At the end of this week our project is due to be handed in and there are some finishing touches we have had to do including our written report, recording the two live tracks and mastering all five tracks for the EP. Completing the written report involved briefly covering what we had done in our blogs and also the different forms we had completed. The forms were things such as the M.A.P. for the health and safety, tracking sheets and our signed agreement with O’Brien. At the beginning of the week O’Brien had arrived back from Jamaica and so he listened to our mixes and was very happy with them, we then used the sound theatre to record the two live tracks that would appear on the EP. For the two live tracks O’Brien used an acoustic guitar and recorded a version of Concrete Jungle and Redemption Song and these songs were mixed later on the same day. We chose these two songs to go on the end of the EP as both these songs mean a lot to O’Brien and after thinking about which songs to do, I thought O’Brien did very good covers of these to Bob Marley tracks. Philip Rollett also got in on the action and played guitar along with O’Brien on Concrete Jungle.

‘Concrete Jungle’

After we had all five songs we mastered all five to flow evenly from track to track and overall we were extremely happy with the end result. The EP was now finished and we had a signed agreement with O’Brien Hesson to hold credit as producers and engineers for the work. This was a great learning experience for me and a project I feel I have put a lot of work and effort into. It will be great to see what people think of the EP and we hope to sort out with O’Brien the idea of placing the EP on iTunes and Spotify in the near future. We thanked O’Brien for his time and for helping us create a successful EP for our audio project.

With the three tracks all recorded and complete, it’s now time to start mixing. The initial plan for this stage was for O’Brien to join us when mixing the tracks but due to personal reasons he has had to go to Jamaica for two weeks. So this week Phil and I have began to start editing and mixing the three tracks in Pro Tools. After researching some mixing techniques from engineers such as Phill Brown who was a recording engineer for Island Records, I have noted some ideas down to try out with the three tracks for the EP. This idea comes from the fact that Phill Brown mixed many of Bob Marley’s tracks and I thought it would be good to try and achieve some of the trademark sounds of records from the reggae genre.

Angel

Angel was the first track we began to mix and we started by tidying up the session with a little bit of housekeeping. The housekeeping included editing out parts where there was no audio activity and introducing fades to smooth out the parts and also cutting out the parts in the vocal tracks where O’Brien breathed. Cutting the breathes on the vocal was done as we were compressing the vocals and although many producers keep breathes in their vocals, we felt it was better to keep them out as we were hoping to achieve a commercial pop sound within the reggae genre.

Monday Morning Love

Monday Morning Love was the second track we looked at during the mixing stage. The harmonies alone consist of 9 tracks broke into three parts which are each panned left and right and the remaining in the center. The drums were compressed to bring them to life but sit relatively low in the final mix whereas the vocals are the main focus point in the track.

A screenshot of the edit window for Monday Morning Love

The keyboard and guitar parts of this track sit opposite each other in the stereo field with one slightly to the left and one slightly to the right. This technique is popular within the ska genre and so we felt we would use this idea to bring to the track.

Another Day

Another Day is by far the song on the EP that had the most tracks in the session and it involved clean and distorted guitar parts. The EQ on the main vocal track is boosted at around 10kHz by 3dB to bring it out of the mix to appear clearer and the vocals on the chorus are double tracked to create a thicker texture on the song. The drums were compressed to add to the distorted guitars driving rhythm on the chorus and this was the track on the EP that felt more commercial due to the elements not abiding by the ‘roots reggae’ rules. Our thinking behind the more commercial sound was so appeal to a wider audience and I feel that this track especially puts O’Brien’s sound into a commercial reggae and ska genre.

The mix window for Another day highlighting some of the tracks and their fade levels and pan pots

Overall reflections

Overall, the mixing stage of the project for the three tracks was enjoyable and I felt that I learned a lot about different compression and balancing techniques of reggae and ska music. Learning how to mix this type of music has helped me understand a lot more about mixing in general and that the more you mix songs, the better you get each time.

