2013 Off to a good start

So with Christmas and New Years celebrations now firmly behind us we set out into a brand new year ahead. I have resolved to focus really hard this year on getting more music done, and doing it better than ever before. Learning new skills along the way and honing existing ones too.

The downtime I get over the holiday season always spurs me on to make some music and this year was no exception. There was a track by James White I had been sent the demo of many months ago which had peaked my interest but I not found time to put any work into it and create a full production of the song. So as I relaxed into holiday mode I decided to crack on and get something done.

In Grey

The demo was a simple piece consisting of some vocals, rhythm and lead guitar parts and a simple programmed drum loop. No real style was suggested by any of the parts so I decided to just let things flow and see what came. I originally started by recording a rhythm guitar part to improve upon the original part. With this down I added in some drums and a bass line and got the track off the ground.

Although the original track was at 126bpm it played heavily on the half beat tempo which interested my as that is very current in a lot of dance productions. This led me to start adding in some synth parts, moving me away from a rock sound into more interesting territories. Soon I had an intro, first verse and chorus all happening, but sounding very different for the original demo - Time to get James involved and check he is cool with this I think!

First Draft - check

By now the synths had completely taken over, with the guitar part I recorded moved into the second verse to get it a new sound after the first chorus. So I sent James a quick first draft mix of what I had, with his guide vocals laid in to get a go/ no-go seeing as it was his song and all!

Luckily James was pretty excited by what I had and after making a few suggestions gave me a thumbs up to carry on, which I did. One of these was to up the tempo from 126 to 130bpm which added a much better energy to the track. This btw was one full day session - from lining up the demo to a late night finish for a completed end to end draft. When the juices are flowing you just need get you head in the game and get it done!

The final thing I did that day was render off a mix of the new backing track to send to James so he could work on some new vocal tracks.

Vocals in a jiffy

To my surprise, when I checked my inbox next morning I had a message form James saying he had uploaded a new set of vocals already - Swift work indeed! So it was now back on me. I'd had a few listens to the track now and identified a few areas of the arrangement that I knew needed more work, so that's where I started.

The end of the song featured a double chorus to finish which comes straight after a build out of the dropped middle section. I'd had this as 2 full chorus's back to back but could see it was struggling to hold the power over such a long duration and still provide a powerful finish. I decided to do a double drop where the build out of the bridge leads to a stripped back chorus which allows the lift into the final chorus the build it needs.

I also spent some time tightening the interaction between the kick, bass and bottom synth sound to lock the groove more tightly. While doing this I also stripped back some of the kick hits from each verse to allow a little more room for the verses to breath. I was pretty much there now.

The mix

In Grey arrange page

One of my music related resolutions this year is to give more direct focus to my mix sessions and deal with them separately to the tracking / production stage of creating a song.  As part of this I will be getting back into the habit of rendering each final track as an audio file in Sonar before I even start mixing. This process can be quite time consuming but ultimately will pay dividends down the line. 

Recently I have gotten lazy and had even been leaving soft synths running live at mixdown which is a bad habit for many reasons - 2 of which are:

1. Eats up valuable CPU cycles  which could be used to better polish you mix
2. If you remove, upgrade or otherwise lose that plugin down the line your mix will be knackered!

James had provided some new vocals to replace the existing guide parts, but had also introduced some additional backing parts and even a short rap over the intro. After picking through the best bits of the new and existing material I was able to comp together a final vocal arrangement which used the best of both to good effect.

So with my bouncing and rendering and comping done I was left with a 36 track mix page to deal with. 

This was quite a tricky mix as I wanted to get the bass really strong with a good defined kick drum, and I went through a couple of versions before I was happy. The result? Take a listen for yourself

So first week of 2013 and one new track under my belt - Happy New Year indeed!

Chris

Old dog - Old tricks

New tricks surely?

Hang on you're thinking, that's not how the saying goes, but read on because I do have a point. Having spent 20+ years of my life involved in writing, recording and producing music in some shape or form I consider myself very much an 'old dog'. As such, I know I must work hard to stay up with the times and be sure to learn as many new 'tricks' as possible in order to keep my productions fresh and current.

