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MPR4C001R-003 Portfolio: Production & Log 2 Template

Task 1 – WAV Mixes

Please add your uncompressed audio files to the block below

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Task 2 – Production Log Book

1500 Words

Please use the sections below to evidence your personal contribution to the production for the portfolio. Please include details for all the tracks produced as a part of this portfolio.

Provide rationale for any of the production decisions that you made as a group. Include any multimedia (pictures, videos, audio recordings etc) evidence to the relevant sections.

Consider the following:

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Track 1 (Genre Specific Emulation)

We all decided to choose the Beatles Track “Come Together” for our Genre Emulation. We decided to use members of our group for the recording to reduce the logistics of finding musicians and then organising around them. Unfortunately, however, we couldn’t find an appropriate singer, so we had to settle for a female vocalist. We had Tom on guitars and drums and bass, Lottie on the keys and vocals. I helped in setting up the drum microphones and the muting of the drums with tea towels as to emulate the original recording.

We used a Rickenbacker guitar and Bass to fit with the original recording, with the bass DI into the Gold Mike Preamp so we had one less microphone to deal with, and to add some extra Grit.

I then mic’ed up a guitar cab with a WA67.

A particular microphone we used for overheads was the XAudia Beeb microphone, a clone of the Coles 4038 microphone which was used on the original track. For the vocals we used a Warm Audio WA67, a clone of the Neumann U67, which was used on the original track. We also used an open kick drum to mimic the original recording and to have a thumpy-er kick drum.

We used the Nord keyboard as a replacement for the Fender Roades on the original track because of how close and sincere the Nord emulation is.

We kept mixing quite simple, I used heavy compression with the Focusrite Fairchild compressor plugin in ProTools, adding some subtle plate reverb to emulate the ones at Abbey Road. We only used hard panning from then on forward to recreate the stereo imaging of the original and some simple volume automation and adjustments to get the levels correct. 

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Track 2 (Live In the Studio Stereo Recording)

We decided to keep it simple for this recording with a Jazz Trio with double bass, piano and vocals. Dan had found them through a friend of a friend and sat in on one of their rehearsals to scope them out. We then organised a recording session together without much hassle. We decided to go with the Mid Side microphone technique because of its mono compatibility with minimal sacrifices to stereo imaging with a lack of inter-channel delay you might get with a spaced pair. We used two condenser microphones, with the centre microphone facing the singer to make sure they are central in the stereo image with the bass player to their left and the piano player to the right. I was the one in charge of ProTools and hitting record on the Mac. We kept the mixing process quite minimal, treating it more like mastering, we increased the lows with a low shelf very subtly, slightly cut around 1kHz to create fullness and a little high shelf boost for some airiness. I made sure to level match the Side channel to the Mid channel to make sure the was no more than a roughly 3dB volume drop when shifting to mono. 

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Track 3 Remix track

For the Verse vocals, I pitch corrected the Come Together vocal to a Dmaj7#11 chord, loaded that into Logic’s Quick Sampler, set into Splice mode and used the transient mode so I didn’t have to worry about shifting the tempo. Used the ADSR envelope to add some punch with a short attack, short decay, and low sustain, to add additional transient material. Added a DeEsser to clamp down on some of the sibilance, EQ with a high shelf boost to add some of the highs back in and a cut at 1k to remove some box-y-ness. Added a stereo tremolo with a fast rate at 11Hz for some texture, used a MIDI modulator to modulate the symmetry parameter so the signal spends more time at a higher volume in one of the stereo channels but the focus shifts between the speakers at a slower rate, creating an extra macro layer to the tremolo. For the beginning of the verses, I used a separate stereo tremolo with a slow rate, synced up with the tempo of the track but with a low symmetry to make the modulator waveform behave more like a square wave, I then used another MIDI modulator to modulate the Phase of the modulator waveform to add a chaotic unpredictability and to keep the signal more even between the left and right channel. Pich shift used at the end of 1^st verse to lead into chorus. 

For the 1^st Chorus vocals, I loaded an un pitch-corrected vocal, pitched up a major 7th (Dmin – C#min) to work in D Lydian, re-pitch corrected it to just the minor scale, sampled in slice mode, set to transient, used the amp envelope to add punch, used compression with a fast attack and release and heavy ratio to bring the body of the sound back whilst still having a punchy transient. Limiting to control peaks. EQ to cut Mud, add brightness with high shelf, add body with 1kHz boost. 20Hz stereo tremolo to give width without compromising mono playback. 

