The Hit Configuration of Holland-Dozier-Holland

0:38 What's good, everybody?Welcome back to love music more.I am Scoobert Doobert, and today I want to talk about one of my mentors and favorite songwriters of all time, Lamont Dozier and Holland Dozier Holland.

1:09 So I've always gravitated towards Motown, not just because the music is incredible.I listen to it all the time.But also because I think it represents something really powerful in music, which is music isa factory or music as a very like working class, get the thing done kind of energy thatI find really freeing and the results are obvious, right?

1:34 I mean, Holland Dozier Holland, they have the most number one hits in all of human history.And there's a reason because they made a lot of music and they made a lot of great music.So I want to zoom out to like what even is Motown?And I love that we have this genre that is around a record label, an independent record label.One of the most successful black owned businesses in US history and Berry Gordy made it happen.

1:56 Founded Motown in Detroit in 1959.And it's a special thing where you're not just putting together musicians, you're notjust funding records, you're putting together a system.And of course, it comes out of Motown, right?It takes that car automation and manufacturing kind of idea and applies it to music, butit doesn't lose the soul.

2:21 And that's the most important part is I see this kind of hit factory idea still very muchalive in the music industry, but I think it's become overly mechanized or it's become athing where you're kind of putting together random parts.You have these songwriter camps, these boot camps, you try to make 100 songs of the 100different configurations and see what sticks.

2:41 I think there was a magic to what Motown was doing because it found synergies.It found the groups of people that really work together.And Holland-Dozier-Holland I think is the ultimate example of if you can put together a system,put together a spine, and then put together a team, a really high performing team, you canmake incredible things happen.

3:03 And I also love stories of business people like this that kind of try a bunch of things,like Berry went from a boxing, he was a record store owner to assembly line work servedin the US Army.And all of that contributes to the systems oriented kind of approach to music.But he got music, like he was a songwriter too, like he wasn't just a suit kind of energy,

3:28 but it took the good parts, I guess, of industrial business applied it to music without losingthe soul.And you know, took soul music and made it like still to this day, I hear these songs everywhereand it comes out of talent spotting, quality control, discipline, packaging, creatingthe environment.And also having that attention to detail of like public image and choreography.

3:57 But I don't just want to talk about Gordy.I'm talking about Gordy to get to the point of what I want to talk about, which is oneof my favorite people, rest in peace, Lamont Dozier.And how the energy of the melody man, the guy that was able to work with whatever singer.And that was one of my favorite things to hear his stories is not every vocalist thathe worked with, with Motown had the same vocal range.

4:26 And it would frustrate him because he hears these beautiful melodies in his head.And he'd say, okay, I'm stuck between the five notes, make it work, but make it workhe did.And the same thing with how he was always kind of struggling with simplicity but interestwhere he's trying to distill these songs, have immediate hooks, simpler song structures.

4:51 But then think about like, okay, how do I keep the interest, how do I keep this vibe?One of the best examples by the Supremes is I hear a symphony.And he would always bring that up of, he didn't know what to do next or the next thingto write, so they just did key changes.And I love it because it's a simplification of a big idea of, you have a simple melody,

5:16 you want it to keep moving, you want the interest, but you don't really want to add newlike content, so just move it in pitch center, move it up.And that alone creates drama.And when you're talking about the Supremes, the four tops, like there's an energy to,what is that little song's universe, like stop in the name of love, I think is a great

5:39 example, or probably my favorite reach out, I'll be there, where there's this like immediacyand almost like it's trying to rip through the radio speakers, like it's, you can feelthe competition in this music, which I also think is really fun.And there's that emotional intensity and there's also kind of this, there's like an aggressionbut like, you know, like stop, you know, stop and listen to this.

6:09 And using the human voice in interesting ways to like, like we do a lot of this stuffwith synthesizers now, but you can literally listen to these old Motown things and they'rekind of doing it, playing the same roles that synthesizers or sweeps are like, you know,like those kind of energies.And a lot of this was innovated here because they were dealing with kind of like the,

6:30 the palette that they had and the mics that they had and the recording environment thatthey had.That's another thing that I really love is the Hitsville plug-in set from Universal Audio.I use this all the time on my music, the Hitsville Reverb Chambers, because they're builton the attic that Hitsville, the Motown place, was using at that time.

