After recording a band, there are two levels of mixing that are possible.
A Simple Live Mix. This is a basic mix of the exact performance with instruments and vocals set into a good soundstage that matches the actual event space.
Post-production. This is a mix in which several kinds of “fixes” are possible. Among the most common are:
Vocal pitch correction
Instrumental sound upgrades. For instance this might mean re-tracking an acoustic rhythm guitar using good microphones instead of a pickup only arrangement, or inserting drum replacement software on a poorly tuned kick drum.
Instrumental part fixes – For instance, correcting notes or even entire parts, fixing bass notes, or adjusting, tightening, or changing vocal harmonies.
Re-creation/improvement of the sonic space.
Most professional concert documentaries involve post-production (Neil Young at the Ryman, Alison Krauss and the Louisville Palace, etc.) and the effect is often that everything about the performance seems amazingly tight and effortless. Some post-production changes can be noticeable however: hearing three backup vocals when only two are actually singing, watching a guitar or bass player’s hands play a slightly different set of notes, etc.
Here are my guidelines for whether to pursue post-production.
Is the band rehearsed? It is not worth the time and effort to post-produce an unrehearsed band, with vocal harmonies that are not well constructed and thought through, individual instrumental parts and arrangement that are uneven and overly “jammed,” and haphazard attention to performance detail, etc.
Is the band recording-competent? Some bands will have one or more players whose sound works for the most part in a live setting, but whose vocal harmonies or instrumental work are full of sonic characteristics and missed notes that would make audio repair overly time-consuming: the harmony singer who constantly doubles another singer (or hangs onto notes too long, or sings the wrong notes in general), the bassist who wanders and finds only about 1/2 of the root notes, the rhythm guitarist who stops playing when he’s singing, the instrumental soloist whose lead work is full of missed strings, scales that don’t quite work, the drummer who slows or speeds up every song, etc.
What’s the goal of recording? Is there anything to be gained for the band’s resume by post-production? If the music is just to be used for rehearsal purposes, or for small local promotion efforts, it’s often not worth the extra time and expense. If the goal is a professional quality demo or demo-video or a band documentary, post-production is essential.
Many bands are well-rehearsed, have competent musicians, and want to take their live musical production to a professional level. This is where post-production makes sense.
I recently recorded a live performance of such a band: Bill Clark and the Route 51 Band. While the musicians are not studio-musicians, this is well-rehearsed acoustic Americana band in Louisville, KY, with instrumentalists and vocalists whose live performances are carefully shaped and within range of post-production. There were occasional bass notes, a few lead guitar chops, some vocal harmonies, a few pitch issues, and a kick drum that needed a little attention. These were all small things, so the performance of most songs were within range of post-production.
Here is the before and after of a section of lead guitar work on one song where the guitarist, Tom Roller, came into the studio and re-recorded his lead. The only preparation work for this section of the song was to use Izotope’s “Music Rebalance” software to pull the lead guitar bleed out of the drum overhead mics for that section of the song. This allowed Tom to record a new lead that diverged somewhat from his original.
Here’s the 33 second clip of the live performance with a couple of small mistakes:
Here is a clip of the same section of the song after post-production work, when Tom came into the studio and over-dubbed his lead guitar part:
When setting up to record a band live, I sometimes get such questions/observations as: “So, you just make one recording, pan things left and right, and cut them into individual songs?” Or, “Why does it take you that long to mix the music. Isn’t it just a matter of panning the instruments and voices, and maybe adding a little reverb to make it sound cool?”
From a layperson’s perspective, this may be all that seems to be required. But let me clarify what live mixing typically involves. Then I’ll mention a few things that typically go “above and beyond” and involve more than a typical live mix.
1. Cleaning and arranging the tracks. First of all, for each song, the tracks need to be cleaned and arranged. Usually, this means: 1) that any time a miked instrument or voice is idle, the track is muted, to minimize bleeding into other tracks; 2) that the beginning and end of each track has to be identified, and faders in/out have to be applied; 3) any noise (bumped mics, strange screams from the audience, etc.) is minimized; 4. that tracks for both lead and background vocals are created for each singer.
