nelly furtado
June 13th, 2006 by 
vcmc
Ok, so a co-worker got an advance copy of the Nelly Furtado cd that comes out…a week from today, it looks like. I can’t help but love the single getting radio play - it’s just, well, catchy as hell.
I listened to the rest of the album, though, and nothing really stuck out like the single, except a production/mastering decision that was made. It’s hard to differentiate at this point because of the current trend in hip-hop (and now some poppier, top 40 stuff as well) to use drums/percussion/samples, particularly the bass drum, that are distorted - usually low-order, just grungy distortion in the midbass/lower midrange region.
Anyway, this style is in use throughout the album to various extents. One track in particular, though, “Say It Right”, takes the effect to a bit of an extreme. At first I thought the mastering engineer clipped the converters for peak control (a common practice for certain types of music, though controversial among mastering engineers), fairly heavily in this instance, creating less of the dirty kick distortion and more of a harsh, digital clipping sound. Very unpleasant, to say the least.
But further examination in an audio editor indicates the clipping has taken place well below the 0dbfs - -0.5dbfs region where peak limiting/control usually would be, which makes me think it’s a production decision.
For the sake of anybody who likes to listen to music that’s not extremely harsh and fatiguing, I hope not.
Posted in mastering, production | 
January 16th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I’ve come into this quite late - bought this album from a “cut price music” rack at a petrol station. At first I thought I must have bought a really poorly ripped off pirate CD, but further checking around the ‘net has brought to light that yes, this is the way the album was produced.
FWIW, I thought it was a problem with my iPod to start with, or perhaps with the MP3/AAC encoder in iTunes.
But no, it’s a problem with the recording. I’m quite upset by it, but I’ve already taken the bait, and the songs that I like are worth more to me than the pain caused by the badly produced audio elsewhere on the album.
I’ll still give this album a negative review on Amazon though, for what it’s worth.
March 15th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I really liked this song the first couple of times I heard it on the radio. I assumed that the distortion was just poor reception so I bought the song from itunes. I was really disappointed to find that the distortion was present on that version also. Does anyone know if there is a version of the song that does not use bass distortion? It really takes away from a great tune…..
May 9th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I came across this page because I’d googled for ‘Nelly Say It Right distortion’ as it was driving me mad!
Why have they done this? It really does ruin an otherwise good track.
May 24th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I heard “Say it Right” on the radio last weekend, and got the impression that they were playing a radio edit that had less distortion. Has anybody else heard a version with less distortion or was the radio I was listening on so bad that I just didn’t notice it? Seriously though, why do this on the production album - it sounds like ass.
June 28th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I thought it was a bad track on the CD so I exchanged my CD for another one. But it was till the same. I then used pop & click removal (tool for cleaning up records) to smooth out the distortion. Now it’s much more acceptable - don’t have to worry about blowing the tweeters on the loudspeakers.
July 17th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Well me too found this page googling for nelly furtado kick distorted. I’m into producing myself and while despite of it all I still like the song, the distortion in Say it Right is of a type that should be ‘not done’. It sounds as if it was mixed on some sort of digital console where the kick is really really way in the red! It distracts. Fact that some other people are making remarks about it prooves the point of it being somewhat a bad thing.
Anyway, I’ll live
July 24th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I had high expectations when I bought the CD, especially for ‘Say It Right’. Given its production, I doubt I’ll play it at all. At the moment I admit I’m a little mad and thinking of using it as a drinks coaster… I googled ‘nelly furtado’ with various references to distortion or poor quality but this is the only hit I found, which I find worrying. Wish I could return it.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Well, what I had feared is true. I love music, but not distorted music. I actually love “Say It Right” but thank goodness I found this website before I purchased the CD. I, too, had thought that something was wrong with the radio station that was playing it and then I heard it from a friend and they also thought something was wrong with their stereo. I brought the CD home and put it on my system and I was so badly disappointed. I googled “say it right distorted” and found this. Well, they lost a CD sale over this one. I love the song, but I just cannot tolerate badly recorded distorted music. How sad to ruin such a good song that I’m sure sounded so good in the studio before they ruined it.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I completely agree. I’m a professional recording engineer, and one who is quite familiar with Timbaland’s production style. He definitely embraces some outside techniques and sounds (especially with Missy Elliot) but ‘Say It Right’… I’m not sure that distortion was a production call. It sounds like a mistake. The distortion is clipping distortion, which was likely pre-mastering. I really wish it wasn’t so distorted. Like previously mentioned, its distracting from an otherwise great song.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am
I too noticed this distortion immediately. It sadly turns out it’s either Timbaland himself or his trusted engineer(s) who leave the distortion. Why? Because the recently leaked Madonna album has this distortion on at least 2 songs: Devil Wouldn’t Recognize You and Voices. Pathetic and disgraceful. Timbaland is just an egoistical moron sometimes. The distortion on Voices clearly shows it was left distorted in the mixdown during production.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:38 am
I have now edited the Wikipedia page for Madonna’s Hard Candy album to mention this practice of bass distortion from Timbaland and co. Let’s make this a topic of discussion among the public.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:25 am
Today I heard Madonnas new album Hard Candy and I was extremely disappointed. Thank god I heard it before buying it.
Just as with Nelly Furtados Say It Right, Timbaland has been there and completely destroyed a great album. Not to mention the last and in my opinion the best melody on the album.
The bass on the track Voices is so distorted that my ears bleed. How can a producer that mutilate music like that be one of the most popular, and why do the artists accept it?
I didn’t buy Nelly Furtados album and I will definitely not buy Madonnas.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I emailed iTunes to complain and they gave me a song credit. Still love the song though!
September 6th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
So I’m not going mad then. 3 copies of this from various sources (inc a rip from the Album) and all heavily distorted on the kick. What a terrible shame to ruin an otherwise good song. Glad to have found the site!
January 15th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Six months since my original post and the song just appeared in shuffle on iTunes so I’ve had another critical listen through some nice-ish headphones. I’m wondering now if there is some sort of real reason behind this… any or all of the following:
a) the story of the songs creation describes it as a late-night jam that just happened to produce a million selling single (love that!) - so maybe to keep the original vibe they had to put up with keeping the scratchy sounds that they came up with at the time
b) the song has incredible DEPTH to it, like it is breathing, with lots of ghosts too. Perhaps to create that space, the relative level of the synths and the kick HAS to push it to that clipping level to allow the space to exist?
c) it was mastered like this so as to push past the natural compression of a radio signal and thus further enhance the effect described in point b)
But doubt we’ll ever know the truth, right?! They might even not know what we’re talking about! Maybe Timbaland has the Brian Wilson thing of not hearing certain frequencies! Maybe just all the people involved in the decision making process of the record do too!