6:54 And it's so cool because it's not just a little sample pack, it's got impulse responsesand then some like algorithm stuff.But because of that, you've got kind of the magic of that room that you can dial in justa little bit in the same way that Reverb Chambers, for those of you that might not know,they have a speaker inside of it, so you can send things you already recorded into

7:18 a room and then they have a microphone to record that room with that speaker.But it's really fun too because you can think about this on the digital side and be like,okay, what microphone and speaker would I use into that room and what kind of soundwould I send into that speaker?Because you don't necessarily have to send the dry signal into the speaker and then intothe reverb.

7:39 You could send a heavily affected or EQed or like rolled off kind of thing into that room.So you're not just doing the EQ on the back end of the post processing, you can do pre-processingwith reverb chambers, which is really fun.Same thing with like the Beatles E thing where you have like tape, slap back delay, likeJohn Lennon, you can run that tape delayed sound into a room and it gives it an extra

8:05 set of dimension because now you don't just have the really clear articulated delay response.You also have the diffusion and the million little delays that happen inside of a room.That's basically all we've got.We've got pitch and we've got time.And when you're in a room, you're hitting all of the walls with your sound, just likeI'm doing right now, and it makes it sound like the place you're in.

8:31 And there, I don't know.There's just something magic to having place and not even necessarily just being in thequote unquote Motown genre, just like anything that you want to have a little bit of life.I find it really exciting to have strange spaces or or characteristic spaces rather thanjust a beautiful studio and beautiful studio is great.

8:49 But particularly for the kind of music that I make, the bedroom pop kind of thing, youwant it to feel honest and not huge and not super slick.And then Hitsville reverb chamber does it for me because it really does.It feels like you're in the attic of this place, but it's familiar at the same time.One of the other things that I love about this partnership is Brian Holland, Lamont

9:14 Dozier, Eddie Holland, they kind of split it up for main roles, but they obviously dideverything.But Lamont was on Melody Doody, Eddie Holland, Lyric Doody and the Brian Holland productionarrangement.Everybody did a bit of everything though.But it is nice too to have like, hey, this is your ownership sphere.This is your thing that it's not, it's not like everybody has to work within these littlesilos.

9:37 But this is, when there's conflict, I'm going to refer to you on this and you're goingto make the call.I think that's also like a really freeing thing, even though it sounds like I know stuffy.I think that there is freedom in knowing your role and knowing and like the other peoplearound you knowing it.It gets so easy to say, yeah, you own this, but for other people to actually let you

10:00 own it, that's a totally different thing.In terms of the motivation that you can have when you really own something, like whenyou're in a room, especially like I've been in these situations where you're kind ofon drum duty and you are going to find the right sample and snare drum or whatever.That's your role.It allows you to kind of shrink the space that you are inhabiting and thinking into that

10:25 smaller space and then you can be more effective a lot of the times, rather than just yourrole as everything.That's the artist role.But when you are, to some degree, like a cog in this musical factory, it can be reallynice if you're allowed to really run with it.If you're not constantly getting second-guest or anything like, because then you don'treally have ownership, then you just have like task duty.

10:49 So I actually think that there's a magic to this indie kind of structure that allowsyou to have that emotional connection and ownership connection, whereas in these bigcorporate things that are trying to recreate this, I think it falls apart because you'reconstantly thinking, oh, is the producer going to like this or is the studio going to likethis or is this going to work?

11:10 When it's just like, Berry Gordy, you know, you get to know that personality and you know,like, okay, I'm going for this vision and mine and I own this and we have a good relationshipand I can push back.But in a big corporate setting, like, you don't even know who owns anything, everybody ownseverything and nobody owns anything and that's one of the worst states to be in.

11:31 And I think it's very frigid and frozen to be living in that kind of world.And I don't think it works very well for music.I think you have to throw a lot more resources at it, just like these songwriter camps oflike hundreds of writers, rather than finding a really good pairing of three.It's also interesting to think about like, I don't know.

11:56 You can get National Medal of Arts and Kennedy Center Honors and all this because you canchange the story of American culture and pop music.It is possible for any individual, but it's a lot more possible for an individual witha great team and a great team that knows what they're doing that is bought in and youknow, has some amazing talent like a Marvin Gaye.

12:22 You know, hoping to lodge the careers of people like a Stevie Wonder or Four Tops, Supremes smokeyRobinson miracles.You know, there's a component to this that is serendipitous, but there's the other componentof it that just is sheer force of personality and as somebody that has worked with Lamontand knew him, force of personality is the right decision and right word to use aroundthat guy.

12:50 I hope you enjoyed this episode.Please check out my music at scoobertdoobert.pizza or search scoobertdoobert here on Spotify.Got a lot of great guests coming up, so definitely stick around, subscribe, share it with yourfriends, and I will see you next week.