In the photo above the grey areas are muted. The shaded areas at the beginning and end of sections indicate the fade-ins and fade-outs of each song. Notice that both lead and background vocal tracks are present for each singer who does both.
2. Aligning tracks and addressing phase issues. It is important, especially if the drums and back line instruments are a long way from front of stage microphones to nudge those track “forward” ever so slightly to keep stage “delay” under control. This can be done by ear, and by visually aligning the transients between back line tracks and front of stage microphones. It is also crucial to address any out of phase issues between individual drums (kick and snare, snare and hi hat, overheads and snare, etc.) Usually, reversing the polarity of one or two drums will solve these issues.
In the photo above the different directions that these transients are moving indicate a possible phase issue, or the need to nudge a track slightly in one direction or another to match correctly.
3. Getting each voice in shape: This involves adding eq, rolling off the low end (below 350 hz is typical), adding compression as needed, and sometimes a small amount of reverb or delay. This also involves some general panning of voices, though this will vary from song to song depending on who is singing lead. I also use some general pitch correction as needed. And on occasion I will pitch correct a few individual notes.
In the photograph above you can see that I’m rolling off the low end, adding a “vocal rider” (from Waves audio) to bring up low volume sections and tame high volume sections, and compression and imaging using Nectar 4.
The 2 photographs below show a general chromatic pitch correction tool (from Logic) using “chromatic” setting and a moderately fast response, and individual pitch correction using Melodyne.
4. Setting up vocal busses: I use a lead vocal buss and a BGV (background vocal) buss. When a singer is singing lead, I buss them through a Lead Singer buss that has a different, more “upfront” and present sound. Those singing background are bussed through buss that is set up for background vocals, with a little vocal doubling, slightly deeper reverb to set them back in the mix a little, etc.
5. Getting drums in shape: This involves adding eq and compression to each drum or drum mic as needed. It also involves “compression-locking” the kick drum to the bass track using a side chain, so that the bass and kick feel “locked” together in the mix. Depending on the quality of drums and the consistency of the drummer, this can take quite a long time. In some instances using “drum replacement” samples will be necessary.
In the photo below, the compressor of the bass microphone is side chained to the Kick which glues them together. Only use 5-6 dbs of audio reduction for this or you’ll get “pumping and breathing” artifacts.
6. Getting the bass in shape: This is a matter of getting the right blend between a DI and microphone so that the sound is what the bass player uses on stage. It also means taking the time to divide the “low end space” of the mix correctly between the kick drum and the bass. Different groups have different sounds in this regard. Some groups have bassists that use bass guitars and amps that grab the territory between 70 and 150 hz. Others have bassists that use lots of “sub-bass” and like their sound to control the space from 60 hz down. This means that the kick will be equalized for the higher sonic territory.
7. Setting up drum busses (see buss photo above). I usually set up a “parallel compression” drum buss which is slammed with compression. As needed, I will send small amounts of the snare and kick through this buss to add punch. I then have a “drum reverb” buss, which will make use of a small amount of reverb, mostly for the snare. I also have a “full kit buss” for all but the kick, set up with compression and eq that helps the kit sit well in the mix. If I use multiple snare or kick mics, I will also run snare and kick busses.
8. Getting the instruments in shape: This varies from instrument to instrument and player to player. For acoustic instrumentalists, this sometimes means rolling off some of the low end (to avoid the accumulation of “low end mud” in the mix). And it can also mean trying to find a clean sound that matches pretty closely what the audience hears, balancing direct boxes and microphones accordingly, and panning in a way that matches the onstage sound. For electric guitarists, the goal is once again to approximate as nearly as possible their onstage sound. For keyboardists, a stereo feed needs to be equalized and panned realistically to match onstage sound.
In the photo below, I’m rolling off the low end on Tom’s acoustic guitar, adding a little soft compression, and some gentle room ambience reverb.
9. Setting up instrument busses (see buss photo above): I usually have “lead guitar” and “rhythm guitar” busses set up, so I can make quick adjustments per song as needed. I’ll also have busses for electric guitars, keyboards, and other instruments, making sure that all instruments with more than one form of capture is mixed and easy to adjust in the mix.
