How to recreate The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up in Ableton Live

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All the samples and processing tricks

We're not exaggerating when we say that Jim Pavloff's 10-minute recreation of The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up, which you can watch below, is one of the finest YouTube tuition videos we've ever seen.

In it, you can not only discover which samples were used in the original track, but also see them being tweaked and processed using the appropriate techniques. Pavloff has managed to authentically recreate the original synth parts, too.

Of course, Ableton Live wasn't around when Liam Howlett produced Smack My Bitch Up back in 1997, so he had to work rather harder in the studio. However, this is still a hugely impressive achievement.

Ben Rogerson
Ben Rogerson
Deputy Editor

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.