Tritonal on what he would change about Piercing the Quiet: “I can hear the mistakes”

Producer and composer Dave Reed – one half of electronic music duo, Tritonal – reflects on the evolution of Tritonal’s production and his thoughts on their early work, why he thinks Until You Were Gone is still Tritonal’s most listened to song, his favourite-ever track, and shares his unorthodox production techniques.

Tritonal are known for their electronic music; what was it about the genre that first captivated you?

I gravitated towards electronic music because of the feeling it gave me. That being said, I appreciate rock, R&B and rap and all that stuff as well. I was always inclined to like any piece of work that had some sort of emotional movement, including orchestral stuff. 

Electronic music seemed to resonate with me because I felt like, especially with trance and techno, it was all about the melodic movements and how it made you feel. This spawned me to respond to the idea and think, ‘How do I make this incredible stuff?’ Like Daft Punk’s Around The World, like Ace of Base, going back into the old stuff, like Sasha & John Digweed, Armin van Buuren, and Tiesto. The spark was just there when I listened to that stuff.

Did you ever dabble in any other genres?

It does translate into other productions that I do, because I don't just make electronic music. Now, I'm trying to expand myself as a producer. If you're a producer and you want to expand, don't pigeonhole yourself within any one genre; it's good to learn and explore how to produce pop, how to mic up a drumset, how to produce rock, how to get into understanding the 808s and the levels within a rap record or an R&B record. 

It's an open world to learning and knowledge. Electronic music was the intro for me as a producer and I'm still making electronic music now, but I have definitely ventured into other categories to try to learn some new things. It's been an adventure as a producer trying to learn from different genres, cross pollinating them all and taking what you love and transpiling them into records that you want to create.

In May 2011, Tritonal released their debut album, Piercing the Quiet. Looking back at the album, can you see how your production style has developed, and is there anything that you would do differently now?

From a producer standpoint, from Piercing the Quiet, we were entering into this industry at that time, and there was so much to learn. We knew that there was still so much to learn – we could never call any one of the productions we were doing complete. It always felt that there was some sort of magic missing. It took time for us to understand that as producers. 

When I look back at that album, I see that album as a catalogue of the life that I was having then as a producer. When I listen to it, I can hear the mistakes, I can hear the issues, I can hear all sorts of sonic mixes that are incorrect. But people listen to it and go, ‘Wow! This record changed my life,’ and you change your perspective a bit. I value that because it's like, ‘Well, this album did something for people, and they liked it’. 

But I'm over here like, ‘Wow, that was not written very well,’ or, ‘That could have been better; that was poorly mixed in,’ and stuff. So yeah, I look back at the Piercing the Quiet album and there's so much growth that has happened since, all the way to now to the newer works.

Have the fans been with you since the beginning, regardless of any changes to your production style?

I'm sure that there are still fans from then, all the way to now that have felt that growth. Maybe they've not liked it, but also they kind of understand that it's a journey that we're actively living, and as a producer, actively learning. I want to apply these new skills to new records and these new ideas to new things, and always try to be different. I don't want to paint the same painting each time. 

One of the things I've noticed within certain trance and dance music is that there is a redundancy of things. But that's kind of normal – that's just how it is. But it's always good to change things up with different types of melodies and movements and stuff. It's definitely been such a growing experience looking back at that album, all the way to the Coalesce album – it's so different.

What advice would you give to your younger self on music production?

Looking back, if I could tell myself anything, I would tell myself, ‘It's okay. It's fine. This is a journey that I need to grow as a producer – understanding things’. Nobody can learn this stuff overnight. If you want to go out and be a lawyer, you have to go to law school, and you're going to have failures, right? I'm not saying Piercing the Quiet was a failure – what I'm saying is that it was a reminder of where I've come from, as a producer. 

I'm sure I'll look back on what I'm working on now as a reminder of how I’ve grown; I continue to learn and grow every day. There is no magic switch where you're like, ‘I've got it all correct’. You have to call it and decide when it's done to be like, ‘This record is cooked, it is finished’. But internally, maybe it's not…but I can learn from that, and in the next record, I will apply those new failures and aspects.

Have you ever been tempted to go back and re-edit or change anything on a published track?

That's a good question. We worked with Christina Soto who did Piercing the Quiet, which was one of the standout records from that album. If there's any song within that album that I would go back to, it would be that record – bringing it back, revitalising it and giving it a fresh new look. It's almost paying homage to the people that really enjoyed it. 

As a producer, when you're sitting in and getting fatigued – listening to the records over and over again – you start to not appreciate your own work, and that's normal because you're second guessing yourself and you're thinking, ‘This isn't good enough’. 

But then when you hear other people's critiques and you know how it affects them, it gives you this fuel to wonder and be like, ‘Man, maybe I should go back and get that vocal, that melody, and take everything that I've learned over the last 15 years, and make something special with this, because maybe, just maybe, they'll love this’.

Spotify shows that 2015’s Until You Were Gone with The Chainsmokers and Emily Warren is Tritonal’s most listened to track; What is it about this track that resonates with people so much to this day?

Honestly, Emily Warren knocked out the vocals on that. And the message on it was really fun. Working with The Chainsmokers and Alex Andrew was really fun as well – we did a music video too. It was such a crazy experience. And not only that, The Chainsmokers at the time, and even now, they're hot items, so being able to work with them and being able to put that record together alongside them did something for us as a brand too. 

Like I said, we're always learning, we're always trying to create new ideas and make things fun. So with that record, at least at the time that it was produced, these big two, three chord stabs and big drops were very welcomed in the dance music community.

The melody and the movement of it hit the mark just right for us. The way that that record streams and plays out at live shows to this day still goes off. It's really cool to have that perspective and look back on it. There were times when, with any production, I had my doubts, but to see the numbers, to see how people have resonated with it and to see how well that record has done over the years, is refreshing to look back on. 

It's a reminder that you did something that was decent work, and it worked out. You can take it and apply it to new endeavours and take from the vocal, take from the lyrics and from the composition overall and apply it to a formula for something you want to work on now. It was a great privilege to work with The Chainsmokers.

What's your personal favourite track that you've ever made?

As a producer, my personal favourite track has to be Out Of The Dark. That record is on our Coalesce album, and as I was working on it, the vocalist was doing something to me because she sang something that meant so much. When things were heavy and COVID was going on, and all these things were happening, I really resonated with her vocal as I was working on it. 

There's so much passion, drive and emotion that I was feeling, and that's one of the things that really set that record aside for me, because I was really hearing her message in that vocal and basically her saying, ‘It's okay, it's alright’. So to have that feeling while you're working on it, and then on top of it, your fan base enjoying that record, just does something, and it was a little switch in me. 

I do feel something – even today – when we play it; there's still that message that says, ‘It's fine, You're going to struggle, and it's okay and that's just normal’. I know that people resonate with that and it's nice to know that I'm not alone, and they're not alone. We're all going through something. That vocal really captures that and puts that in the light a little bit.

Is there any new Tritonal music on the horizon…?

There's been a lot of Praana music and our Praana alias has taken a lot of light lately because we've done a lot of work on that. The Tritonal cycle is coming up and I'm already in my studio right now working on a newer record. It's nice because over the years I have been able to listen and digest so much music from different genres, and listen to our own stuff as well as other amazing, incredibly talented artists that are coming up. I’ve been inspired and have been thinking about how I want to direct the Tritonal sound, and what is going to be a great way to push that sound. 

To actually sit down and start looking into different styles of sound design and pushing myself as a producer is refreshing to sit down and do. So there's definitely some more stuff coming on the horizon for Tritonal. I'm at a point right now with the project that I'm working on, where I'm still figuring out the direction, which is exciting because I don't know where it's gonna land.

You regularly share music production tips online and you have recorded and released educational music production courses to teach aspiring music producers the techniques they use to create their music. When it comes to plugins, Waves plugins seem to be a constant on your tracks: L3 is the final limiter on many Tritonal singles; H-Delay is your go-to tape delay plugin, and SSL G-Master is the first on your master chain on most records. What is it that keeps you returning to these three in particular?

I’m always changing them around, but those come to mind because I noticed that when I'm working through the beginnings of a song, the SSL G-Master is great. It's something that works really well. When I was introduced to it, funnily enough by Super8 & Tab a long time ago, I didn't know this plugin existed because it's buried in the millions of plugins within the Waves catalogue. 

So when we got to working with it, I loved the sound, I liked the control that it had. It's one of those things where on the first day of a production, I will immediately go grab it and slap it on a bus or a master or something to give a meaningful idea on the shape that I'm working with.

And the H-Delay still to this day, is incredible. It has a great Tape feature that can decay the output delay on a vocal, and just does it well. One of the ones that we used this past week, because we were recording a vocal, was CLA Vocals, which is perfect when you're recording vocals and trying to get something done quickly. Something we do say is, ‘If it's good, it's good. If there's no need for an improvement, there's no need’. 

Sometimes that CLA vocal just does it – it's there, you've got the basic compression done and it's met your needs for that particular piece of the vocal and you can move on. There are a handful of plugins from Waves, like Clarity, which are absolutely amazing. I've had a chance to get my head around it and get used to it. It's definitely cleaned up so much stuff as well.

What is it that keeps you coming back to the L3 multiband peak limiter plugin?

Like many limiters out there, the L3 is great for the master chain. But I tend to use the L3 mainly on my buses, so when I'm doing drums, or maybe a bass, like if I want to have the bass and kick go to the same bus. I like to have my low end go to one bus before it hits my premix into my master, and the L3 is there to slightly touch it. 

That can also help to give it a bit more transparency, and then I can bring that down just a bit to keep that. It does a good job, especially with not giving the kick top a little distortion at the same time. I'm able to push it without the transparency being degraded, if you will.

Are you using any Waves plugins in unusual ways?

Oh, my God, Yeah! So there's the H-Reverb. I would put that on – and maybe other producers are doing this too – but I would put it on a send, then I would sidechain it to a drum or a vocal and then would automate the decay of the H-Reverb to really emphasise a tail of certain things. For instance, over one of our records, Everything Is Beautiful, I did use it on our vocal bus to sidechain. 

But I wasn't side chaining with the normal compressor, I was simply automating the decay up and down, so I would have the decay sharply come up and then down, just to show the vocal releasing. It's probably not the most orthodox way to use it, but it was definitely a lot of fun because it gave me a sound and that's what I liked. I'm gonna do things that not everyone may agree with, but I do things to give me a sound that I want. 

I can always come back and polish it and make it a little bit better – freeze it, clean it up, and then it's there. Some people might say, ‘Well why don't you take a compressor and just sidechain it to the compressor?’ Well, that's okay; You can do it that way. I'm doing it a different way. That's how I do it!

Has a Waves plugin ever saved a project for you?

You know what? RVox has been something that's helped me with certain things, like radio shows. It’s incredible for vocals as well. There was this vocal, but it was incredibly bad how it was produced, and I was going from plugin to plugin trying to fix it. 

I remembered RVox and I put it on there and played with it for maybe 10, 20 minutes. I took a break, came back and I'm like, ‘This is magic’. It's like the vocal was recorded completely differently and it just completely changed everything for me. I still, to this day, use RVox on so much stuff.