10. Setting up the basic template for each song. Softer songs will require different mixes typically. When a guitarist changes instruments or volume level, decisions have to be made regarding how to bring the instrument up or down in the mix in a way that matches the player’s onstage intentions. Some automation might be required for an instrument when the player has been too erratic with a volume pedal onstage, etc. When multiple singers sing lead on different verses, their voices have to be cut and pasted onto lead or background tracks (see above). Many decisions are required for each song. It is NOT simply a matter of using the previous song’s mix.
In the photo below you can see the automation that was required on Tom’s acoustic guitar on a song where his volume pedal usage seemed to create a few volume issues.
11. Bouncing each song. Once the mix is done, each song must be bounced at a level that allows plenty of head room (at least 6 db) for mastering.
12. Mastering each song. Here you can set up a basic mastering template using eq, imaging, dynamic eq, compression, tape saturation, and a finalizer to bring the song up to appropriate volume for streaming or whatever final target is needed. This will need a little tweaking for each song depending on its volume and style. I usually wind up with an entire mastering “list” for each live performance in one template grid. I also usually add about 2 seconds of silence at the end of each song, making sure that it is faded nicely as well.
In the photo below you can see that I’m using a dynamic eq.(part of Izotope’s mastering suite), tape saturation plugin (from Slate), and a mastering compressor (from IK Multimedia).
Each song occupies a stereo track
in the mastering template.
ABOVE AND BEYONDTHE CALL OF DUTY
What I don’t do (but could) when mixing a live performance. Some of these things I’m glad to do for a few choice songs that a band or artist might want to perfect. I assume that a roughly 30 song live gig might only have between 3-10 songs that an artist might want to “dig deeper” on for a CD, or some other presentation.
Extensive pitch correction.
Fixing the performance. This might mean repairing a lead, bass line, drum hit (errant kick for instance), vocal performance, etc. In some instances this can be accomplished by flying something into a performance from somewhere else (a kick hit or bass note, for instance). In other instances, however, the artist might have to come into the studio and redo a part. This is not always an option if microphone bleed issues are too overwhelming. Fixing a guitar lead, for instance, often can only be done for a few notes and not the entire lead. It’s also possible to make the background vocalists and lead singer enter and release together. This sometimes requires using Izotope RX Rebalance on the vocal tracks to remove most of the music bleeding into vocal mics prior to realignment to avoid adding delay or artifacts to the vocal tracks.
Changing the mix. This might involve adding more reverb, adjusting volume or pan, and so on as per the artist’s taste.
Credenda, a wonderful close harmony family band that I recorded, just posted a promotional video in which they use three songs that we recorded in the studio as background music behind a montage of pictures and videos of the band playing in various situations.
Instead of trying to create videos for each song that attempt to either tell the story of the song, or create suggestive imagery about a song, the goal seems to be celebrating the individual artists and the family as a kind of musical community.
After watching it a few times, I decided that it is a fascinating concept! See what you think.
Many bands that play mostly in small to medium sized clubs will have YouTube or blog posts of their music. Often the videos are fine but the audio will be poor. Most computer video programs (think QuickTime, IMovie, etc.) will allow you to strip audio and insert a good recording of your music to sync with your video. Although a good two-track stereo recording can be an improvement, a multi-track recording gives you many more options which, if mixed correctly, can provide a first-rate, natural (not over hyped) listening experience to go with the video.
There are a few things that have helped me get a better-quality multi-track recording over the years. I’ll share some of these below. Then, I’ll give an example of the kind of recording I’m talking about by providing an example of a recording of Louisville band, Palo Verde.
Use the right microphones. Some singers want to use their own microphones. It is important to check ahead of time to see what these microphones are. While some will work well, others will produce significant mixing issues. The same is true for drum mics, etc. Be sure to double check! Super or hyper cardioid mics are best because they work to eliminate noise from other instruments and especially floor monitors (see #2 and #3 below). Remember that when you’re trying to get a natural live sound you don’t need to put a microphone on every drum unless the band normally does so for the house mix. A single overhead (Omni?) microphone, kick, and snare mic will be plenty for many bands and less intrusive.
