{"id":3356,"date":"2020-12-16T08:49:55","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T14:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2020-12-17T08:57:09","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T14:57:09","slug":"solid-state-logic-sets-the-pace-for-prolific-rapper-future-and-atlantas-5-star-production-studios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/solid-state-logic-sets-the-pace-for-prolific-rapper-future-and-atlantas-5-star-production-studios\/","title":{"rendered":"Solid State Logic Sets the Pace for prolific rapper Future and Atlanta\u2019s 5 Star Production Studios"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atlanta, Georgia, December 15, 2020 \u2014 Since springing onto the Atlanta trap scene in 2010, Future has delivered eight solo full-length releases, six collaborative albums plus numerous mixtapes and other projects. At the 5 Star Production Studios complex in Atlanta, the DAW control and automation capabilities of Solid State Logic\u2019s AWS 948 \u03b4elta SuperAnalogueTM<\/sup> console, pure analogue workflow of the XL-Desk and advanced DAW integration of the Nucleus2 controller enable engineers and producers to keep pace with the prolific rapper and others artists as they work at a frenetic pace around the clock.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Futures Engineer ERIC MANCO<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three years ago, Future moved his team into a building that had originally been producer and songwriter Dallas Austin\u2019s DARP facility, which he opened in 1993. \u201cWe took it over and did a whole renovation, top to bottom,\u201d says Eric Manco, Future\u2019s engineer. \u201cIt\u2019s a compound with business rooms, a lobby, entertainment room, a pool table room. It\u2019s like a club. I haven\u2019t been to a studio like it. Future has a suite there and when he\u2019s in town he\u2019s there pretty much 24 hours a day.\u201d Acoustician Ross Alexander, owner of Florida-based Synergistic Services and former chief engineer of Criteria Studios Miami, oversaw the rebuild of the four studios, which all feature SSL consoles.<\/p>\n

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Manco was previously based in Los Angeles, working with Future whenever he came to town. \u201cThen he took me on the road for three years straight. I became part of the team and moved to Atlanta,\u201d he says. The artist and the engineer both won a Grammy Award in 2018 for their work on \u201cKing\u2019s Dead,\u201d a collaboration between Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, Future and James Blake for Marvel\u2019s Black Panther soundtrack.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

FREEBANDZ ARTIST: GUAP TARANTINO recording himself in C room<\/strong><\/p>\n

Through his former colleagues at South Beach Studios in Miami, where he used to work, Manco contacted SSL\u2019s regional sales representative and ordered an AWS 948 \u03b4elta for the A room, an XL-Desk for the B room, and two Nucleus consoles, for the C and D rooms. While rap and hip-hop productions typically require minimal channel counts during the tracking phase, Manco says having the AWS 948 in the A room is invaluable \u2014\u00a0particularly when it comes to mixdown\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s nothing like having a board,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Manco, who trained at Full Sail University in Florida, prefers to work on a compact desk, he says. \u201cMy main problem with using a big board is I don\u2019t want to be running around from one side to the other. But with the AWS I have 48 faders in the space of 24 channels. The fact that I have everything within reach, and I can control 48 channels if I really need to, is insane. You can do a mix in there, sitting down with everything within hand\u2019s reach. Your mix can be done very, very fast, compared to somebody who has to run around a big-ass board.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the AWS 948\u2019s hardware control of Pro Tools and plug-in integration via SSL\u2019s \u03b4elta-Control software that Manco finds most useful during tracking sessions. \u201cHaving the digital control side is really the main reason I got the board. It\u2019s cool to be hands-on with stuff,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m able to track on it and run it as a controller. I\u2019ll have a lot of my stuff set up to be automation ready. I can grab a fader if I want to do some fader rides, or mute or group automation. Even though you can do that in Pro Tools, having the fader in front of you while you\u2019re tracking allows you to drop the beat in a way that you wouldn\u2019t be able to do if you were just drawing it in with a mouse. That\u2019s something that some of the younger engineers need to experience and see why we do it this way.\u201d Plus, he says, \u201cHaving the Bus Compressor built into the board is just great.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the B room, says Manco, the ability to select outboard processing directly from the XL-Desk speeds up the workflow, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to do inserts on your mixes without having to patch out \u2014 you just hit a button \u2014 makes it easier for people to discover the benefits of analog. And the faster you can get this stuff done, the better. That\u2019s exactly what I like about the SSL boards.\u201d<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

DJ ESCO and Artist Young Scooter put finishing touches on a record<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speed is often of the essence when capturing Future in full flow. And while projects may get sent out for mixing, it\u2019s not unusual for Manco to take over as release deadlines draw near. \u201cWe did the High Off Life album earlier this year,\u201d he offers as an example. \u201cWe were changing things up until the day it was coming out, just because of the pace that we move at.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Compatibility between the four rooms, which are all similarly outfitted with SSL consoles, Pro Tools rigs and massive Augspurger main monitors, has become essential to the creative process. \u201cI\u2019m Future\u2019s engineer, but I was also working with DJ Esco, High Off Life\u2019s executive producer. We were putting the album together while another engineer was recording Future in another room. And we\u2019ve got other artists coming in and working in other rooms,\u201d says Manco. Having similar equipment in all four studios, he says, \u201cIt\u2019s cool to have everyone in the same building and be able to go from one room to the next and it sounds like you\u2019re still in the same room.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

5 Star Productions GAMES ROOM\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the release on November 13 of Pluto x Baby Pluto, Future\u2019s first collaborative album with Lil Uzi Vert, the rapper has now racked up 14 top 10 albums on the Billboard charts. Future\u2019s eight previous albums, including High Off Life, released earlier this year in May, went straight in at number one. The video for \u201cLife is Good\u201d featuring Drake, released in January and taken from High Off Life, has been viewed over 1.2 billion times on YouTube and was just nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award. \u201cWe\u2019re having a good year,\u201d says Manco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atlanta, Georgia, December 15, 2020 \u2014 Since springing onto the Atlanta trap scene in 2010, Future has delivered eight solo full-length releases, six collaborative albums plus numerous mixtapes and other projects. At the 5 Star Production Studios complex in Atlanta, the DAW control and automation capabilities of Solid State Logic\u2019s AWS 948 \u03b4elta SuperAnalogueTM console, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[231,715,259,40,714],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-aws-948","tag-nucleus2","tag-solid-state-logic","tag-ssl","tag-xl-desk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/White_console_image.94d363b33e5855ff9a78cd0ce6c3260a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestudiolounge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}