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Commercial Pop Track

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For the commercial pop track, we decided to start with a guitar and vocal line as a base to build upon, I got in contact with my friend to record one of his original songs ‘everybody’s in love’ for this. I recorded him to a click with an SM7B on his vocals and his guitar DI’d into the studio as we weren’t going to end up using the guitar track in the final production as it did not fit the style of commercial pop music and was too scratchy to work with.

we then went to develop with track by adding in elements as a studio group. I tracked bass for the track going straight in through a sans amp, jimmy tracked all the synths, piano and strings using a Jupiter-50 synth

we also added multiple different synth swells and cymbal swells as well as incidental one off sounds and notes to add more dynamics and progression to the track, we found this was present in much modern pop music, for example the song espresso by Sabrina carpenter displays this very well and we took a lot of inspiration from it.

when approaching the mix for the pop track, I used another Sabrina carpenter song, man child as a reference, putting particular emphasis on the vocals and having a driving drum sound and pattern that gives the song a large amount of intensity and catchiness. I achieved this with a lot of compressors and limiters to consolidate everything in the track whilst also using reverb buses to give certain elements such as synths and vocals more depth. I also used panning to create a wide stereo image for this track due to how many synths we used, this gave each synth more space and reduced frequency fighting.

during the development of this track we each took multiple different roles, for example, in the session where we recorded bass and synths, fin was tasked with running the desk, whilst me and jimmy had to learn the parts of the song, with me tracking bass and jimmy tracking synths. I was also responsible for sourcing the musician for the initial demo of the track and running that session.

Acoustic Track

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For the acoustic track we decided to go with one of our group members original tracks as it fit the brief perfectly and had a lot of room to expand on it. we began by getting Fin to track his original song on just vocals and acoustic guitar. we then approached this track as a much longer project, recording each instruments session by session, adding drums and a double bass from the session musicians that came into the conservatoire, and then adding instruments like pianos, violins, 12 string guitar, percussion and extra vocals for harmonies and doubling.

we changed the arrangement of this song a few times, cutting it down in places as well as the original track felt a bit long and some sections felt like they were in the wrong places, we swapped focus to what we believed would work better as a chorus compared to the original and it worked perfectly, we also cut down the length of a lot of the verses as they felt quite repetitive originally.

as we knew this was going to be a large scale production, we mostly used spot mics on the instrumentation to get a very clear sound, apart from drums in which we incorporated room mics as well to give the drums space to breathe and contextualize them in the track.

For this tracks mix I planned it out to be a large scale production, using a lot of compressors and reverb to make all the different elements fit together and sound like they were part of the same session. I wanted to put particular focus on the drums and vocals in the track as they are one of the few things that stays constant throughout the track so they had to sound solid and carry the pule and context of the track right the way through.

for the other elements of the track, I decided to pan them all around different parts of the mix to create a very wide stereo image, this gave each instruments its own space to breathe within the track and helped fight against possible muddiness and clashing.

I did find particular issues with the bowed double bass becoming uncontrollable in the bottom end of the mix, I solved this using multiprocessors and eq to bring out some of the higher tones and the woodiness of the bass.

I also extensively used reverb buses and compressors to give all the instrumentation some context and let them sit within space. this gave the mix much more depth.

For the mastering section of this track, I used a very subtle EQ and some compression and limiting to improve the overall mix and make it hit the required short term LUFS value of -10.

We all took many roles for this track, with it being a longer process than the other two to create, we all had multiple occasions of running the desk and live room whilst each of us were tracked on different instruments, for example, fin on vocals and guitar, jimmy on piano and 12 string guitar and myself on percussion.

Location Recording

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For the location recording, I got in contact with two friends of mine to record a track featuring guitar, mandolin and vocals. I decided to set this up in a local pub called Wapentake near the campus, I got in contact with the bar manager and managed to get it booked in for a day when the pub was closed. For this session I decided to use the location recording rig, along with a C414 on the guitar, a km184 on the mandolin and an SM7B on the vocals. for the room mics I decided to go with an orpheus for the furthest away section of the pub as it was shaped like a medium sized hall, and I initially wanted a pair of beebs for the other room mics but ended up going with a pair of XR1’s as I believed they would sound better.

I worked closely with the musicians to develop this track as it was initially 7 minutes long and drastically needed cutting down, together we managed to make it down to 4 and a half minutes, and removed a lot sections of the track that seemed to drag. we also simplified multiple elements of this tracks as it got a bit too messy at certain points and lost a lot of its simple charm.

When approaching the mix for this tack, I wanted to amplify the sound of the room as much as possible while keeping the mix sounding good. to do this I did many things for example, much of the tracks were sent to reverb buses along with feeding the room mics in the mix, creating much more depth in the track and creating a really roomy yet nice sounding mix.

I also decided that the XR1’s could do with some more depth, so I decided to use an 19 millisecond delay on the opposite pan from where each track was, creating an effect as if it was in even bigger room, giving the track an extra bit of depth which went a very long way.

There was a section of this track near the end where the vocals became quite out of control due to the volume and the room noise getting too much for the microphones and it really cut through the mix in some of the higher frequencies, becoming quite unpleasant. I solved this using multiband compressors on the vocal mic and the orpheus in the back of the room, to selectively control those higher frequencies without affecting the rest of the track.

We also took many different roles each for this track, the on location recording was done by me and fin, both of us set up the room, once takes began fin was responsible for working the DAW and monitoring levels on the headphones. I was responsible for sorting out the location and the musicians to record for this track as well.