Tweak monitor placement. While in-ear monitors permit the best recordings, most bands still use floor monitors. These should be placed well behind the microphone’s sound field. This is usually not difficult with singers. It is most difficult when a drummer uses a floor monitor, and it faces upward toward the overhead microphones. This means that the monitor mix will intrude on the drum’s overhead mix and render the overheads virtually useless. I usually bring along a spot monitor that I can place near the drummer, facing away from the overhead microphones.
Control monitor mixes if possible. If the band is in a space with walls on either side and a wall in back, it will help if the front of house mixing engineer can run individual monitor mixes to each musician on stage, providing only the minimum of what they need. Full house monitor mixes at high volume can bleed into all of the stage microphones and wind up competing with your overall mix in a lot of ways (especially by creating out-of- phase issues) so keeping them as modest and targeted as possible will help later down the line. If band members are used to in-ear monitors this is best, of course!
See if you can position musicians with the vocal stereo field in mind. If a band has three-part harmonies and those singers all stand at the front of the stage, it can help if these singers are not bunched up on one side. You will likely want to mix them to left and right, so have them stand on stage left/right if possible. This is helpful also because of the drum-bleed that comes through on the vocal mics. When mixing, the stereo field for the drums can be disoriented or out of phase if you are mixing a singer to the opposite side of the mix from where they stood on stage. Most musicians will honor this request, knowing its only for one night, if it is a huge change.
Don’t fret the room microphone. If you use a room microphone for small to medium size club gigs, you’ll only use it for applause and room noise before and after songs. Otherwise, you’ll hear table conversations, etc. in the mix.
Assess (and use) direct inputs for acoustic instruments. Most artists use direct inputs from pickups for guitars, mandolins, harmonicas, etc. these days. Some are excellent. Others are not so good. Use them no matter what the quality. Why? Because they are what the band “sounds like” and your job is to get that sound. That said, in some cases, you might want to stick a directional mic in front of an instrument, just to provide the option later of improving the sound. And remember, a good sounding direct input eliminates microphone bleed!
The more you can control the better. In order to have maximum control over the quality of recording I prefer getting a direct feed into my own preamps and converters. Although many affordable mixers will now do multitrack recordings (Midas Mr18, Mackie Onyx, etc.) I prefer to use better quality preamps and digital to analog converters. For that I use a passive stage box that is a splitter, with one cable running to the bands mixer and the other running directly into my preamps and converters. This allows the band’s engineer to do his/her thing unimpeded while I do mine. When using a passive splitter, it is a good idea to carry along a few inline phantom power supplies and several good DI boxes to help with any ground lift issues. If you have the money and want to be sure you have the tools to get a good isolated sound and avoid compatibility issues with the house mixer you can avoid a passive splitter and get a few transformer isolated splitters such as the ART S8 and the cables to get from the front of house to the splitters and to your recording rig. I like my passive splitter because it has the cables built in and is easier to set up and haul. My basic converters and preamps are the Focusrite Clarett + series. I love the clarity and detail of the converters and the preamps sound great for just about everything. If I need other preamps I can bring them along.
Mix to reproduce the live sound! The number one rule for mixing comes down to avoiding PD (plugin disease). When you have good tracks, it is tempting to add lots of effects (reverbs, delays, compression, etc.) that were NOT in use live. I see my job as reproducing a true to life recording that mirrors what the audience was actually hearing. When someone who attended the gig hears the recording as the audio for a YouTube they can say, “Wow, that’s just how the band actually sounded!”
I recently had a chance to record Louisville’s Palo Verde at an outdoor venue called Bud’s Tavern. The recording was not made for video purposes, so live video is not available here. Here’s an audio track from that event, however, to provide a feel for the kind straight-forward enhanced “live sound” I’m talking about. You’ll want to listen on headphones or good speakers to appreciate the difference between this sound and a simple iPhone or two-track stereo recording.
When we moved to Louisville from Nashville I went from a larger space to a smaller setup. Basically I now have a control room shared with a small isolation booth for vocals, acoustic instruments, etc. and a second room next door for tracking drums, and other loud instruments. There are also several small rooms and closets nearby where amplifiers can be isolated when groups want to track live. The setup is small, but still large enough to do live work if needed. The floor is on a slab, and the windows are treated with “Indows” that improve room isolation a lot.