For 2^nd chorus vocals, sampled one syllable of the vocal, played a Dmaj7#11 chord, then resampled that. Added amp envelope for punch, compression for extra punch, used Crunchrr distortion with noise modulator for extra character and some high mid content to make the drop seem fuller. Overdrive to add extra distortion and to reign in peaks for extra loudness. Sent over a reverb bus. 

For Synth Bass, used Vital wavetable synthesiser, created two saw oscillators 60° out of phase to give them an interesting response curve. Added unison for extra depth and stereo width in some sections of the song. Used pitch modulation and amp modulation to give the bass a kick-esque attack so it sounds like an 808. Used “Phaser” filter model and modulated with a slow moving LFO to add some interest and movement, also modulated the filter position with the same envelope as the amplitude to create extra clicky effect. Lots of soft clipping to tie everything together. Used EQ with a Low Pass filter at roughly 15kHz to keep them out of the hihats’ way, and a dip at 1-2kHz to keep it out of the vocal’s way. 

For Synth Lead, used vital again to create a pad sound, sampled a Dmaj9#11 chord, manipulated amp envelope to add punch, decreased gain of the side channel to make more mono compatible, added overdrive for some extra aggression but also to tame peaks. Added extra distortion with Cruncher with the modulator at 6kHz for extra brightness and presence. EQ to cut low end, boost at 1kHz for extra body, high shelf boost for extra brightness, cut at 400Hz and 2kHz to reduce boomy-ness and nasal-y-ness respectively. Bussed over to reverb with a Noise Gate that ducks for the transients of the lead but then comes back in for the body. 

For Hi-Hats, sampled myself using a grinder, cut the sample really short, added delay with 22ms time and full feedback and mix and modulated it’s output volume with an envelope to prevent infinite sustain, creating a comb filter effect to simulate real cymbals. I then added another comb filter with some random modulation to create interest. Then I added some sine fold distortion to add some more low end material. Ran it through Shaperbox3’s “Liquid” Phaser to add some movement. Used a high pass filter to cut out some of the mud from the signal, cuts at 400Hz and 1.5kHz to cut boominess and honky-ness respectively. Added overdrive to compress the signal, a tiny bit of a short reverb to put it into a space. I then used a waveshaper in asymmetric mode to subtly rectify the signal, simulating tape biasing. 

For the kick, I held my microphone inside a ¼ full McDonalds bag and lightly thumped the bag with my hand. I then added a small amount of room reverb, EQ’d the opposite of my mic’s frequency response curve and then used the frequency response curve of an Audix D6 kick mic with EQ to make it seem like it come from that microphone. Added some overdrive to add aggression and extra harmonic character. Added heavy compression with a slow-ish attack to increase the crest factor and make the drums extra punchy. I then used shelf EQs to boost the low end and decrease the harshness of the “beater”. Extra distortion for good measure and aggression, extra compression in parallel for some extra sustain. A limiter to control peaks so I can extract extra loudness. I then put every channel except the kick into a bus then used a Ring Modulation Sidechain (RMS) device to make the kick punch through. An RMS takes an incoming sidechain signal (external or internal), rectifies it to gain it’s magnitude, flips its *polarity* to make it negative, and then uses that signal (in this case when it’s over a threshold) as the operator waveform in a Ring Modulator to essentially erase that signal from the carrier waveform, in a sense, it acts as perfect sidechain compression. 

For the guitar solo, I ripped it from our come together recording, Pitched it down a semitone, added a DeCrackle plugin to remove some artifacting, added a heavy amp sim for some 80’s vibes, then added two reverbs to make it sound washy and huge, I then added some Expansion to tease out some transient material. 

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For the Snare, I sampled me rubbing two pizza boxes together, extracted it as a wavetable to use in Vital. I then used the come together vocal, band pass filtered the first two harmonics and then extracted that to use as a wavetable in vital. I individually manipulated each of their ADSR envelopes to create the crack of the drumstick, the snare wires, and the snare fundamental. I then used unison to thicken the snare fundamental and to add extra harmonics of the snare crack. I then used Soft Clipping to smooth out the transients and to add some bite. I then used EQ to cut out some of the mud, boost the snare fundamental, boost the mids at 1kHz for some body, and a high shelf to increase the fizz. I added a Phaser to generate some movement and also some gated reverb to beef up the snare and put it in a space.