures the moment for art on a wall, then a producer captures the moment for music in time, right? For me, one of the best ways to do that is to have two active mics in the room all the time – I have two SM7s set up in my control room – so that I can pick up whatever somebody might have done accidentally and incorporate it into the production. There's a song I did with Demi featuring another artist – I'm not going to mention who the artist is because I don't think they've announced anything yet – but when the artist and Demi met in the room, the artist said that he was a little nervous to meet her. She went, “Awww!” and I happened to pick it up using that SM7 and cut it into the production that we did that day.”
His years of experience have clearly defined what the job of a producer means to him. He tells us, “A producer's job is to be a reflection of the artists that they're working for. We amass all of this technical knowledge as producers to be able to physically put together the idea that the artist is envisioning in their minds. For example, an artist will walk into the room and say, ‘I kind of want it to sound like Def Leppard meets Billie Eilish meets Run-D.M.C.,’ and then we have to technically put together how that sonic is created. It’s good to have capabilities outside of that as a producer, but at its core, a producer's job is to be able to translate the artist's whim into something physically attainable on a sonic level.”
One tool that plays a part in that translation is a good plug-in. When asked to list their three favorite Desert Island Plug-ins, the conversation gets animated. Oak answers immediately, “The Logic EQ, Logic Compressor, and Logic Reverb. If I could have four, then the fourth would be Auto-Tune just because some people on a desert island might be thirsty; they might have been there for years and might not be able to sing as well as they used to… [Laughs] The Logic plug-ins are my salt and pepper, I put them on everything. There was a period when all I could afford were the plug-ins that were in Logic, so I had to figure out how to make it work with that, and to this day, it still remains a very useful set of plug-ins for me.” Zaire concurs, “Oak sort of took my answer, but to piggyback on that, I also use the Logic Distortion and Overdrive; they're so user-friendly. I also have to give a shoutout to Arturia; I feel like every single plug-in from them is golden – from the distortions to the spring reverb to the tape emulator – they work so well and I love them all. The God Particle plug-in by Cradle is also really great.”
Keith keeps it simple – it’s Waves plug-ins all the way for him. He says, “The SSL E-channel is my go-to for pretty much everything; I love the CLA-76 compressor. I've also been using the Waves NLS stuff a lot, trying to spread it across everything just to clip and color stuff as I go.” Trevor picks Omnisphere, AmpliTube 5, Little AlterBoy, and the Logic stock Sample Delay, at which point Oak chimes in with a grin, “Do you guys want to hear a sound engineer-minded dad joke related to that? Here we go… Sample Delay in the Haas!” [Everyone laughs]
The camaraderie and connection between Oak and his protégés are evident as they share ideas, riff off each other’s suggestions, and discuss the things that are important to them in their careers. One such topic is the kind of artist they are drawn to. Trevor says, “I love artists who have vision. If I ask them, ‘What's your favorite color and who did you grow up listening to?’ and they say, “I listen to all kinds of music”...well, that's cool, we've all listened to all kinds of music, but I love it when they're specific. If they say ‘I listen to Tyler, the Creator and my favorite color is blue’, I love that because it inspires us to really build up blue, make blue cool, and we don't have to worry about the other colors.”
Oak is in agreement, “I'm a pessimist, so I'm going to tell you what I hate. Are you guys ready? This is what I hate: when an artist comes in the room and says, ‘I don't know what I want. I'll know it when I hear it.’ A lot of times, we tend to try to empathize and be like, ‘Okay, we’ll try some things, ’ but I'm going to analogize that. Imagine walking into a restaurant, them asking ‘What would you like to eat today?’ and you say, ‘I don't know what I want, but I'll know it when I see it.’ Does that mean I have to bring up the whole menu for you to determine what it is that you want to eat? So I really hate when an artist doesn't have a clear vision for themselves; it turns me off – unless an artist wants to be molded and shaped. But in those situations, I would argue you're not looking to be produced, you're looking to be defined as an artist. And if you are an artist that lacks definition, then you might not necessarily fit the actual definition of being an artist, in my opinion.” Trevor adds, “If they're asking me for what they want in terms of artistry, I'm going to turn them into Weezer every time!” [Laughs]
Once the laughter dies down, Oak touches upon the thing that all producers and songwriters know to be true: “Making a song with a person is such a sacred thing. Think about the song that reminds you of the first time you kissed someone; think about the song that you danced to at your wedding; the song that reminds you of your parents; of playing around with your siblings when you were a kid… We create those. Right now, a song does not exist that will exist later on tonight, after we’ve created it. It's such a sacred process coming up with those things because they're so important to the lives of people, and that means that the artist that you make the song for has to hold that as sacred as you do. So when you look at their artistry, their audience engagement, when you look at how they view doing their shows, when you look at how seriously they take their careers…all of that is in consideration when someone asks, ‘Hey, will you make a song for me?’”
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