Task 1 – WAV Mixes
Task 2 – Production Log Book
Track 1 (Genre Specific Emulation)
Pre-Production: Demo Track
The original track “There She Goes” was not recorded to a click, so I made an approximation of 122bpm and recorded a demo track using a DI acoustic for rhythm and lead guitar, scratch lead vocal and midi drums.
Session 1: Drums
| Kick Out | Kick In | Snare Top | Snare Bot | Tom Rack | Tom Floor | OH L+R | Room |
| Audix D6 | AKG D112 | SM57 | SM57 | MD421 | MD421 | AKG C451 | Delta II |
My role was operating the Logic session (as I had brought the demo project), as well as arrangement decisions with our performer Art Marshall. It was hard to hear whether the HiHat was being played in the verses in original track with such heavy emphasis on percussion (tambourine & shaker), so we recorded 3 takes with and 3 takes without.
The percussion was recorded after the drum takes as overdubs, using the stereo overheads so that it sounded more spacious rather than intimate. We knew the original track was very wet and high-mid heavy which justifies the use of stereo overheads and a ribbon room mic placed approx. 2 meters from the kit.
Session 2: Acoustic Guitar
I performed the acoustic guitar parts for this session, and also chose the mic setup. The track has at least two acoustic guitars panned medium-hard left and right. I chose to use two different mics for these double tracks to reflect the slight variation heard on the record, and decided on the Neumann KM184 and AKG C414. Both mics were in turn placed facing the 12th fret slightly towards the body at a distance of 10 inches.
Session 3: Bass & Electric Guitar
We recorded bass with a DI box split signal and mic’ing up an Ashdown amp cabinet with an AKG D112 for a natural low end and low mid response.
Performer: Freddie Meaden
My Roles: Mic choices, Logic project managing
Electric guitar was performed by myself, using the bridge pickup of a Fender Telecaster running straight into a Vox AC30. The speaker was close-mic’d with a Sennheiser MD441 as shown below. I chose all of the gear we used based on the mainstream brands that would have been available at the time of recording.
It took some time to figure out the arrangement but it appeared that all of the single note lines were double tracked, so I recorded some sections by themselves then did whole track run-throughs and then double tracked it. Once i had laid down the double track we listened back to the original and realised just how close we were in matching the guitar tone.
Session 4: Vocals
There is a single tracked main vocal in “There She Goes” and a number of harmonies and ad-libs buried in the mix which took some time to figure out. I performed the vocals with a pop-shield and using a Sontronics Orpheus (Large Diaphragm Condenser). After 2 full takes of warming up I then did my best to roughly imitate the voice of the lead singer Lee Mavers.
Mixing
We started with gain staging via clip gain, because we wanted to avoid using automation this early.
Once we had a rough balance we started with the kick and snare which were both incredibly punchy in the reference track. We ended up getting rid of our snare bottom mic entirely because the “paper” sound it captured was not fitting for the cracky punchy snare sound we needed. The bass was far more pronounced in the original track then we had noticed before, so we made sure it was a consistent volume throughout via compression and clip gain, and used a smooth 100Hz boost to bring it to the front of the mix.
The battle for volume was mainly between the acoustic guitars and the main vocal, as there were so many acoustics they took up the entire stereo field (as per the track), and the only way to make room for the vocal was a very extreme reductive EQ from the low end all the way to 500-600Hz, and boosting the upper mids to compensate. This worked to great effect as the guitars were supposed to be as loud as the vocal without one drowning the other out.
The rest of our time was spent with thinking about reverb send levels, using a total of 3 reverbs (short plate, medium hall, large hall).
We knew that the reverb would be the focal point of bringing the mix together, and after careful time and thought we got as close as we could to the original track.
Track 2 (Live In the Studio Stereo Recording)
The act we recorded was a piano and cello duo. We began with a pair of Neumann KM184’s and then thought about the best configuration to show the two instruments in their best light with a wide stereo image. The coincident pair had little to no phase issues but ultimately was much thinner than the spaced pair upon listening in the control room, and the space brought out the uniqueness between each instrument perfectly while still interacting with each other co-dependently. It was a very straightforward session as after we got a mic setup we liked it was just a matter of running some takes until we got one that the performers were satisfied with.
Track 3 Remix track
Planning and References
I chose to do a reggae dub remix of “There She Goes”, as the genre is very idiomatic with very typical and unique production techniques/tropes. In planning the arrangement for this track I used existing reggae records (Bob Marley, Easy Star All Stars, etc)to find the typical instrumental layout and stereo image of the genre.
- Uncompressed drums
- Syncopated guitars and keys (hammond organ and piano), both with delay
- Very wet snare, specifically used of spring reverb
- Tape delay on vocals
- Bus saturation
Arrangement
Found Sound Percussion
The first step was found-sound percussion, so I used an old music anthology, a bag of coins, clicking and some brushes to put together a quasi-drum kit. The initial fade-ins and outs were essential for cutting the ambient noise around my flat such as utilities and traffic noise. I wanted the track to be very wide, and so i created 2 hard panned tracks for my finger-clicking and used a sample delay on one of them to create an enveloping, spacey genre-typical width which already gave so much character to the track.
Vocals
Manipulating the vocal consists of using polyphonic flex time to drag each syllable to the grid in the desired melodic rhythm, as not only is the tempo of this track different to the original but so is the groove/swing.
After much experimentation with different “Flex Time” modes, I found that all of them created inauthentic and digital sounding artefacts which would not be appropriate in the track, so instead of trying to speed up the vocal (at 124bpm) to fit the half-time 68bpm, i slowed down the track to 62bpm to match the existing vocal. In order to keep up the momentum and groove of the track i would need to add some sort of 16th-note triplet layer either in the percussion, a synth or guitars. This also works because the typical tempo of reggae dub tracks sits anywhere between 60 and 90 BPM.
Reggae dub vocals have very specific qualities:
- Saturation
- Tape Delay
- Spring Reverb
- Reductive EQ
The latter “telephone EQ” shown below is used to emulate a megaphone which has its place in the sound system culture of early reggae and dub.
Synths
I took this idea and used a simple ascending arpeggiator to trigger a logic retro synth to outline the chords. I adjusted the glide and attack times to make it sound smooth and natural, and then used a stereo tremolo to pan each short phrase left and right. Taking advantage of a wide stereo image is a commonplace production trope in reggae, as it already appears in my percussion and gave a new exciting movement to the track as well as solving the issue of finding appropriate space for it without drowning out other instruments.
Guitars and Bass
I achieved the authentic Lo-Fi sound of the genre by using vintage studio hardware (preamps/valve amps). Then, I had to play a syncopated and percussive part to compliment and build upon the simple drum pattern I already have.
I panned this guitar 31 degrees left, and another “demo guitar” (recorded DI from a UAFX Dream 65 amp simulator) panned the equally right to balance it which comes in 4 bars later. I added bus sends on both channels to an 8th triplet delay aux channel, fully fleshing out the idioms of reggae dub guitars.
The demo bass i recorded followed the rhythm of the kick, stayed on the bass note of each chord and used rudimentary walk-ups to each note. Listening back I realised that the track called for something more appropriate for reggae dub and therefore more melodic and adventurous.
In the context of the mix, it now sounded far more like a reggae dub track. After I had settled for that comp, I added an amp sim, compression and noise gating to thicken out and clean up the sound.
Edits/Changes
The one edit I had to make a result of this new bass-line was that the synth part also shared this upward arpeggio motion and each part felt less unique. I played with the settings on the synth arpeggiator until I found a pattern that was different enough to all other parts going on, but not so different that it felt out of place.
The mids were getting very overcrowded with guitars, bass, vocals, organ and synth so I moved the midi an octave higher to tend to this issue.
First final draft mix:
