Track 1: Guitar based full band production

Pre-Production

The track we chose for this part of assignment was a track that our group member Rhys had already started work on with singer/songwriter Charr and her band. All that had been recorded toward the track before we started work, was a rough guide acoustic guitar part and electric guitar lead line. In a lesson, we listened through to the guide tracks, and thought a lot about drums. I had an idea to program some midi drums into the demo just to hear the song with a drum track alongside the guitars. While working on the midi drums, we listened to various reference tracks by Fontaines D.C and Wunderhorse, both artists that had similar sounding guitar/drum sounds.

Production/Recording

We started with the drums (mic list below), recording with the bass at the same time, but instead of amping, we thought it’d be easier and less of a recording risk to simply have the bassist record in the control room with us, DI-ed into the desk, going through the bassists own stomp box.

After getting a few takes of drums and bass, we decided to get a scratch/rough vocal take, to complete all the elements of the song, as we had the time. This vocal would be properly re-recorded at a later time, with its own dedicated session, but we decided to get a guide anyway to aid with structure clarity. In a later session, we decided to re-record the guitar parts, replacing the rough guide versions. We started with acoustic, and after getting a good pass of the entire song’s chords, we moved on to record the acoustic top line melody. The guitarists took a moment in the control room to listen to the demo version and re-learn the part before going back into the live room. We also asked him to record a whole pass of the chords and the chorus melody line an octave higher, to replicate a 12 string sound.  For electric, we left the u87 that we used for the acoustic guitar up, and used that as a room mic, and started by having him run through the high melody line, with pedals adding distortion, reverb and delay. We asked him to run the part a few times, before recording the electric guitars rhythm parts, re-recording the same parts from the demo. Finally, we recorded the guitar solo, which had already been written and roughly recorded in the demo. We knew we needed to delicate and give the guitarist a good portion of the recording session dedicated solely to the solo.

After almost everything was recorded, we booked a session to record vocals. This was a relatively quick session, as the singer knew her own song very well, and was able to do passes of the song without many mistakes at all.

Solo Mix

When it came to my individual mix of the song, I knew that clarity was key. Being an indie pop song, the catchy guitar lead and vocal line is the key focal point, and that’s what I focussed on. Although it was a big session by the end, this was to my benefit. Recording many different guitar double tracks meant that in the mix I could hard pan them, and leave space in the middle for the vocals, bass and kick drum. The drum sound overall, was already on the way, as we had compressed and EQ’d lightly on the way in. All I did in my session was some panning to overhead, and further EQ and some fast/harsh compression to enlarge the sound. For the acoustic/electric guitars, I focused on a good relationship between the two, ensuring neither overshadowed the other, giving the electric the 1-3kHz area, as it was slightly brighter, and giving the acoustic the mids and the sparkly high end. Finally, when mixing vocals, I really wanted it to blend into the rest of the instruments while still standing at the top of the mix. To do this, I added a small room reverb on a bus and had it quite high on the vocal, while also adding some saturation to slightly distort and brighten the vocal.

GUITAR BASED/BAND AUDIO SUBMISSION:

Track 2: Live Jazz Ensemble

Pre-Production

For the Jazz ensemble, everything was live, recorded in the same take, so we needed to prepare how we would plan to record the instruments without too much bleed. We decided to record a classic Jazz trio, consisting of a pianist, upright bassist and drummer, recording them in the live room of Studio 113. We started setting up, with two of my group members setting up all the drum mic’s while I set up a close mic and a bridge mic on the bass and the D.I’s for both the upright bass’s pickup and for the keyboard. We decided to D.I a keyboard rather than using the grand piano that’s in the live room, because we were concerned that even though it may have sounded better in general, it would have heavily bled onto the drum and bass mic’s. Once everything was set up, we decided to do some soundchecks, asking the music to play sections of the song in which they all play together, so that we could get an idea of the sound, and what may need altering (e.g mic positions/distance) but also so that the musicians could hear their headphone mixes. We ended up having some issues with headphone mixes, with the musicians being understandably particular about how loud each element was in their headphones. Eventually, we got the headphone mixes right for recording. Also, while we were soundchecking, we added some processing on the way in. We added a light EQ from the desk to the snare, to remove some of the ‘ringing’ tone around 3khz. We also created a parallel compression aux, adding a little to each instrument.

Recording

The recording process in general was very simple. The song was around 5 minutes, and it was a jazz standard that all three of the musicians were familiar with already, so at no point were there any clear or obvious musical mistakes. The only issue we did have, is that during a take, we realised that the compression we had on the drums on the way in was running quite hot, slightly distorting and overcompressing. We simply waited for the take to finish, and then did another short soundcheck to correct the issue. Once fixed, we did a few more takes before getting the musicians into the control room to listen back to takes and discuss which they preferred and which we thought was best, before deciding on a take.

Group Mix

Finally moving into the mix, the first thing we did was create a group for each of the three instruments, so it would be easier to process each element independently. We then looked at the bleed. For the most part we had done well to avoid it, with the use of baffles around the drums helping a lot. There were a few small bleed issues in the bass mic and the tom mics. We discussed gating these mics, but I argued that it would love some of the ‘room’ and the ‘atmosphere’ if we gated it all, so we decided to leave it. We then moved to adding outboard processing to different elements. We put the distressor on the Bass group and a 241 compression on both the kick group and snare group respectively. We started by processing the bass, instinctively starting with a fast-attack and high-ratio, before listening through and realising that the fast staccato notes were being lost, so we pulled back the attack, also adding some desk EQ to control the low-mids. We moved on to the keys, adding the Neve 8803 to control the tone of the ‘fake’ keyboard piano, to make it slightly less tinny and warmer, also adding a small slight plate reverb for a bit of stereo depth.

ENSEMBLE AUDIO SUBMISSION:

Remix

Finally, for the remix, as soon as I found out what vocal it was, I immediately recognised it as a massively famous dance/EDM vocal. So when deciding how to make it my own, I thought that I wanted to stick with the electronic style but change the style, going for something much more cinematic and atmospheric, without any drums at all. I started with finding the chords, and putting them into a pad. I then simply sequenced the rest of the song as I went along, building and building in each section, adding more pads, automating cutoffs and volumes, repeating melody lines, and breaking down in one section to leave space for just the vocal, a bassline and synth topline. I also wanted to add some depth, rather than having everything in MIDI, so I recorded additional chords using the Juno and Minilogue in Room 109. Toward the end, I knew I wanted to make it even more cinematic by adding an orchestral section, so I wrote parts using midi strings and horns. To add to the drama, in the final section, I also decided to layer the two vocal variation of the chorus on top of each, almost echoing back to each other, like a call and response.

REMIX AUDIO SUBMISSION: