Task 1: Three Minute Song Production (70%)
Task 2: 1000 Word Write-Up (30%)
Songwriting Process
I wrote “Cabin in the Snow” about the idea of an escape from busy everyday life where the only thing that matters is the people you love, specifically your family. The main inspirations for the lyrical and sonic content were artists Phoebe Bridgers, Lizzy McAlpine and Paolo Nutini.
Arrangement/Genre
The centrepiece of all of these artists sounds is a very delicate and sincere vocal, supported by some sort of guitar (typically acoustic). Bridgers’ “Garden Song” uses a retro digital distortion plugin on a bus where the whole accompaniment is sent to, and above it sits a very Hi-Fi, breathy and soft vocal that communicates the melodic and lyrical content of the song. This is very typical of the current “folk/rock” wave that Bridgers has been instrumental in representing. Using bus compression, saturation and even distortion is definitely something I want to explore in the mixing stage to evoke this musical style.
Recording
Drums
Lizzy McAlpine’s most streamed song “ceilings” took advantage of samples and found sound for its percussive makeup. In an interview for The Tape Notes Podcast, she details the tracking of bamboo sticks, rocks and nuts alongside the snare to make it more thick, raw and cutting. I took inspiration from this and made my own sampled drums with books, coins, bracelets, and brushes. All of these were recorded with an SM58 for practicality and consistency, as most of the sound designing and shaping would be done in the box.
The coins and snare were layered to create a thick snare sound, and I played an 8th note pattern with the brushes on paper through the song with a guide vocal as my reference.
Acoustic Guitar
The song started out as an 8th note arpeggiated chord idea, which is the first thing I recorded. I first tried playing it palm muted, then did a take letting the notes ring out to see which i felt fitted better.
Muted Take:
Open Take
I felt that the open playing supported the vocal in the sparse first part of the track.
Keys/Midi Parts
Though I did want to keep the first minute of the song as sparse and minimal as possible, I felt there was room for a sustained and simple keys part. I quickly programmed some gentle piano and using reductive EQ and adjusting the amp filter I ended up with a subtle and very genre-typical sounding keys part. I panned it soft right to balance the acoustic to the left.
I knew the second half of the song would need sampled string’s to make the listener feel as though the music is scoring the narrative like in a film. The plugin I used is “BBC Symphony Orchestra” by Spitfire Audio
Creative Effects
Most production and arrangement decisions were made with emotive and narrative intent. That is to say that the instruments are used to reflect the lyrical content. The song’s narrative begins with “yellow headlights, quiet country roads” which is where the few instruments present are running through a Lo-Fi plugin called the Cymatics Origin.
Both the start and end of the track uses the above settings which include pitch/phase modulation, lowered sample rate and cassette hiss emulation to give the illusion of the song being played through a low quality car stereo. The sample that brings us out of this LoFi effect is a recording of my CD player closing, which seemed appropriate to transition to a clean mix when the vocal comes in.
The instrumentation remains unchanged until the second verse, where on cue with the line “opening the door”, the bus containing percussion, strings and all other instruments that have yet to come in enter with an automated LPF opening up.
The driving percussion signifies the new part of the story, as well as the strings adding a dramatic and romantic feel.
In the next line, I used an 8th note tape delay on only the word “more” with the feedback set to 122% making it grow in intensity and volume to reflect the lyrics (a wooden picture-frame and 100 more).
I was aware to not overuse the technique of word-painting should it lose its value and feel like “mickey mousing” (a scoring technique popularised in early cartoons where the musical composition acts more as a sound effect depending on what the characters are doing i.e. chromatic ascending scale when a character is walking up stairs). This last case was one that i desperately wanted to include, where on cue with the lyric “oak-wood stairs that one day little shoes come running down”, a marimba plays a sweet descending motif whilst automated panning moves it gently left to right. I always thought this to be the most touching and vulnerable lyric in the song as it refers to the magic of wanting children and imagining all the things you’d want to give them. I chose a marimba because it is typically seen used as a child’s first instrument, as with anything that is percussion-based. It has a fragile and innocent quality which I felt perfectly encapsulated the meaning of that second verse.
Electric Guitars
The final verse/outro was lacking in energy and a sense of climax, so I double tracked a heavily distorted PRS SilverSky using an overdrive pedal and amp simulator pedal. I then automated the panning so they came in together centrally and slowly grew apart throughout the verse, ending hard-panned. I used a high-send level to the large vocal reverb bus so that they sunk into the instrumentation adding thickness and loudness, rather than poking out of the mix and subtracting from the vocal and lyrics.
Similarly, the gap between the chorus and second verse felt empty and lacking in definition. I used my Epiphone ES-339 P90 played with a slide to present a simple motif that is split between 2 tracks, each panned soft left and right.
Mixing for the Big Picture
The song is a daydream, so the more stuck into the dream the narrative goes, the more vocal has to be sent to the reverb bus to reflect this. For the final verse/bridge there is more reverb on the vocal than at any other point, and there is greater boost around 10kHz to make it feel airy.
The “kick” was lacking in punch, which made the song lack drive and momentum. I found that the more compression, limiting and EQ (extreme LPF) i took off of the channel inserts, the more it punched through.