It’s the end of November and the multitrack studio at the university is getting busy and booked up due to deadlines fast approaching. This week we were due to track the vocal tracks for the three songs we had, so we decided to use the ADR booth in the sound theatre to record O’Brien’s vocal takes which we had done before for a recording in our second year and got very good results. We also managed to use the Neumann U87 microphone to record the vocals which was placed a foot away from O’Brien with a pop shield in between to get a clean recording of our clients voice. The M-Audio preamps in the sound theatre are brilliant for tracking dialogue and sound amazing when used to record vocals and we got some fantastic results whilst using this setup for the session. The session began with O’Brien recording all the main vocal tracks for his songs after he had warmed his voice up using his exercises.

O’Brien ready to roll

After we had recorded all the main vocal tracks without any problems, we decided to layer the harmonies for the songs. After a chat about the best way to do things and what the song would benefit from, we decided on doing three harmonies of the same parts and then when it came to mixng the tracks we would pan two harmonies left and right and then the third through the middle. This is a popular production trick that makes use of the stereo field in songs and creates a lot of space within the track. Four hours into the session we felt as a group that we had enough vocal tracks to take to the mixing stage and I also suggested to O’Brien the idea of getting in touch with some marketing students about creating a sleeve and promo photos for the EP. O’Brien, Philip and I sat down after recording to listen to the three roughly mixed tracks and felt confident we had enough parts to take to the mixing stage. The only job left at the end of the session was to return the Neumann microphone back to security to keep it safe over night.

Philip Rollett returning the Neumann microphone back to security

The fastest paced session I have ever worked on. This week involved tracking bass guitar and keyboard parts with two of O’Brien’s friends who he has known for a long time. Megel plays the keyboard and Clive plays the bass and both are very experienced musicians who were able to come up with some parts for the three tracks whilst in the studio and it was my job to ensure we kept the session running smoothly for everyone involved. As these two instruments were going into the desk via direct injection, there was no need for any microphones except for a 414 we hooked up in the live room to hear the musicians talk to us about the different takes. O’Brien stayed in the live room with Migel and Clive to sing and give more of a feel to the different takes we recorded.

Clive, Megel and O’Brien

After about three hours of recording various parts and takes we were very happy with the results we had got and played the overall rough mixes to O’Brien and we were all very happy with them. Reflecting on the production process so far, I feel I have kept a well managed project going with a lot of attention to planning out time slots. So far the project has nearly all the tracks we need for the EP and the final recording sessions will involve recording vocal tracks and harmonies. The project so far has been a good learning experience and a lot of fun too!

A song really starts to take shape when you get some rhythm guitar on top of some drum tracks and this is exactly what happened in this weeks guitar tracking session. After Philip and I worked on choosing the best drum track takes from the past session we did some rough level mixing ready for O’Brien to start building guitar parts on top of the drums. Prior to the session my main concern was to book out two SM57 microphones and an AKG 414 with some placement ideas in mind. After O’Brien arrived we got to work on placing the microphones with the two 57’s close miked an inch away from the grill on the two speaker cones of the Line 6 Spider 212 amplifier. One 57 was placed an inch away directly facing the center of the cone whereas the other was angled facing the inner part of the cone, off the center. This was done to allow us options in post-production with various sounds, the AKG 414 was placed 8 foot away at a height of 2 foot in the air facing the front grill of the amp. The polar pattern we chose for the 414 was cardiod as we decided against omnidirectional as we were setting up in the ‘dead room’, therefore not a lot of reverberation would have been captured anyway.

The pair of SM57’s

After getting a good sound from the microphones and checking the phase on the 414 room microphone, we started to track different guitar takes and listened back to them and we very pleased with the sound we were getting. From this session I learned how it was best to get as many takes as was possible to then allow us more options when it came to mixing these tracks, choosing the best possible ones. We layered guitar overdubs with O’Brien and I even got a chance to play a few guitar parts including a guitar lick in the middle of ‘Another Day‘. Overall, this was a very successful session and now the tracks were starting to take shape.

O’Brien Hesson