With the advanced software DAW's and plug-ins most of us have access to today there are plenty of new tricks to learn. Some serve to add new mixing and production techniques to our arsenal. Some extend the depth of the audio soundscape we create, and some simply ensure our final mixes can complete with the professional recordings we hear on the radio everyday.

But even today, working with the latest in multi faceted audio software the core principles of recording, mixing and audio engineering still hold true. If you are working with audio and terms like "gain staging", "EQ", "compression" and  "spectral mixing" mean nothing to you I urge you to go look them up! Getting the basics right at source is still the real key to getting a great mix.

So what exactly are these 'old tricks' I've been alluding to? They really are too wide and varied for any singe blog post to cover i'm afraid. Some are techniques I learnt so many years ago that they are ingrained in my working practices, but every now and then I come across a tip somewhere that reminds me of a simple core principle technique that I'd forgotten about. It might be a neat vocal treatment idea or a best practice starting point for miking or EQ'ing a particular instrument - whatever. Point is it's very rarely new or complicated stuff, just great tools to have in the bag of tricks to get the job done. If your engineering 'toolbag' is empty it's time you went tool shopping!

Viva La revolution!

All this was brought to mind recently when I discovered The recording revolution. This brilliant site is an Aladdin's cave of tips, tricks, reviews and techniques. Some great new ideas here, but also plenty of the 'old tricks' we all need to learn and master so that they become second nature to us. It also has a youtube channel with a host of video tutorials to soak up and learn from. If you have any interest in improving your recording mixing and skills you should definitely take a look.

3 tips from me

In the spirit of a number of the posts on The recording revolution I would like to offer you my 3 top tips. Please take from these what you will but they work for me:

• Stop hankering after the next piece of kit - We all get 'gear lust' every now and again, but assuming that you have some reasonable kit assembled in your studio then stop lusting after new gear and take the time to really learn what your existing kit can, and more importantly what it can't do. Once you really know your gear and your software you can remove the barriers between an idea and a recording and get work done. This will serve you more than another new piece of kit you don't know how to use.

• It's 'Mixing' - not 'Fixing'! - Getting it right at every stage of the recording process will pay dividends when you get to the mix every time. Period. Most of us tend to mix as we record these days, but it pays to set aside a session to just mix your new track. Get all your recording, editing and arranging done and then break from the track. When you come back you can then concentrate only on the mix. Often I will remove all the plug-ins I added during tracking and zero the board so I can create the cleanest most focused mix possible.

• Never stop learning - I still learn something with every mix I do. I still look for great tips (new and old) whatever the source. I still soak it all up. I still practice 'critical listening' to recordings new and old every day. I'm always still learning! And so should you be.

With so much great information available to us from some many sources both free and paid we owe it to ourselves and our music to seek out and learn as many new and old tricks as we can.

Happy exploring people! 

A song for the studio - part 4

Mixing the track

So this is the final instalment of this particular series where I have been detailing the writing and recording process of my song 'Play it again'.

After the brilliant studio day, we returned from the studio with a nicely recorded, and reasonably well mixed version of the song - But Colin and I both felt that it needed a little more.

Ear candy

Play it again - arrange page

For me the song was lacking what is often refered to as 'ear candy' in music production circles. These are the quiet sounds that sit in the background or the appear only a few times giving depth and interest to the production. Something for your ear to latch onto outside of the main musical parts without even really knowing it. 

First on my list was the introduction - There was good energy in what we had but I felt it needed something a little more. I added the arpeggiated 'guitar' part to the very start. I also deliberately set it to a lower level than the main opening chords of the song - this is an old trick which can cause the listener to turn up the track when it starts thinking it is quiet gaining you extra impact when the song actually kicks in!

Over the main introduction I also added some strummed guitar chords - well, an acoustic guitar patch from Dimension Pro anyway. This for me helped to sell the introduction much better.

As the track gets into verse one the arpeggiated 'guitar' sound drops back to play a series of long notes with a slide transition between. This for me was just enough to draw the ear into the back of the track and add some movement.

Come the verse middle and chorus, I doubled the piano part with the same acoustic guitar patch used in the intro, just to add a bit of sparkle and texture.

