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Acoustic Track

When tasked with recording and producing an exclusively acoustic song, I immediately put myself forward as the artist that we would be recording. I have been writing and recording acoustic-led indie-folk music for the last few years, and it has been a core interest for a while. As for selecting the song, I sent a few demos that I had recorded myself earlier in the academic year and asked my group which they thought was best for the project, which had most potential to build on and which felt more comfortable to produce.

The demo I had recorded for my track, titled ‘feel’, had the bare bones of the song. It had a double-tracked acoustic guitar, vocals, bass and very simple drum take that I recorded with only a kick, tom and snare, using my hands rather than sticks. On the 27th of January, me and the rest of my group, in our weekly seminar, listened through the demo and discussed what elements could be added to flesh the song out, and with the session musician recording on the horizon, we decided that this would be the song that we’d use for that session. We agreed that for the bass, we would keep some of the notation that I played in the demo, but that we’d also leave some of it up to the session musicians interpretation. We agreed on the same rationale when it came to the drums, but decided that we would give the drummer brushes, and encourage further use of cymbals for more texture.

DEMO BASS+DRUMS

SESSION MUSICIAN BASS+DRUMS

Furthermore, when recording the drummer, although I couldn’t be at the actual session, we agreed prior that we would change the demo drum part, as I am not an actual drummer, and the demo part was only there to indicate where the drums would be in the arrangement. The drum mic/bass mic list for our recording is as shown below:

In the time after the drum and bass session, we had various seminars in which we tried to start a drums and bass mix with what we had recorded, but knew there were more elements due to be added, and additionally, wanted to re-record my vocal and guitar, as we were still working with the demo versions. Then, on the 19th of April, we had Studio 422 booked, for essentially the whole day, and we took this opportunity, primarily to record strings, but also to add any other acoustic instruments we thought would add to the tracks texture, as well as re-record my guitar and vox.
Although we had agreed that the track would definitely benefit from having some strings, we decided that creating an arrangement beforehand wasn’t necessary, as I already had a few ideas, and we wanted to create the string part on the fly, working collaboratively with the musician, bouncing off different ideas, trying to record as much melodic information as possible. One thing that I had my mind set on was having an element of call and response between the vocals and strings, especially in the first verse, as there is a lot of time between each line, and I wanted that space to be filled.

We also ran the cello mic’s through some pedals, just to have another texture if we needed it. The cello/violin input list and pedals are as follows:

After recording the cello, we still had a few hours left in the studio, and wanted to finish the recording for this song, so we started by re-tracking my lead vocal

Next, while my fellow group member Rhys, who was engineering the session, broke for lunch, I recorded myself playing piano, just one take, improvising over the whole song, knowing that we could then edit the take down to the best bits, and bury it in the mix slightly.

Finally, due the criteria for this particular song being a strictly acoustic recording, I wanted to record something that could replace the very quiet but crucial synth pad/lead sound from the demo, so I decided to get a harmonium out and, like the piano, record an improvised take of the whole song, again, with the approach that it would be editing and buried in the mix.

Once everything was recorded, we moved onto the mix, and prior to going away and working on our individual mixes, we used two of our seminars (21st and 28th of April) to do final checks and to make sure everyone had the same stems/session. For example, on the 21st, we all agree that the mass of strings recorded sounded a little too disorganised and unbalanced, so I agreed to, before the next session, edit the string section and create one print of all the strings that we would all unanimously use in our final mixes. As for my final individual mix, my overarching approach was to stay within the sonic expectations of the genre, using artists like Flyte and Ben Howard as reference, treating the rhythm section as a backdrop, chugging away in the background, while the range of harmonic and melodic elements take the forefront with the vocals.

FINAL ACOUSTIC TRACK MASTER:

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Commercial Pop Track

For the commercial pop track, we were unsure at first which route to go down. A pop song at the top of the charts 10 years ago sounds completely different to the music that is topping the charts nowadays, so there was a certain ‘openness’ to the brief, that stumped us a little. However, one of our group members, Leon, put forward a pop track that he had made prior to the assignment that he wanted to change the vocals on, and add some more instrumentation. In pre-production, when initially making the track, they put together a rough demo, inspired by the likes of Kali Uchis. They built a loop with some synth sounds, added the bass and drums to give the song a groove, and finally layered some guitar and piano.
With the instrumental already there, we wanted to add some more elements, to make it slightly more grand and impactful, and we thought some analog synths backing up the existing MIDI was a perfect idea, so during a seminar, myself and Rhys played over the top, one synth doubling the bass-line, the other a counter melody over the chorus.

Once the instrumental was fully finished, we needed a female vocalist, who could preferably write her own lyrics for the song, and so I thought of my friends Ivania. The group agree to let me take the song to her and collaborate on it. I gave her a week or so to write lyrics and then we did a very simple vocal recording session. However, after the first session, the group quite rightly felt that more needed to be added vocally, and that the takes needed more energy to be apt for the ‘commercial pop brief’. So, Ivania and I did another final vocal session, doing many more takes than prior, so we had more options in post. We also did some harmony/vocal arrangements on the fly to strengthen the vocal section, which is the always the focal point of any pop track

vocals solo-ed: chorus

Finally, once everything was recorded, I moved on to my individual mix. For this, I knew that the key to popular music is the vocal, so I spent most of my time getting the correct amount of compression, EQing out the lows and getting a crispy sharp high end to sit above everything, and finally tuning everything correctly while still ensuring the vocal sounds natural and the diction is still clear.

FINAL COMMERICAL POP SONG MASTER:

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Location Recording

When tasked with a location recording we had a few ideas, and we nearly recorded an ensemble in a church, but after that fell through, Rhys had the idea of recording a band in his garden. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there on the day of the recording session, but they managed to capture the band very clearly, with not masses of bleed, while still sounding like a live outdoor performance. The mic list and setup was as show below:

When it came to mixing, we did a short group mix in our final seminar together, before going away to finish mixing and mastering independently. In the seminar discussed the mix, agreeing that certain mix decisions should be intuitive to the genre e.g. despite the task being a location recording, that certain ‘cleaning up’ in post-production is expected, while still consciously not removing the sound of the ‘space’ it was recorded in. Additionally, we wanted to mix the guitar further, so we re-amped it in the live room, found a good sound and then printed it. The setup for which can be seen below:

After that, we then bussed each element (vox, drums, guitar, bass) onto its out group to create ‘stems’ on the desk, which made it easier to get a full balance of the band, adding some compression and reverb before printing all the stems for us to use in our own mixes. The bus groups and outboard processing can be seen below:

In my mix of this track, I put focus on what was discussed in our lesson. I steered away from the habit of trying to get everything to sound as clear as possible, and leaned into the sound of the location and the live sound of the band together, to get a overall solid mix.

FINAL LOCATION RECORDING MASTER: