Another guy who worked in Max's studio..

[the beatsmith]

PS: Cheiron & Maratone Nerdsssss 

[cheironlover]

OK then, what were the names of the breath-like shakers heard in baby 1 more time, larger than life, oops i did it again, and shape of my heart?

[JackSnr]

Hi Scott,
Wow, your knowledge of Maratone is fascinating - I will try to restrain myself but...

Can you tell us how Max handled doing vocals (especially for Britney) and how he got those really great sounding choirs after the bridge (eg Baby One More Time) when there were lots of singers singing? What were the harmonies, 3rds? 5ths? was it sung under or over the main melody? How many vocal harmonies did he have?

Also, what was the process by which Max and co selected the songs for the artists (like Britney)? How many songs did they prepare in demo version for her? How did they select which ones to record and which ones to axed. How and how well were the demos of the songs produced?

Lastly, can you tell us more of what Max (and any of the others) was like as a person? After all, you are one of the few (only?) people here to have meet the man in person. What was he like? Any stories? What was the Maratone building actually like inside?

Cheers, Jack

[Scott Martin :)]

Hi Jack, Im afraid there's a misunderstanding. 

I was simply copying and pasting a message from a guy who actually used to work at Maratone. I do have some knowledge about the equipment Max uses for recording, but Ive never actually met him or stepped foot inside his studio (I can only wish!)

Cheers,

Scott.

[OverPop]

First off http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/49113-max-martin.html in case you haven't checked that out, a lot of cool information there including some of the answers to your questions  

Here are 2 vids from the inside of Maratone, maybe you've seen them already..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6fMRvkjZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_kRoMFetyM

Hope I helped.

Now I have a few questions of my own..


Let's talk about one (baby)  
As I've read in some interview, Max "writes" the songs on dictaphone until they're pretty much done, so what I wanna know is what comes after that in that production stage, how He approaches that one?
In one interview with Denniz Pop from the mid 90's, Denniz said that they would usually start with the background... I'm really curious if they (ex Cheiron members) had their own approach towards composing, like some steps they usually followed etc.?

And how they used to choose their sounds, because obviously when you have the right sounds you've made your mixing process a lot easier because everything "fits" already pretty well. Or they just found the ones that go well together and used them over and over 'cause they were too busy and/or lazy to find some new ones?  
(Which I guess would be the explanation for that "famous Cheiron sound")

How they approached writing lyrics?
Because they definitely had pretty strong lyrics, so I wanna know the link between melody (as they said, it's all about the melody, and that's the first thing they start with, a great melody) and the lyrics, because they definitely knew how to choose the perfect words which just "flow" so easily, kind of fluid, and that's probably what made those songs sound the way they did, as others would call it sweet / candy etc (which people seem to love) XD as compared to the songs of a lot of other artists / bands where they're sometimes kind of hard to sing, sound somehow "unnatural" compared how would you pronounce it in regular speech (goin' a little bit to science now   phonetics, vowel height, meter (used in poetry) etc.)

Boy, so many questions haha

Hush.. just stop  


Peace

[OverPop]

OK then, what were the names of the breath-like shakers heard in baby 1 more time, larger than life, oops i did it again, and shape of my heart?

hmm well I always thought it was some breathing sampled, even if it's not, you can maybe try it and see how it goes in the mix if you're into production 

btw one of my favorite Cheiron samples is the one that sounds like some "mwav", kind of like some deep voice, it was on Stronger, Crazy, It's Gonna Be Me, Don't Want You Back, It's Gotta Be You, most noticeable on that intro for Larger Than Life although it's much higher in pitch than in the rest of the songs I've mentioned, really cool sample.
Really wonder where they found or came up with that one 

[JackSnr]

Hi Jack, Im afraid there's a misunderstanding. 

I was simply copying and pasting a message from a guy who actually used to work at Maratone. I do have some knowledge about the equipment Max uses for recording, but Ive never actually met him or stepped foot inside his studio (I can only wish!)

Cheers,

Scott.

Ha Ha... awkward much?  My bad  Wherever did that guy go?

[turnaround]

This is interesting.

This Johan is probably Johann Schuster Shellback.

It's all taken from this thread here: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/49113-max-martin-5.html

Took a while till we realised this. 

[andrea]

No, he's Johan Brorson, the producer behind stand by me (darin) and siberia (backstreet boys)!

[turnaround]

Ah, thanks for clearing this up. 

[Joshua]

Here are 2 vids from the inside of Maratone, maybe you've seen them already..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6fMRvkjZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_kRoMFetyM

WOW... I hadn't seen these old vids before, this has totally made my day/week/month.

EDIT: Anyone know who the guy with the red and black striped top is at 0:15 seconds in the second YouTube video? I thought it might be Max, but it doesn't quite look like him.

[Axel]

good stuff, thanks for sharing these. Was great to watch

[Linda]

Here are 2 vids from the inside of Maratone, maybe you've seen them already..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ6fMRvkjZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_kRoMFetyM

WOW... I hadn't seen these old vids before, this has totally made my day/week/month.

EDIT: Anyone know who the guy with the red and black striped top is at 0:15 seconds in the second YouTube video? I thought it might be Max, but it doesn't quite look like him.

They called him Tobias

[turnaround]

Tobias Karlsson, who discovered Five Stars Nation?

[Joshua]

Tobias Karlsson, who discovered Five Stars Nation?

Ah yep, it must be... looks like him! Thanks for that.

http://www.albionamps.com/artists-detail.aspx?Tab=9