Verse 2 is treated to a simple riff from the new acoustic guitar patch - a 'picked jangle part' set way out in the left of the image. The verse middle sees the return of the sliding note motif, and the same sound makes a return in the bridge alongside the picked acoustic.

And that was it - just enough extra material to add some interest and variation to the soundstage.

The mix - my mix!

Nick had done a solid job of mixing the track at the studio, especially when you consider he only had around 30mins on it, but for my taste there was a shade to much reverb on the drums and backing vocals. Also the drums were a little to upfront which was fine while the track was quite sparse, but now I had added some extra instruments I needed a little more to sit everything in.

Play it again - mix page

I started my mix by applying gates to all the solo drum tracks. This was partly to help me separate the sounds ready for individual processing, but also allowed me to shape the attack and decay of the individual drums. This was particularly important for the toms which drive the groove of the drum track. They had more decay and ring than I needed and by carefully setting the gate I was able to keep the attack and drive but lose most of the ring which was robbing space for the other parts.

I added gating and pretty heavy compression to the snare too to give it plenty of edge and ensure it cut through well in the mix. All the drums were routed to a drum bus and additional compression and EQ applied along with a little splash of short bright reverb. The only exception was the kick track which I heavily gated to remove all the spill from the rest of the kit, compressed, EQ'ed and routed directly through to the master bus so that it was not treated to the drum reverb.

The other tracks received the usual array of EQ, compression and reverb treatments to might expect and were routed via busses to the master output.

The final touch was to apply some low ratio / low threshold single band compression to the master bus, followed by a more targeted multi-band compressor to glue everything together. Final icing was added with Sonar's excellent 'Boost 11' limiter to give it that extra loudness required to compete with commercial mixes.

And that was it done....

And here it is if your still interested ;o)

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings

All the best

Chris

Tribute to a lost friend

Nick Lowe (4/6/69 - 3/8/12)

This week I received the truly sad news that my friend and musical collaborator Nick Lowe ended his life on 3rd August 2012.

Although Nick had battled for many years with his personal demons, recent times he really appeared to be on a positive path, and was fitter in mind body and soul each time I saw him. This made the news all the more shocking and hard to grasp.

Nick was a prolific songwriter and had a way with song structure that I always found intriguing. He was also totally fearless when it came to melody writing, simply reaching for the note he wanted regardless whether it was in his range or not - this was to his credit, and always produced interesting results. To me his melodies never felt stale or predicable because of it.

Best of all for me as a producer he was totally open to trying new ideas and styles for his songs - giving me freedom to take the song in the direction I heard in my head. He was always keen to receive critique of his new ideas and like a sponge for tips and techniques on how something might be improved.

We spent endless hours talking about music in general, and each others song writing efforts in particular. Sadly in the 9 years I knew him we only managed to finish 8 studio recordings of his songs.

At the time of his death, I had a demo of his in my 'to-do' list which I had promised him I would turn into an upbeat modern pop/disco track. I had loved the song first time I heard it, but had not found the time to work on the track.

Inspired by the sad events, I set about finishing the song using the guide vocal from the original demo he had given me. He never got to hear this version, but I think he would have loved it.

  

This ones for you Nick - Rest easy now my friend

Chris.

A Song for the studio - Part 3

Studio day - July 20th 2012

Ok, so after all the writing, planning and worrying the big day finally came along. In the lead up to the session I had spent some time trying to flesh out a demo of the song to help me understand the direction I wanted to take it in. Try as I might though I simply could not pin it down and get a start on it. I took the decision fairly late on to 'wing it' on the day and hope that the producer could help me draw the best out of the material.

Recording a hi-hat overdub for verse 2

How not to prepare...

As the studio was in Kent, I live in Bournemouth and my brother is located in High Wycombe we decided to  to stay over at our parents house in Crawley the night before so minimise the distance we would both need to travel on the day. This also meant that we could have a good catch up the night before and discuss our plans for the session that lay ahead.

As neither of us had previously recorded at a commercial studio before we were both slightly apprehensive about how the session would go but were channelling this into creative nervous energy. After meeting up on Thursday evening we headed out for a bite to eat and a 'few drinks' to discuss strategy....

