Recording Process:

This was a recording session at the Gretsch Recording Studio on the campus of Elmhurst University. On this session I engineered all of the overdubs and all of the mixing and mastering. The basic tracks were recorded by another engineer, though I was not there I spoke to the tracking engineer to get his track list. The microphones for the drum kit included a Shure Beta 52 placed inside of an open faced bass drum, a Shure SM57 on the top and bottom of the snare, Sennheiser MD421’s on the rack and floor tom, A Shure SM27 on the high hat and two Sennheiser MKH40’s positioned as overheads. A Bass was recorded in an isolated room through a DI and from a Sennheiser MD421 through an amp. In the same room as the drums, scratch piano tracks were also recorded but were later re-done. A scratch vocal was also recorded but later re-done.

During an overdub session I recorded the piano tracks. I recorded the piano in an LCR format with AKG 414 microphones placed spread across the strings of a grand piano, close to the hammers to get a bright, separated tone. I then added a center microphone at the back of the piano. I used a Neumann U87 for this. I processed the LR pair through a Universal Audio 2-610 and the U87 through an Avalon 737 channel strip. Next I began recording sounds from the piano players computer output. We created tracks for a Synth Solo, Synth Bass, 2 Melotrons and 3 Strings entirely from Logic instruments.

Next was a percussion overdub session where we recorded and processed the reversed cymbal effect at the beginning of the song. We also recorded some snaps, a clave and an egg shaker. These were recorded through a Neumann U87 and an Avalon 737 Microphone Preamp and Channel Strip.

The Vocal Overdubs were recorded in an isolation booth with the microphone pointed toward the corner of the singers mouth, about 6 inches away and 10 degrees off axis. I used a Blue Baby Bottle SL Microphone processed through the Avalon 737. I’ve worked with this vocalist before, and while I usually use the U87 as a go-to microphone we know that the Baby Bottle sounds better on her voice than the others.

Finally, we recorded a saxophone solo for the end of the song. Again, I used a Neumann U87 through the Avalon 737 using light preamp EQ and compression

Mixing Process:

During Mixing, I started with my drum tracks and began applying EQ. These were fairly basic, with a HPF on every channel except the kick drum to avoid excess low frequency noise. On the overheads I brought the HPF to 550Hz and added bells boosting 3.4khz by 3dB and 11khz by 2.6 dB. Next I added compression to the kick and snare drums. These compressors were mostly to handle high volume spikes and bring the overall volume of the tracks up, especially the snare to bring the cross-stick hits up in the mix. The Aux percussion that was recorded was processed with some simple EQ like HPFs, a few high shelves and a tape echo on the clave

When mixing the Bass, I used Sans-Amp on the DI signal to get a similar but slightly brighter tone compared to the amp signal. Then on the amp signal I used EQ to darken up the sound by adding a bell with the widest bandwidth setting to cut frequencies ranging from about 300hz to 7khz by 2.6 dB I then panned these two tracks to opposite sides of my stereo field by 16 to give the sound some width to the low frequencies. Later as we recorded the Synth Bass, which was just a sine wave doubling the recorded bass part, I centered that signal to have a firm foundation of bass frequencies in the center of the mix.

I routed my 3 piano tracks to an aux track after mixing together the LCR tracks and processed the stereo aux with EQ cutting frequencies under 100hz and slightly cutting ~220hz -1dB on the left and -2.4dB on the right. I also boosted 675 Hz by 2.2dB on the Left and 2.6 dB on the Right, 2.09khz by 2dB Left and 3.2dB Right, and added a 4dB shelf at 6khz on the Right. After my EQ, I added slight compression with no out-gain to even the dynamic range.

The synth instruments didn’t have any processing on their channels or the subgroup they were routed to.

All of the vocals were all processed through Melodyne to adjust timing and pitch. The lead vocals were then processed through the Waves Scheps Omni Channel which added saturation on the odd harmonics, a HPF set to 12dB per octave at 70 Hz, a de-esser set around 10khz, EQ boosting a high shelf at 6.1khz by 4dB and compression.

Lastly, the saxophone was processed through Scheps Omni Channel with a slight 0.6dB cut at 3.7khz and compression.

All of the tracks were routed to subgroups, except for the sax which went directly to the master output. My subgroups were Drums, Aux Percussion, Bass, Piano, Synths, Melotrons, Strings, Vox and Vox Harmonies. My drum subgroup had a subharmonic generator set to add a slight subharmonic to the kick drum and was then fed to a bus compressor modeling an 11-76. The Aux Percussion bus was bare, only used for volume automation. The Bass subgroup had only compression and EQ boosting the fundamental tones between 100hz and 250hz and cutting the extreme low end around 50hz by 3.4dB. The Piano, Synths, and Melotrons subgroups were bare, and only used for volume automation. The Strings subgroup had slight compression from a modeled 11-76 compressor. The Vox subgroup had a different compressor, Waves H-Comp used to glue together the doubled tracks that were joining the lead vocals in this bus. The Vox Harmonies subgroup had the 11-76 as a bus compressor.

Track List

Effects:

In this session I used 3 reverb sends and 2 delay sends. I used a chamber reverb from the Waves Abbey Road Chambers plugin, this was for the vocals exclusively. Before the reverb plugin, I added another Scheps Omni Channel strip to add a De-Esser, EQ and compression to the signal that fed the reverb because the sibilance was building up too much in the reverb. The second reverb I used was Waves R Verb which was emulating a hall type of reverb. I sent the snaps from the Aux Percussion to this. For the backing vocals, I fed them to a delay send which had a compressor to reduce dynamic range then to Valhalla’s Delay / Modulation plugin, Supermassive. This plugin adds delay and slight pitch modulation which I then fed into the Abbey Road Chambers bus. The second Delay send was Waves H-Delay and was used for the Sax at the end of the song, this was going to the mains and also sent to a reverb, which was the final reverb send, Waves TrueVerb emulating a medium sized room.

The final effects I added were automated on my master bus. These effects were the vinyl synthesis heard at the beginning and end of the song. This was done in three steps, first was a 2 band EQ with a HPF and LPF that were set to 520Hz and 1220 Hz. They slowly open as the intro progresses. As the cymbal first hits the LPF is set to just around 5k, and then opens all the way as the reverse comes in. The HPF opens at a constant rate from the beginning. This plugin is then bypassed until the outro of the song where it slowly closes back to its original settings. The second part was the Abbey Road Vinyl plugin which simulates the elements of a turntable. Even when all the modulators are set to 0 this adds a distinct coloration to the sound which to my ears are a punchier low end, more defined low mid and an overall decrease in high frequencies. I used this plugin to color the track in this way, but I also automated the modulators to add noise, crackle and intermittent clicks to the intro and outro. After those steps, I used the Waves plugin, PS22 Spread to give a defined and modulated stereo field. This plugin spreads frequencies across the stereo field in a sine wave, essentially throwing certain frequencies to the left or right. I automated this plugin to narrow the stereo field as the reverse cymbal reaches its climax and is then bypassed until the outro where it slowly widens out.

Mastering:

Lastly, I mastered this track with the Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain plugin from Waves, fed into a precision L1+ Ultramax Limiter then monitored through iZotope Insight 2. The Mastering Chain was used to slightly reduce the input, apply a high shelf cut by 1.2dB at 362Hz, and add a LPF at 20khz. The Limiter had its threshold automated and the ceiling was fixed to -0.5dB. It was also set to the True Peak Domain. Finally, Insight 2 was set to show me a spectrogram, loudness history and loudness meters. I set my LUFS target to -14.