{"id":400296,"date":"2019-12-29T18:01:38","date_gmt":"2019-12-29T17:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/?p=400296"},"modified":"2019-12-23T11:13:01","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T10:13:01","slug":"hit-the-tone-michael-kiwanuka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomann.de\/blog\/en\/gear\/hit-the-tone-michael-kiwanuka\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit the Tone! Michael Kiwanuka"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ll help you sound as cool (or close to as cool) as Michael Kiwanuka<\/h3>\n

You mean the guy who revitalised soul music?<\/h3>\n

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Exactly. The kid who jumped into the limelight as a new kind of Terry Callier<\/strong><\/a> (a perfect illustration of this comparison is his song “Home Again<\/strong><\/a>“) recorded his second album after Kanye West<\/strong> blew his mind and motivated him to come up with the album Love & Hate<\/strong><\/em> (2016, Polydor). This release showed us a giant Kiwanuka, emerging from the humble beginnings of his debut and embracing new magnificent directions.<\/em> Basically, this Londoner<\/strong> knows what he’s doing. In this new stage, accompanied by the great producer Danger Mouse<\/strong>, Kiwanuka brings together giants the size of Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield<\/strong> or even Isaac Hayes<\/strong>. Their proposal goes through soul (from Stax<\/strong> to Deep Soul<\/strong>), gospel, folk, funk<\/strong> or psychedelia<\/strong> without forgetting that we’re reaching the second decade of the 21st century<\/strong>. In Kiwanuka<\/strong><\/em> (2019, Polydor), his third album, the Brit adds to his tandem with Danger Mouse the figure of producer Inflo <\/strong>to confirm what he showed us in Love & Hate<\/em>: a brilliant soul, simultaneously modern<\/strong> and classic<\/strong>, appealing in unison to the hips, heart and brain. Not an easy task. In this article we will try to direct you in how to record with a certain “old sound”, a certain vintage tone. Come on, let’s go!<\/p>\n

What we mean when we talk about vintage<\/em><\/h3>\n
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Do us a favour and listen to the song above<\/strong>, “Solid Ground<\/strong>“… See? That’s what we’re talking about. How can you get that sound? With the arrival of Danger Mouse into his life, Kiwanuka added some elements to his usual accompaniment, which rarely went much further than an acoustic guitar<\/strong>. One of these elements was a Prophet 5 synthesizer<\/strong><\/a> made in the late ’70s<\/strong>. This is what he said himself: “It’s a sound that dozens of musicians have used, but it’s new to me and it’s beautiful”. We are talking about a synthesizer so legendary<\/strong> that it even has its own tribute website<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Another staple in Michael Kiwanuka’s lineup since that encounter is the use of vintage guitars<\/strong>, such as the Fender Stratocaster<\/strong><\/a>, one of the oldest guitars in history and yet still used by countless artists.<\/p>\n

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Wait, wait, you’ll see where we’re going with this. Danger Mouse was crowned a genius<\/strong> when he decided to mix Jay-Z<\/strong>\u00a0music<\/strong> with Beatles samples<\/strong>. That mix of tradition and avant-garde<\/strong> allowed him to crown himself as the king when it came to dreaming up music that sounded like a pure<\/strong> 21st century<\/strong> but with an old flavour.<\/strong> At the time of elaborating this sonorous miracle, the producer used samplers<\/strong> like the ones below:<\/p>\n\n\t\t