OUT OF SPACE - How did The Prodigy get away with it?

In this video, I break down The Prodigy's iconic rave anthem Out of Space.
By recreating the entire track in Ableton I show "under the hood" of this track and how it was put together.

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The Ableton project I used in this video was actually made by Tom Meeson as part of his participation in my Electronic Music Mastery course, although I did make some tweaks to it.

[GyuBeats]

Want to finally break out of the loop phase and start finishing tracks you’re proud of?

[matthewbucknall]

Omen was released in 2009, Out of Space was released in 1992. The bell sound is from the Zero-G Datafile One sample library (track 91), released 1991.

[keithmac]

I grew up listening to the Prodigy. Genuinely don't think Liam Howlett gets the respect he deserves. He is a musical genius and one of a kind. The Prodigy still going strong to this day.

[derekarmstrong]

I find it funny that Keith's face from their "Firestarter" era is the image of Prodigy that is most recognisable. When I saw them in 93, he had long hair and just danced. My friend who also produces music nudged me and pointed out that there were 3 guys on stage running around making a scene, but the real show was hidden behind a stack of keyboards like the wizard of Oz.

[paulhelsby]

This Breakdown displays what a genius Liam Howlett really is. Thats hard enough to put together in a modern day DAW like Ableton. imagine doing it on an 5 second Akai sampler with floppy dics etc. having that vision... He's a genius and is up there with the greatest UK music artists in history.

[acb]

Max Romeo was utterly robbed by the music industry and despite good sales was left destitute and homeless.
He got what he was due when a group of ravers from the UK used his sample, did well and bought him a house in acknowledgement.
Nice one Liam and the boys.

[supersonictomlad]

RIP to Max Romeo. Sadly passed on the 11th April, so a timely video. ✊

[TokyoXtreme]

That Hanna-Barbera sound effect is absolutely hilarious. It gets me every time, and the anticipation of knowing that it's coming only magnifies the effect.

[leser_breakbeat]

Amazing that Liam travelled into the future to sample Omen. What a clever guy

[Rrgu_uture]

When I was 16, I got dragged along, last minute to see The Prodigy about a month after the Charly single was released. They were headlining the Big Nighter III rave at Kilmarnock’s Hippodrome Theatre. I recently found part of my old ticket stub—still can’t believe the admission was only seven quid on the door, lol.

[StratsRUs]

The 'scale' you outline is the 5th Mode of A Harmonic Minor.

E F G# A B (C) (E)

E Phrygian Dominant.

Which is called Phrygian Dominant or Phrygian Major.

The 'parent' is A B C D E F G# ( A harmonic minor).Just the same as a normal A minor but with a G# instead of the G.
There's a Chromatic Mediant ( F to D chords ).
The F could be seen as the 6th chord of A Harmonic Minor.
And the D major could be seen as 'borrowed' from the parallel A Major Scale.

[JustAnotherPassenger]

Liam does what I consider 'honest' sampling. It's not only totally transformative, but so many Prodigy tracks are full of samples which he could easily just recreate or alter slightly so that nobody would ever know it's sample let alone where it came from, but he doesn't. Then you have other groups who just stick a bit of percussion over a full length sample and call it a day.

[BillLambert]

Prodigy back then was almost entirely scrappy sampling, but it worked so well and Liam was such a madman with the edits that it was often difficult even for sampleheads to trace all the bits.

[DanPichichi]

Prodigy were ahead of their time. Absolute genius to come up with this sound back in the day before we had all this modern tech where even now it’s impressive.

[SamUrtonDesign]

As somebody that was producing tunes and sampling back in the era that this tune was made, you are spot on regarding the techniques used. We didn't have access to huge sound libraries, and we had no internet to educate us regarding all of the classic drum breaks, and no way to download them even if we knew (we had to go to record stores and spend hours digging for an old Lyn Collins record). So, many times we sampled from other records that had a sound, or break, that we wanted (and those records had probably done exactly the same thing to other records, etc, etc.). We also had about 20 seconds of sample time to contend with, so we had to edit the sounds down to their most fundamental essence - this contributed to the distinctive quality those productions had, and to that particular "sound" in the late 80's - early 90's. Anyone can 100% produce in the same way today in a modern DAW, but it's just so easy to NOT limit yourself in that way (I know I don't - very happy with unlimited sample time, and unlimited sounds now at my disposal - LOL!)

[seancooper]

I worked for Liam during this period.

Blows me away to this day that he did all this on a Roland w30.

[EddieG]

The one thing you do notice by reconstructing this in Ableton and snapping everything to the grid for ease of presentation in a video, is how much the samples in the original Prodigy track _aren't_ snapped to the grid, especially on the Max Romeo sections. Back then, Liam would have been trying to line stuff up via beat-matching to the grid rather than being able to snap exactly, as we've got the luxury of doing these days, and it gives it a very subtle but human groove.

[nyc]

Liam has achieved so much, but he's still criminally underrated in the music scene for his incredible contributions to music. I've been a huge fan them since '92 in the UK when I first heard Everybody in the Place on Maximum Rave '92. I was all of 12 and had to explain to my friends when I moved to Australia who the Prodigy were.
Then Firestarter and Breathe hit the airwaves in '96 and I no longer had to. One of the best days of my life was bumping into them in Sydney, introducing myself as a goofy fan (now an adult) and having them graciously take a photo with me. Keith asked me if I was going to the concert that night (I was supposed to be going to class), added me to the guest list, and then answered my phone to ask my mate if he was coming because I'd just been added to the guest list. Keith, Liam, Maxim and their manager were incredibly kind and I had the best night of my life. R.I.P Keith and thank you Liam and Maxim for your continued efforts and talent.

[prestigiouss]

Title is completely misleading. It's clickbait. I get the video ends up not calling the prodigy thiefs, but I don't think you should confuse people with regards sampling and how they made music in the 90s, by putting stolen in the title. Everyone sampled back in the day. Just look at the jungle warfare sample packs, which are filled with recognisable loops. Slow these loops down, lower the pitch and you get the original jazz drum sample. Sampling absolutely rocked and gave us the best era of electronic music. One track could spawn 50 others. The hoovers from mentasm were sampled in god knows how many tracks. I think people will eventually go back to sampling more, because you can get so creative with it.

[sneekeruk]

@4:55 you said it came from an old prodigy track omen, omen is about 15 years newer then Out of space. So its more then likely Omen sampled Out of space.