Commercial Pop Track
During our brainstorming for this we were initially going to write the track ourselves, looking into the billboard top 100 and tiktok trending audios to figure out was is “commercial” in the contemporary musical landscape. Eventually we decided on something akin to a Lady Gaga dance track due to the nature of that style of music, our skillsets and ability to produce. We had booked a Moog Matriarch out to play some ideas for melody and bassline that would fit this commercial pop track. We then sent those demo synth recordings to a talented songwriter who took the melody and developed it further, adding some lyrics about relationships as we developed the synth sounds during our off-times to develop and DI into an ableton project. The vocals were recorded initially by the songwriter herself but they came back slightly out of time and tune, meaning it had to be rerecorded by some of us in the studio group with proper direction. We then used a lot of hardware processing in studio 113 such as compression and lexicon reverb units to give a distinct sound quality from the warmth and tone of these outboard pieces of equipment.
During mixing, a lot of factors had to be considered such as the tones of the bass, the variety of textural sound effects and how the vocals will feel and sit within the mix, in order to do this I had been listening to a variety of Lady Gaga and other electropop artists popular today like Charli XcX to use as references for this process in mixing, paying special attention to the synths, textures and vocals within the mix. I also Needed to automate reverbs, choosing to make the reverbs smaller for the choruses to make them feel more intimate and closer, and larger for the verses. I also automated a much larger reverb for the very end of the track due to the stems ending very abruptly, letting the ending ring out a bit longer.
Acoustic Track
For this track, Nate had reached out to singer/songwriter Gracie De Wolfe from the conservatoire songwriting course. She had a song that was in the works she had lent to us to use and produce fully. Initially we were going to use it for the commercial pop track but had realised pretty early on it’d suit far better under the acoustic track.
We had used the session bass player and drummer during the sessions provided by LCON to get a very solid drum recording and bass recording, We had included Gracie in these sessions as it was her track and we wanted her input, as working closely with the artist was imperative to us as her vision for the track was what we were working towards. We had tried using an acoustic bass and a double bass respectively and as Gracie had voiced a preference for the double bass, that is what we stuck with. Similarly with the drumming pattern.
Our next session was planning what to do next, talking about musicians we knew and also how to change some of the synth parts to fit with the acoustic brief, as the original demo recording had pad synths texturing the whole song so we were discussing how to change those parts for acousitc instruments to serve a similar purpose without being a synthesiser.
We had our next studio session in studio 115 and we were planning to record a guitarist that session but they had cancelled last minute. Because of this sudden change we had to think of how to use our time, which meant Nate had taken a flute from the facilities desk and we spent the session improvising flute parts for the chorus of the track to layer and serve as the synth padding texture that was needed to replace, I had suggested using a large diaphragm condenser mic because of the jazzy airy sound of the flute and the dreamy soundscape we were attempting to achieve with it. due to the impromptu nature of the recording some of the takes had to be scrapped entirely due to mistakes or simply not fitting the vibe of the rest of the track properly. Additionally in another session in 113 we had used the Piano to record sound effects of strumming the strings while holding down a chord and then putting it through lots of processing and reversing the audio to create a glistening riser sound effect, again to replace the synth pads throughout the song.
We had all agreed ahead of time that it would be best for the vocals to be recorded by Nate and Nate alone due to the nature of the song and for the comfort of the singer, Gracie. As we thought it wouldn’t be ideal to be recorded singing with 5 people staring through a glass window judging your performance. This was a decision done in order to get the best vocal takes we could for the song.
For the mixing process I had been using a lot of effects, such as putting the vocal on a send with a logic plugin pedalboard and distortion, playing at a low volume to add a subtle texture to the voice and lift it up during the choruses. I had also decided that heavily compressing the guitar part so it sits consistently in the track while having a distinct tone would help the overall track.
Location Recording
For this location recording, we used a session to discuss our options based on who we knew and our connections to pull strings for a location recording in which the location it was recorded in would benefit the track we were recording. For this we were looking at a jazz group in a small lounge, a folk session in a pub or a choir in a church, eventually we settled on recording the lcon folk society jam sessions in the Chemic Tavern. For this I had reached out to members of this folk society jam session and asked them if it was alright for us to drop by and record one of their sessions. In advance we had also asked them for any dietary requirements as we were going to offer some snacks during the jam session to accomodate their willingness to let us record them and also for a list of instruments so we knew what we were dealing with in advance. However, some of the musicians attending the session did not respons to my message and therefore we had to do some guess work and pick out microphones to take with us that would cover most of our bases.
Going in we had all agreed to be as inobtrusive as possible as this was to record something where the location was part of the character of the track, So this meant we had no plans for what they would be playing or what we would record, and would let them play and we would be adjusting microphones to suit them.
During our set up we had used Zayn’s car to take most of the equipment roughly 2 and a half hours before the session was planned to start, using our time management to plan ahead, check equipment and put mics on stands. This was vital that we did this with so much time due to the interface extender we were using not working properly and coming back with an unexplainable feedback noise with all the microphones plugged in. This was something we could not work through and therefore we scrapped needing the interface extender alltogether. We then took time picking out the most important microphones for the set up and cut our mic capabilities in half, opting to go for a more condensed approach by having people all around one specific area while playing rather than spread out and individual micing which was our initial plan. This adaption worked really well as many people showed up to the space to play, and they played back to back folk songs for 3 hours. of those 3 hours we recorded 2 hours of songs to choose from.
After the location recording was done we had a studio session to go through each of the songs we had captured and take our options down to songs that fit the length requirement of the brief and sounded the best, landing on one song towards the middle of the session due to the overall sound quality, the energy of the performance and the development and evolution of the track.
During Mixing process on my own, I decided i didn’t want to over process any of the audio files due to the nature being very acoustic and organic sounding, and that over processing would be a detriment, so i opted for subtle compression on certain close mic audios and a general room reverb that wasn’t overpowering the tone of the actual environment. I had also edited some of the files to make the background chatter a little quieter in places due to the volume being significantly louder than instrumentations in certain parts. However, I did not want to remove it entirely as I felt it was a part of the character of the location, something we were asked to capture within the recording. This is also a characteristic found often within folk genres; the presence of background chatter as seen in tracks like “Sleep Patterns” by Merchant Ships.
