MPR4C001R-003 (24101628 – Jasper Sharp)

by

Jasper Sharp 24101628

MPR4C001R-003 Portfolio: Production & Log 2 Template

Task 1 – WAV Mixes

high and dry mix 3Download
Flute Trio w Equi Mics miix 1Download
&dry (remix(Download

Task 2 – Production Log Book

Track 1 (Genre Specific Emulation)

Our group chose 90s Britpop for our genre and selected High and Dry by Radiohead as our emulation track.

High and Dry – Radiohead (1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qFfFVSerQo

Our performers were:

  • Jack Rigby – Lead Guitar/Rhythm Guitar
  • Katie Wilshire – Vocals
  • Zach Nolan – Bass
  • Leo Thomas – Drums

We recorded a demo vocal on its own before recording the rest of the band. We put the demo vocal through Ableton and gridlocked it so it would stay consistent to the click and the rest of the band could follow easily with a click track.

The mics we used were either exactly or close enough to what Radiohead recorded with found out from interviews with the producer Robert John Lange. They were as follows:

  • Voice – Rode K2
  • Guitar: SM57 + SM7B
  • Bass – (DI)
  • Drums – Drum Pack (AKG D112, SHURE SM57, OKTAVIA MK-012)
  • 2 AKG 414s

Track 2 (Live In the Studio Stereo Recording)

The piece selected for this task is a flute piece: ‘Syrinx en Resonance’ by Claude Debussy. The version recorded however is a version arranged for three flutes by Francois Narboni, included in ‘The French Flutists Propose Collection’. This piece was recorded on the 29th April at 4 o’clock in Room 422.

A link to a performance of this piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHxe_CTvYMM

The instrumentalists playing in this recording are:

  • Ayesha Davie
  • Gemma Downes
  • Chloe Dyason

The group have played this piece in several performances already so they are very familiar with the music and how each of them leads the piece. I contacted them personally for the recording as I am friends with Ayesha already.

After arranging the performers in a semicircle, we used four AKG 414 mics to record this track, two of them being used in a midside pair placed in the middle of the semicircle, recorded a demo and then placed the other two on the left and right side of the players as an equidistance space pair for the second recording.

We chose these techniques over something like an XY pair as we believed that they gave the most depth and control over the recording through more channels to manipulate, as well as avoiding problems like phase cancellation if setup incorrectly.

The space pair’s purpose was to be used as room mics that captured the natural sound of the room not audible from the midside pair.

More information on the midside pair: (https://www.uaudio.com/blogs/ua/mid-side-mic-recording#:~:text=The%20%22Mid%22%20microphone%20is%20set,axis%20from%20the%20sound%20source. (para. 8, by Daniel Keller).

More information on space pair: (https://www.uaudio.com/blogs/ua/stereo-miking-acoustic-guitar?srsltid=AfmBOoq8jVolZdINsiS78e6bgqjI8wPTERSK2oIEx1YpS7iL-0UYb4ij para. 7, by universal audio.com)

In the mixing process, I hard panned the original and duplicate of the figure 8 mic recording left and right, while letting the omnidirectional stay in the centre. The room mic space pair was also panned left and right but not as drastically.

In addition to this, I sent all five tracks to a reverb bus with light compression and EQ removing a moderate amount of mid frequency, with spikes at 500hz and 2.5khz. This is where the most piercing parts of the tracks were situated at.

On the master channel I placed a multiband compressor removing a small amount of the high and high mids and a small amount of low end to remove some of the room noise.

This mix could probably have been done without the room mics, but we thought that the addition of two extra channels deepens the depth of field and adds more power to some parts that may be harder to hear without them.

Track 3 Remix track

I have chosen to remix high and dry into a more pop/electronic direction with a heavy focus on synths and atmosphere, while recontextualising the main vocal melody through different chord progressions and textures, as well as creating additional melodies to compliment the new sound.

Sampling

  • The intro to this remix begins with a sample of the main vocal’s chorus (‘Don’t leave me high’) which I have paulstretched by around 10x to turn the vocal into an ambient textural device to give a bed for the first verse to sit upon. The lowpass filter slowly being reduced completely when the sample hits its sustained note and the light tremolo prevents the sound from becoming stagnant, before the bitcrusher kicks in and the tail end reverb of the sample dissolves into crackling static.
  • This sample is accompanied by synth strings to add some harmony to the sustained note. Both of these instruments fade out before the 2nd half of the first verse starts to create silence between the end of them and the next build up. Cuts in the instrumental is a common tactic in most modern pop music to help build anticipation, usually before a chorus or pre chorus
  • Supercut – Lorde https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxSzt51xnkU (1:33)
  • Stateside – PinkPantheress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ-a4VkeMZE (1:54)
  • Pendulum – FKA twigs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw6H9YsTLek (1:24)

I also use this same vocal sample (or its ‘dry’ equivalent) in both choruses to stack backing vocal harmonies; in the first chorus they build on top of each other from left to right to fill out the mostly empty stereo field and end in a triumphant chord. In the second chorus, they jump around in pitch much less, and ping-pong left and right to fill out the space between each ‘high and dry’ the main vocal sings.

Other samples I used included:

  • My slightly broken jaw that cracks when I bite down, overlayed with cracking my fingers to create a percussive finger snap (instead of snapping my fingers)
  • Tapping my keys against my bar blade to create a triangle hit one-shot.

Both of these samples had reverb with a medium decay time on them ensuring that they wouldn’t get lost in the mix.

Structure and Mix

I knew I wanted to keep the general flow of the song the same, partly due to the assignment brief mentioning not to make the vocal unrecognisable. Despite this, I liked the intro idea so much that I thought it would be fine to cut off the last chorus, as the bridge of High and Dry makes for a reasonable outro.

I also knew that the sort of feelings I wanted to evoke with the synths and atmosphere of the piece were euphoric and soaring, so in accordance with the rich harmonies I treated the vocals in the chorus as less of a melody and more as one part in a giant block chord that melts into the rest of the instrumental, before reintroducing it clearly in the verses. I like how this mixes around how you interpret the song and its lyrics when you can only really hear the lyrics in the verses. In addition to this, I’ve also sped the tempo of the song up to match the pop sound.

Due to multiple string parts in this piece there is a lot of high and high mids, I balanced this during mastering by using the multipressor to even the frequencies out.

Strings

I played all the violin parts in this remix to add various melodies, textures and sound effects. I recorded these in my room with a laptop, Rode-NT1 and a Scarlet 2i2 3rd gen. Violin parts include:

  • Acoustic riser (glissando on all 4 strings that all finish on the same note in different octaves when the chorus starts)
  • Accompanying melodies for the 2nd verse
  • Playing the lead guitar bridge riff from the original
  • Tremolo on tension building in the 2nd verse
  • Accented stabs before the 2nd chorus to build before the riser.

Synths

Synths take up the large majority of this composition, the most crucial ones being:

  • Chorus synth pad: Multiple saw wave oscillators with a fluctuating lowpass. Has two reverb plugins chained to it, one being ValhallaSupermassive which also contains a delay feature. This allows the synth to fill out the chorus exponentially without much help in the first half of the track
  • Bass synth pluck: Sets up the second verse and carries on into the chorus with an automated filter. Medium sustain + decay and short attack/release give the synth its pluck character
  • Sub bass: Made in ES E logic stock synth, full resonance and medium cutoff give the synth a bubbly sound when releasing and pressing the keys. Played in fifths to emulate the M1 organ commonly heard in house music