Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
ATimbalandbeat can make you feel everything all at once.
But how did he get there in the first place?
What accounts for a production approach many have tried but none have replicated?
But they were feeling pretty desperate to break out of this silo.
They wanted to get their beats and songwriting in the hands of other artists.
So one day, Timbaland was in the studio with another producer, Static Major.
But they knew it needed something else.
One thing that Timbaland does is collect sounds.
So Tim sifted through his catalogue and heard something that he liked.
He described it as a futuristic robot saying yeah over and over in different tones.
Megan:Pony, by Ginuwine.
Nate:The song that would become the soundtrack for male strippers around the world.
This one sounds as fresh as it did when it first dropped.
Megan:This song is a good example of what Im calling Timbalands mosaic production approach.
But Timbaland was almost never trying to do that.
He wasnt aiming for nostalgia in his beats.
His approach to sampling was much more collage-like.
Hed use them to make a wholly new sound, a sonic mosaic unlinked to the source.
Some elements might have felt familiar, but the sum always felt really fresh.
Nate:So yes, the iconic sound that kicks off Pony is a Timbaland and Static studio invention.
And it puts this stamp on the song in this way because youve never heard it before.
So now this new sound will be forever identified with that particular track.
It sounds like the future.
We talk about songs or sounds that sound futuristic or otherworldly.
These are words that often get attached to the Timbaland production approach, but its hard to describe.