Now, as we don't often get to spend time together a 'few drinks' very quickly dissolved into 'several' if not 'many' drinks and a late night to boot! However, we did use the time to get our ideas fully aligned and make sure we were on the same page with our ideas.

Off to Kent

After a late night, we had an early start to get on the road to Kent to arrive in good time at the studio. We arrived at Broadwood Studios and met the owner and our producer/engineer for the day Nick Wood. It was quickly apparent that Nick was a nice guy with and easy and friendly manner. His open nature and encouragement put us both at ease very quickly - this was going to be an enjoyable session!

We started the session by playing the rough demo of 'Play it again' to Nick, and explaining our thoughts on where the song should go from a production point of view. Generally I work with sampled drums and bass although I try hard to ensure the parts I create are convincing but since the studio featured a real drum kit which Nick could play for us I was keen to incorporate this into the track. After a quick few listens to the demo we then took to the the live room with a guitar and note pad to start on the process of working out the basic drums parts I wanted Nick to play.

I was great to be in the room with another musician with different talents to my own because I could have my ideas quickly interpreted into musical parts. In a relatively short time we had fleshed out the ideas for the drum part and it was time to start recording.

Red light is on

First to be recorded were the acoustic guitar parts. These were a simple strumming of the chords and run throughout the song. I recorded around 6 takes with the idea to be to end up with 2-3 good takes to form the basis of the rhythm track. I was reasonably happy with my performances as I only made a few mistakes on the run throughs, although I was struggling with the B7 chord in the middle 8 for some reason! (go and listen and you might hear it!). While I was recording the guitar in the live room, Nick set up Colin with a mic in the control room to capture a guide vocal to aid with the rest of the tracking process.

Next to be recorded were the drums. Nick spent a short time resetting the drum kit and putting up mics ready for recording which was interesting for me to watch as its something I have never had chance to do. After setting levels and fine tuning the setup it was time to record. As Nick would be playing the drums I was left in charge of running the desk from the control room. I quick once over the controls from Nick and we were ready to roll tape... or hard disc or something.. ;o)

By his own admission drums are not Nick strongest instrument, but after a few run throughs to warm up we were soon getting good takes down. Several passes later we had all we needed to construct the drum track. I was really pleased with the tom heavy rhythm we'd created for the verses and the contrasting straighter beat of the choruses. Finally the song was starting to get the voice I had in my head. 

Bass and vocals

Colin in the vocal booth

Next we needed a bass part. Nick is an accomplished guitar and bass player and was happy to lay down a bass part for the song. It's a simple song in many ways and only needed a simple bass part. So much so that I was happy to let Nick record something with out feeling any need to direct it or provide input. He quickly recorded a nice solid bass part, locked to the drums that underpinned the song just the way it should.

Now it was time to hand over the Colin and add arguably the most important part of the song - the lead vocal. Up to now we had been working to the guide vocal part recorded right at the beginning of the session, but with the guitars, bass and drums down we could fine tune the performance aspects of the lead vocal in terms of phrasing and pronunciation and where the vocal needed to push and where it could pull back a touch. 

I been recording Colin for a long time and know his voice well. I have always found that his best performances come in the first 3-4 takes and that his voice quickly tires after this and needs a rest period. True to form after a few warm up takes we began recording and takes 2&3 where among the best. I called for a break to let his voice rest and we used the time to work out the keyboard parts.

Piano and BV's

After some initial playing around, I came up with a nice open and simple piano part which Colin and I liked and we spent a short time recording this, not more to be said about this really..

The session was moving fast, as was the clock so it was time to press on with the backing vocals. I had already worked out a high backing vocal which I had sung during the initial demo recording so it headed into the vocal booth to lay that down a few times to get two good takes we could use to double the part. I initially wanted to get Colin to double this part to provide body to the sound, but Nick suggested we perhaps work out a lower part to sit below the main melody. Always open to ideas I quickly worked out what we need and Colin sang through it a few times to again give us two takes to double the part. The result was great, providing a nice wall of vocals to really life the main lines of the chorus.

