Track 1 (Guitar-based band production)
‘Nice Girls Never Win’ is an original composition by Ari Mullen adapted for performance by her band (Solomon Hughes, Roo Samuel-King). Ari already has some clout as a performer with decent interaction on social media, and is also very familiar with studio settings (as is her band) from recording with different groups and producers.
We started this track in Studio 422 on the 19th of November for a demo attempt. The band here had a guide track from a recording of a recent rehearsal which we gridlocked to tempo in Ableton, then ported over to Logic. In the time we had we laid down a foundation with, the full drum part, the Rhythm guitar part and amongst other guitar layers/effects.
Using the patchbay, we captured the sound of an amp in the vocal booth while the player was in the live room using direct input. This allowed a way to record both parts at the same time while reducing spill from the drums, and the guitarist could hear the drums from the live room. and communicate with the the drummer easier through the glass.
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In the second session (1st December, Studio 109) we refined the vocals with more takes and different direction as per Ari’s request. This included multiple doubletracking takes, composing and recording various harmony parts and a revision of rhythm in some passages.
We were done with the vocals about two hours through the session, so we took the extra time to rerecord the guitar part and add extra layers (like the ambient drone through using pedals). The bass was the last part to be added in.
As the assignment brief states, I wanted this mix to best represent the live performance of this track, so no additional harmony parts through DAW manipulation are in the track.
I approached this mix with the drums first, knowing I needed to spend the most time on them. To keep this ethos of a live performance I kept most of the panning as a normal drum kit would be apart from the snare and kick which I kept true centre for the recognisable impact.
Pop music has a technique that adds more satisfaction by putting lots of the mix in mono for the verses and then widening it to stereo in the chorus for a broader texture. For this track, the guitar, bass and vocals are in mono in the intro and first verse, then I turn on a chorus plugin on both guitar and bass through automation when the chorus hits. The vocals spread out by panning the main one soft left (-24) and using a different take to be panned the opposite way. During the chorus and some parts of the bridge, I also applied a short fast-decaying delay to simulate slapback delay that you might have heard during a live performance. Stylistically it fits the genre of the instrumental regardless.
The Guitar amp channel has a flanger on it, I wanted a warmer sound for the bass to lay under while simultaneously adding character and an evolving tone.
Ari’s vocals were pleasantly easier to mix than other vocals I’ve worked on in the past partly due to her singing ability and revision and partly due to good capture. Her vocals had 20-750hz cut as well as 12k-20khz with a moderate boost to both ends next to those regions.
I used the same EQ pattern for the ambient guitar sounds.
On the master channel I have a standard adaptive limiter, multipressor and a Linear Phase EQ which ties the whole sound together with a slight boost from 20hz-250hz, 2k-20khz and a small reduction between the two regions.
Track 2 Live in the studio (jazz ensemble)
This track is adapted from a jazz standard called ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum’ composed by Wayne Shorter. It appears in his 1964 album ‘Speak No Evil’. We chose to record in Studio 113 (17th October) as it has the biggest live room which we would need for the amount of players and the live aspect (no overdubbing). As well as this, we could revise outboard mixing while recording as 113 has a full size desk.
We also used the Jazz Chorus-4 amp for the guitar, as well as a space pair stereo mic technique for the piano.
We had little involvement in directing the performance due to the genre and recording method, essentially just hitting record and letting them play through the standard at their leisure.
After 2 and a half takes we were happy with the material we captured, finishing the recording in only one session leaving the group lots of time to mix with the outboard gear.
On the 4th December we went back into Studio 113 to mix the track using the desk.
All of the drum channels were sent to the DL241 compressor (top) with moderate to low compression
The saxophone was sent to the 1968 compressor (middle)
Electric Guitar was sent to the warm audio compressor, as it is the simplest compressor and the part didn’t need a major amount of tweaking. (bottom)
The reverb bus for the guitar and sax is sent to the Lexicon reverb unit.
When the piano solo comes in at 2:36 I practice live automation by slightly increasing the output fader volume for both piano channels and lower it again when the solo is finished (while rerecording the now mixed recording back into the DAW)
Track 3 Remix track
I approached this remix project with the intention of speeding the vocals up a lot but couldn’t find a way to comfortably do it on Logic Pro or other third party software, so I started by keeping the tempo the same and transposing the vocals up to E Minor.
I made a conscious effort to keep my distance with the original genre (dance/deep house) through mediums like the instrumentation (using VST choirs/strings including my own violin, unusual drum beats and harsher sounds), and rhythm: If I could avoid the typical four-on-the-floor beat then the vocal line would recontextualise itself naturally. Multiple words or phrases in the lead vocal I used as samples for more harmony lines and rhythmic devices to stack on top of one another.
Another part of my ethos of alienating myself from the original track and genre was avoiding heavy repetition, so I always tried to either add or strip something from the mix whenever it was apropriate
The choices I made with this track aimed to push it towards a more cinematic and introspective instrumental achieved by sculpting multiple textural layers with synths or effects that fill out the ambience or choke the other instruments out. In addition elements like the key change in the last chorus could come across as cliche but I think it makes sense when compared to the rest of the track and the emotions drawn out throughout it.
Some of my favourites include:
This grating high end pad that changes the type of wave being played on each of its three oscillators through separate LFOs,
Or this retro 80s sparkling pluck, acting as a driving rhythm with its ping-pong delay feature,
In this track I’ve recorded myself playing violin between the bridge and second chorus, but swamped it with reverb and tremolo so it sounds like you can’t quite tell where the melody is hitting you from. Right after this, I sing backing vocals in the bridge reminiscent of the original track yet more human and reharmonised to sound more melancholic. In between the phrases my violin cuts back covered by bitcrusher.
If I could do this remix again I would try to purposefully limit myself to less channels as I have a habit of thinking bigger is better a lot of the time.
