Jimmy Critchley 24101273
SHR4C004M-003 Song Prod. & Write Up
Task 1: Three Minute Song Production (70%)
Task 2: 1000 Word Write-Up (30%)
Around the 19th of March, I took a chord progression, that I had come up with at home, to the studio with my guitar playing friend, Jamie, to further develop the sound. On that day we came up with the songs structure, it went intro, verse, pre, chorus, post, verse, pre, chorus, post, chorus, outro. However, I wasn’t sure what kind of song I wanted this to be, then my mate showed me the song ‘Roman Holiday’, by Fontaines DC. This song became the foundation for how I wanted my song to feel.
Now that I understood which direction I wanted to take the track, I created a very rough demo, including MIDI drums, and DI guitars, which I knew I could take and develop into the final song. Following this, me and Jamie took both acoustic and electric guitars into many studios, recording as many takes as thought necessary to provide my song with the right amount of variation and character. I decided on DI acoustic guitar, helping provide a lot of rhythmic quality to the instrumental, and for the electric, we mic’d up mostly Fender twin reverbs and VOX’s, with an SM57 and a Sontronics Halo, switching the guitars pickups between different sessions for more variation.
Next, I then needed to find a drummer, I only suggested the sound of the drums in the demo, but made it known that I wanted their own character. The drummer that helped was my mate Harry, so we attended a studio session on April 7th, and recorded many takes of the drums, the last of which I ended up using, due to its epic fills and energy.
Finally, I recorded one more variation of the rhythm guitar, as well as the bass, and now all there was to record were the vocals, which I had always intended to do myself. I had booked studio 116 b to record my vocals, I chose an AKG 414 to record as I thought this would provide my vocal with the body it needed to stand out within my mix. The recording session was around three hours long, and to save time I had decided how many vocal layers I wanted and where I wanted them beforehand.
To begin the session, I started with a few practice runs, then moved on to record the first lead vocal take, which runs throughout. After this, I knew I wanted to double track this lead, so the vocals would be more present, so I performed around 3 more takes of this lead vocal, on two channels each, ensuring that I had enough to comp, and panned one hard left, and the other hard right. This helped bring more width to the vocals, adding depth through differing timbres. When it came to the development of the vocal, I knew I wanted harmony, as well as more layers, however, I tried multiple harmonies in the pre-chorus, so it could build into the chorus, but I wasn’t happy with the way they sounded, ultimately scrapping those takes. During each chorus of my track, there is two more double tracking layers of the lead vocal, again, panning one left and the other right. As well as this, there are two harmony lines, one low and one high, that I double tracked too, feeling all this was enough for the sound of my vocal to begin mixing with.
When it came to mixing my vocal, I knew I wanted to somewhat replicate the presence of the vocal in my reference track. The steps I took to produce this began with EQ, removing the lows completely, avoiding any muddiness, attenuating the root of my vocal, and then boosting around 2k for some presence, as well as the high end. After this I added a DeEsser, my sibilant sounds are pretty harsh, so I knew I wanted this plugin early in my chain to irradicate it. After this, I have two FET compressors in a row, one taming the peaks, and the other controlling the rest of the transients, a couple equalizer plugins – adding more presence. Then finally, another compressor, catching anything else that pokes through. For the backing vocals, the chain is exactly the same, however, I added a saturation plugin for more warmth. Finally, to further glue the sounds together, I added reverb and delay aux channels, applying to taste, ensuring that it wasn’t affecting the other instruments, and the mix as a whole.
Finally, in the postproduction, I knew I had to include samples somewhere, and I felt during the choruses that the snare and kick were becoming lost in the mix. To combat this, I used a kick and snare one shots, layering them on top of the live recorded drums. When picking the samples, I made sure to choose desired qualities, I felt the kick needed more bass, and the snare needed more ‘sizzle’, so I chose accordingly. When mixing, I took what effects I already applied to the live drums as a template, for the kick, I used an EQ to remove some harsher frequencies, a compressor to control the transients, and a couple more EQ’s to add punchiness and click. For the snare sample, I didn’t apply much, however, as I had chosen this sample specifically, I used the EQ quite drastically, removing a lot of bass and low mids to focus on the high end. To finish up, I added a compressor to fit the sample into the mix.
The commercial potential of my song, I believe, is great. The song I used as reference was ‘Roman Holiday’, by Fontaines DC, in their album, SKINTY FIA. I used this song to influence the structure, tonality, instrumentation, and mix of my own song. For example, I borrowed the ABAB template, as well as the use of DI acoustic guitar, as these were the components I enjoyed, as a consumer, the most. Skinty Fia became Fontaines DC first number one album in both Ireland and the UK, and the band used a lot of these same qualities throughout the album, songs like ‘I love you’, and ‘Jackie Down the Line’, having over 100 million streams on spotify alone. The track follows the A major scale, similar to many chart-topping songs, the most known being: ‘Wonderwall’ (Oasis), and ‘Somone like You’ (Adele), these songs being the artists most popular song, having over four billion streams combined, showing that the A major key is helps the popularity of songs.