Colin decided that he could do a better take of the lead vocal, so headed back to the booth to perform the song a few more times. It was one of these takes that eventually became the final vocal. Take 3 if memory serves correctly.

Mixing against the clock

We were well into the last hour of the session by this point, and really needed to press on with the mix. Nick had been balancing the tracks as we went, but now was time for move surgical precision and sculpting of the sound. Normally you would set aside more time for mixing a track, but since I had already said that I wanted to take away the raw tracks to do my own mix at home later, I was happy for Nick to just to work up a quick mix to best present the song as it stood at the end of the session. I watched with interest to see his process and was pleased to see it was not far different from my own.

The following 30 minutes were spent tweaking EQ, adding effects and balancing the track. A little compression here and there and some overall limiting to to the final mix bus to give the track some 'loudness' and we were done!

From just an idea to a pretty full track in just 8 hours including recording live guitar, drums, bass and piano parts, and laying down lead vocals and backing vocals and finishing off with a quick mix - Not a bad days work I reckon!

So what did we end up with? - Take a listen below, and remember to check back for Part 4 where I will detail my additional production and mixing sessions carried out my own studio which lead to the final version of the song.

Thanks for reading

Chris

A Song for the studio - Part 2.

The writing session

I wrote before about creating a new song with my brother for us record at our upcoming studio session. I wanted to write a short post to document the writing session and describe the process in a little more detail.

A guitar, pencil and pad, a few chords and a dash of time. All you need to write a song...

It's been a long while since I had written a new song as I mostly concentrate my efforts on producing tunes for others these days, and in the week running up the the writing session I felt I should be trying to note down some ideas, but as hard as I tried I found myself coming up blank!

Generally as a writing pair my brother is the lyricist and I create the music, but these lines are not definitive and we will both contribute to the song as a whole. We haven't had a chance to write directly together for many years so I was a little nervous approaching this session whether we would still click quickly into place and start to feed from each others ideas.

Getting started

The session started as all good writing sessions should, with a cup of coffee and a chat. Colin (my brother) had brought along his song book and ideas file and we spent some time getting into the zone by reviewing old songs we had written or worked on together and also skimming through some of the half finished ideas he had in there.

One song caught our attention, originally entitled 'Better late than never' it consisted of a verse, verse middle and a few lines for the chorus. Essentially the song was about rediscovering an old song and realising that it never really got the time it deserved, we both felt that this was an interesting concept especially considering the context of what we were doing. Colin couldn't remember the melody or chord sequence associated with the song but that didn't matter as it gave us a blank staring point, and the few lyrics we had would make a great jumping in point.

So we had our starting point.

Working quickly

Now was the time to work quickly and to get the idea moving while inspiration was still fresh. In my experience about 80% of the song gets written in the first 40 minutes of a writing session, because if the idea is exciting to you it will begin to suggest  its own direction and you simply hold on for the ride. We quickly settled on chord sequences and melodies for the various section of the song, and began to flesh out the lyrics often with lines we both agreed were simply placeholders to be revisited later. As I said it is key at this stage to let the song flow and not get too hung up on details - These can be worked out later.

Although I feel sure that this song will end up centred around the guitar, when I'm writing I prefer to work out chords and melodies on the piano. As this is my stronger instrument and allows me to be more inventive and creative when working out chord changes and I can better visualise how a melody needs to move. My limited guitar playing ability always leads me to the same few chord choices which can be a problem.

Along the way the song gained a new chorus and title based on the line 'Play it again'. We wrote a new second verse and a bridge, while also editing and rewriting parts of the original song's first verse.

Job done - for now..

We spent around 4 hours in total writing the song, and by the end we had a finished piece - all be it one still with a way to go both lyrically and structurally. I feel that it needs as short break possibly after the first chorus, and a proper intro is called for too.

But time our was up. Our wives had returned with the kids and it was time to call it a day.

One last job remained, and that was to record a quick one take 'scratch demo' of the song for us to both go away and listen to so we could refine the thing towards being 'ready'. So if your interested, here is that very recording. Rough round the edges and full of plenty of mistakes, but it's our version 1.0

Final thoughts

I was a little worried going into this that we would not be able to come up with the goods on the day, but deep down I knew it should work as long as we could keep our egos at bay were just be open to comment and suggestion from each other.