The studio is in a walkout basement in our home that overlooks Beargrass Creek. Access to the studio is via stone steps that run from the driveway alongside the house to a patio where musicians can gather or just hang out when not recording. The patio has a lovely view of the Creek
The door from the patio leads into a mi-size room where furniture can be easily moved around to set up drums, or other louder instruments for tracking. The door at the end of this room leads directly into the control room. The screen can be used as needed to see others in the control room and vice versa.
Here is a view of the control room / isolation booth taken from the large window on the creek side of the room. You can see that a large closet has been converted into a small iso-booth for vocals, etc.
When isolation is needed, or corners need to be taken out of the recording, I now use a lot of these moveable Auralex gobos. They are amazing and work for just about every application possible.
These can be set up around or in the isolation booth if more or less isolation is needed, depending on the voice or instrument and the frequencies you want to enhance or squash.
From the isolation booth toward the window, here is the view, and the scene out the window. A great place to work on music!
All in all, it’s a great place to hang out and record music! I’ve settled in now and the vibe and the sounds are absolutely first rate.
John Wiley Nelson (a.k.a. “The Rev”) is a folk and bluegrass songwriter residing in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He was the manager of WOMR, the local public broadcasting station there for some years, and still acts as DJ for a regular bluegrass show. He has recorded several CDs here at Jonymac Studio. Over the years, he has focused more and more attention on hiring the finest award-winning musicians for his CDs: Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Adam Steffey on mandolin, Randy Kohrs on resonator (dobro), Ron Stewart on banjo, and most recently Kenny Smith on acoustic rhythm and lead guitars. He also brings in Kenny and Amanda Smith to produce and perform his vocals. Due to the busy schedules of all of these musicians, it is impossible to get them all together at one time to record. We have to multi-track, working around their schedules. Here’s the process:
The Rev records a rough vocal and rhythm guitar track to click for all songs (I accompany him on guitar)
The Rev creates an arrangement sheet, identifying clearly who plays rhythm, fills, or leads during each song.
Kenny Smith comes in and records a rhythm track for all songs, replacing my scratch guitar track.
Kenny then records any lead acoustic guitar work needed
I record an acoustic bass track
This improved rough mix is sent to:
Adam Steffey who records his mandolin tracks at his preferred studio (sometimes Ron Stewart’s Sleepy Valley Barn in Paoli, Indiana)
Randy Kohrs who records his resonator tracks at his studio, Slack Key Studio in Nashville, TN)
Ron Stewart records his tracks at his studio: Sleepy Valley Barn in Paoli, Indiana
These artists send their stems to me digitally to put into the mix
The Rev comes back into the studio and records his final vocal tracks
Kenny and Amanda come in to do background harmony vocals
Stuart Duncan comes in to the studio here and records his fiddle tracks which provide the “glue” on the CD.
The Rev and I do a good early mix for each song
I finish the mixing and mastering
Because of the quality of musicianship, this process works wonderfully.
One final thing that really helped this new CD. I’ve been less than happy with the basic sound palette when recording and mixing acoustic music such as bluegrass “in the box” in Logic (Pro Tools is not better), so I added an instantiation of Slate Virtual Mix Channel’s Neve console emulation on each bus, and on the Mixbus, and it made an amazing difference. I strongly recommend this! The sound is warmer, rounder, more listenable. The CD is available on iTunes, Spotify, Napster, and YouTube. To hear the album on YouTube go here!
Credenda is a family band: see more here! Three siblings sing awesome harmonies, and the mother performs on keyboard. They came in and tracked a 6 song EP last summer, and we finished up the mixing in the fall. They released the project a few months ago. Kim Mclean produced the CD and brought in Andy Hull on drums, his son Evan Hull on electric guitar and bass, and Charlie Chamberlain on electric guitar and mandolin. The tracking sessions were very creative and spontaneous, and Mclean gave the artists a lot of room to experiment on each track. The results were beautiful.
We first tracked the drums, percussion, bass and rhythm guitars, along with a scratch vocal track. Because the energy between the siblings was so good on vocals, and I didn’t want to lose that, I recorded the vocals at the same time, after the rhythm and lead tracks were in place. That also gave me an opportunity to try out a couple of microphones I had recently hand-wired and modified, using parts from Micparts.com. I had done their Rode NT-2 modification with one of their RK-47 capsules on my old Rode NT-2 microphone, and their Studio Projects C3 modification on an old C3 I got on Ebay. I had also recently asked Shannon Rhodes do one of his incredible modifications on my MikTek CV-4 (more on that in another post soon!), and used that for the lead vocals. All three modifications took the vocals to a new level, and combined with the live three-part recording, the effect is great! Take a listen here!
I usually record bass guitar both through a DI and through an amp. The DI provides a lot of the weight and lower harmonics, and the amp adds low-mid punch and definition to the sound. I’ve been relatively happy using standard DI boxes (Whirlwind, Radial, etc.) through my rather strange but wonderful Peavey VMP-2 tube preamp.
That monster is one great bass preamp. And between the two, the sound has been good.
But then I stumbled on this thing:
The A-Designs Audio, Reddi Tube Direct Box. Quite simply put, this is an indispensable piece of studio gear for those who want rich, multi-harmonic bass sounds from an electric bass guitar in the recording studio. I auditioned one for a project and immediately went and bought one. It was that good. The direct sound I was able to get from my Fender American Deluxe P-Bass was ridiculous! So ridiculous that it gave me enough low-mid punch, along with lower harmonics, when tracked through my Focusrite ISA 430 Producer Pack Channel Strip (with very little eq), that I decided to go straight into the board without the amp for the bass on Mundo Brew’s latest CD. The sound was great, and the mixing simple – the bass sat in the mix like a champ!
So, as a project studio, owned by someone who records, mixes, and masters “on the side,” I’m often approached by artists who are looking for a deal – which sometimes means they expect free service. In many instances, these are friends, or friends of friends, and in some instances they are really good artists – the kind I’d love working with! Or they want to use the studio and/or equipment but without me. Why not?
There is a part of me that would love to oblige good folks and even do what I do free of charge. I love what I do, and I love helping others achieve their musical goals. Early on, as I was “working on my chops” I did a few free projects – which took some of the pressure off and helped. When I listen back to some of those projects, I’m glad I didn’t charge!
As I got better, I found myself 50-75 hours into a project, listening to an artist ask me to “tweak” something (which sometimes would take several hours) and saying to myself: “I’d feel a lot better about this is I were getting paid!” True enough.
The fact is that many artists are unaware of the amount of time it takes, beyond tracking time, to get a project mixed and finished – even if it’s just vocals and guitar, or a few tracks of audio. Tracks have to be cleaned (gated or “stripped” of noise between clips of audio), de-essed, de-breathed (fixing loud breaths), equalized, sometimes compressed, automated as needed (louder in some spots, softer in others), run to busses, etc. etc. And even if a song is recorded in series with nothing changed, all of this has to be done differently for each song. In other words, a separate file has to be created for each song – and all of these steps done for each song. All of this adds up to TIME.
So about 20 years ago I started charging for my services. In my humble opinion, I’m still “a steal” if you compare my work to comparable work. And at this time I mostly charge by the project, rather than by the hour, which allows me to be the laid back guy that I like to be in the studio – and not to worry when I’m a little slower than some (perfectionist that I am).
John Wiley Nelson (a.k.a. “The Rev”) is a retired Presbyterian (PCUSA) minister who lives in Provincetown, MA. In his retirement, he is the manager of the local public radio station, WOMR. The Rev writes mostly folk and/or Americana songs. He likes to use acoustic instruments, but with electric bass and drums – locating his sound somewhere between bluegrass and country. Although a minister, his music is not religious – though, at times, it shows the sensibilities and sensitivities of a theologian and pastor. There is a lot of fun in his music which is loaded with irony, double-entendre, and reversals of plot.
The Rev. likes quality of instrumentation. When he comes to town, he hires the best. In this case, he hired Grammy award winner Randy Kohrs on dobro and pedal steel. Kohrs was Dolly Parton’s dobro player for years, and has played on more than 500 albums, ranging from those by such legends as Hank Thompson and Jerry Reed to current chart-toppers Little Big Town, Dierks Bentley, Sara Evans and The Wreckers. Among his accolades for such work is a 2009 Academy of Country Music Award nomination in the Top Specialty Instrumentalist category. Randy owns and operates his own recording studio called Slack Key Recording Studio. We sent him scratch tracks and he recorded his tracks in his own studio.
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On fiddle, the Rev brought in Stuart Duncan. Stuart can be seen and heard with The Nashville Bluegrass Band, where he’s been a contributing member since 1985. The band has won two Grammies, multiple IBMA & SPBMA awards. Duncan has played with Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Yo Yo Ma, Alan Jackson, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and many others. He is a complete professional. Because he tracked after the dobro and mandolin were finished, he provided fills that weave all of the other tracks together in a beautiful way. He showed remarkable sensitivity also. When tracking “Ordinary Day”, a song with a verse about the death of the Rev’s son, he re-recorded his lead, working to make it match the tenor and feeling of that part of the song. I used a single MikTek C5 on his fiddle and it worked great. I let him find the sweet spot, and the tracks turned out great.
The Rev hired Grammy award winner Adam Steffey to record mandolin tracks. Steffey has played with many of the bluegrass greats, including playing for seven years with Alison Krauss and Union Station, working regularly with the Dan Tyminski Band, and now playing with the Boxcars. Adam lives several hours away and had a friend, Ron Fonzerelli, record his tracks and send them in. Ron used API pres and a stereo pair of Neumann KM84s to record Adam. The tracks turned out really well in the mix.
I used no eq or compression on the dobro, mando, or fiddle tracks. I used the same stereo buss for all three instruments in order to get them pretty much into the same sonic space in the mix.
The Rev. likes to mix genres on his CDs, and on this CD he had two great blues tunes. He flew Mark Hill in from New Jersey to track the lead guitar parts. Mark played with Herd of Blues for years, and really has a nice feel for blues. He brought his Fender Nashville Telecaster and we recorded him through my Fender Princeton, using a single Shure SM57. He used my Nick Greer “Ghetto Stomp” to add grit to the sound. The result was great.
Mark Hill
Andy Hull produced some masterful drum and percussion tracks. Andy has drummed for Ty Herndon, Jamie O’Neal, Collin Raye, Joey and Rory, Lee Greenwood, and the Evinrudes. I tracked him in the larger room in the studio and, instead of overhead miking cymbals individually and using a room mix, I used a stereo pair of AT4041s, which are brighter than my MikTek C5s, up and back over the kit to get the kit reflecting off the walls of the room. This would give us the option of picking up as much of the ambient wood in that room as we could as a part of the kit.
On the Rev’s vocals, we used the TLM 103 through my UA LA610-MKII. I used a tiny bit of limiting on the way in, but no compression. With vocal tracks I usually use a 4-buss setup. Buss 1 is for a touch of reverb, buss 2 is for a tiny bit of delay, buss 3 is for vocal thickening, and buss 4 is for widening. I find that the Logic Stereo Delay works fine for delay, timed to 1/8 notes and used very modestly. Izotope Alloy’s vocal preset for “Intimate Parallel” vocals is a nice place to start when tweaking a vocal thickening track. Logic’s analog tape compression combined with Logic’s Stereo Spreader produce a nice, adjustable spread. The IK Multimedia “Vocal Late Reverb” setting provided a good amount of reverb ambience.
Vocal Plugins
The Rev invited his daughter, Molly, to track vocals on three of the CD’s songs. She had a lovely, soft voice, and her pitch was perfect. I used the TLM 103 on her voice and a similar 4-buss palette.
The Rev asked me to record the bass tracks. I used my Fender American Deluxe P-Bass. I went direct, through the LA 610MKII. I then added the IK Multimedia Ampeg SVX plugin, splitting the sound between the DI and an emulated SVT-4 Pro. On the two blues songs, I used the back pickup (a Fender Jazz Pickup), and a bit more compression on the way in, to get a more mid-rangy “honkin blues” sound.
He also asked me to record some of the rhythm guitar tracks. Mark Hill recorded some of these also. He prefers these to be in the mix, but not prominent. I used my MikTek C5 stereo pair in a ORTF arrangement for these tracks.
He also had me record the keyboard tracks. I used Logic’s “Yamaha Studio” piano for the piano tracks, and used my Nord Electro 2 for the organ tracks.
JonyMac Studio 