It was a hugely enjoyable session which produced a song that neither of us would have written alone, which is great as it means we both feel attached to it and totally on board with the idea.

However, the biggest thing I've taken away for the process is that there is no such thing as writers block in music - all you need to do is make something, anything - if is good then great - Job done. If it's just 'OK' then you, or maybe someone you know can probably improve it, change it and mould it into something better. If just plain stinks then you at least have made something and it might spark other ideas to move forward with!

So I will leave you with this thought (which I think I originally heard in some form or other from Merlin Mann)

Make a version 1.0 - it can always be improved in version 1.5!!

Chris 

Old Masters...

A blast from the past

Now of course I'm not talking about the painters here, but rather my old master tapes from many a year back. Hang on, did you just say tape? - Yep, and cassette tape at that!

A recent request by my Nephew for a copy of the backing track of one of my old songs so he could do his own version of the song had me digging out my old Tascam 424 four track tape machine and a whole stack of master tapes going back over 20 years!

Tascam 424 - Sepia toning seemed fitting somehow

Now I'm a sucker for listening to old recordings. You always find that forgotten track, idea or take that makes you smile, and quite often makes you think "What on earth was I doing!". Every time these old tapes come out I end up losing hours just enjoying the sheer innocence of the ideas they contain. They come from a younger me, a me who had all the time in the world to just play, create, programme and record music. From a me still learning about recording, songwriting, audio engineering and sound. That's not to say that I don't still learn something with every recording I make today, but the technology I was using back then made every recording a true learning experience.

Decisive days

For me these were the days of tape. The earliest recordings were made without the use of sequencers, meaning entire parts had to be written and rehearsed before being played live and committed to said tape. These were the days of track bouncing while adding new live parts to maximise the track count from the limiting 4 presented to you.

Most of all the were the days of decisions.

Once you had bounced 2 or more tracks together there was no going back. No calling up a new softsynth or patch. No tweaking the mix of the parts bounced together, no macro edit screens to hone every 'event' (we used to call them notes!), and definitely no multiple 'undo' button to fix your mistakes! You were forced to work with what you had and move on.

These may seem like bad things, but in many ways they are a fantastic positive force on your music making,  by forcing you to have the courage of your convictions and commit the idea and move on. Too often in these days of DAW's we defer our decision making for a later date and never really 'finish' anything. Every session can be recalled and tweaked and remixed endlessly making the final version of something all too elusive. This modern working method leaves little room for the happy accidents which all to often could lead a track in a new direction.

What's that noise?

That would be tape hiss. Or maybe it was the old keyboard's output stage, or the cheap poorly designed mic preamp, or any number of other items in the signal chain all of which hissed, hummed and buzzed in various musically unpleasant ways! It is such an eye opener to hear how clean and quiet the outputs are on  even the budget gear we have today when compared to gear from 15-20 years ago. Your ears compensate so you quickly don't notice what you are hearing after a while, and it's only when you put the two in direct contrast that you see, or rather hear the difference.

Hearing one of the later songs on these tapes reminded me of the day I was recording it. I remember completing the mix for the backing track which was all running from MIDI sequenced keyboards, and wanting to lay that down to 2 tracks of the recorder. However, every time I played back the newly recorded backing track from tape I was dismayed at the loss of clarity and tone in comparison to the live MIDI mix.

There was no real way to avoid this, you just had to accept it as a limitation of the medium and move on.

Never go back!

Say's it all really - Would I trade in my DAW with it total recall and macro editing, my high bit rate audio interface and it huge dynamic range and minimal noise floor, my softsynths and plugin's and the 1000's of patches and variation of sound they give my? Not on your life! The technology we use today frees us and makes all sorts of creativity possible that simply could not have been achieved back then.

But the one thing I take away from it all is this:

Sometimes you need to finish your idea first. To write the song or part before trying to record it. To choose a sound or patch and commit to it. Make at least some or your decisions early on and stick with them to give you a foundation to build your track on top of.

Of course, if you want to come back later and do a Dubstep/Metal /Country remix mash-up then nothing is stopping you  - least of all the technology.

Chris