project diary-it

Project Diary Part 1

Beni:

1. L'artista è talentuoso e le canzoni sono buone.

2. The producer is himself a talented singer and player and we've hit it off well from the start. He's also hooked up with some talented players in Los Angeles that we're going to use.Il produttore è egli stesso un buon cantante e/o musicista

3. I have access to some very good equipment that either I myself will bring or can call in from favors.

Liabilities:

1. The budget won't allow for in-studio overdubs. We must work in a room that although is acoustically very good, has some noise problems and is limited to an extent.

Format:

I'm committing to 20-bit ADATS as the format for recording and mix. We will mix internally to the ADAT and then take the whole machine to the mastering facility so the conversion can be made at the last possible moment on the best possible equipment.

As we go along I'll fill you in on as many tricks as I'm using to get us ahead of our limited resources. I'll also be highliting new gear I'll be using and things I discover along the way so stay tuned.

Day 1

Day 1 is basically a setup day. We setup the console and the two ADATS we'll be using (more about that later). The console I'll be monitoring on is the Mackie SR24-4. However, to get onto tape I'll be using Calrec and API Mic preamps direct to tape, possibly through a compressor if it's needed. The Calrec's have built in EQ and the Lunchbox rack that I'm using also has a graphic and 4-band sweepable EQ. We'll be monitoring on small Tannoy PBM 6.5 speakers and we have plenty of cables and snakes to make any kind of connections we need to make. I find that although the recording room is an ex-school bandroom and has good acoustical properties, the "control room" is boomy and not well isolated from the studio. In addition the power amp that we're using is noisy and there's no real solution other than tucking it in a corner, giving it ventilation and trying to cover it up as best as possible.

One of the limitations I'm concerned with is that I have one 20-bit and one 16-bit (blackface) ADAT with which to work. This is going to be interesting to say the least but I have a work plan that I think will get us through adequately and will free up the 20-bit for all the new tracks we need to lay down.

Day 2 (problems!)

Day 2 was originally slated for cutting tracks from our sequencer which is an Ensoniq ASR. However, that all changed very quickly. The producer has a JL Cooper Datasync2 to interface between the ASR and the ADATs. Although this worked fine I was uncomfortable with the fact that this box works on a button push that is memorized by the DataSync and not a hard start number that can be repeatedly synced with any sequencer. Also, when you go to a second set of ADATS, which we'll invariably do because we have 10 songs, you have to erase the memory of the box and start over. There is a backup you can do via sysex dump to a sequencer but I've had problems with that before and the whole thing was looking decidedly non-pro.

Luckily I have an extra computer laying around that I loaded with Cubase XT. I brought the computer and my MOTU Midi TimePiece AV down to the studio and we synced the ADATS, computer and ASR using that. I trust this setup much more because it uses a hard offset number that is easily repeatable and I know the MOTU device is rock solid. Stay tuned for more about the project and see how it unfolds.

Project Diary Part 2

Dateline: 11/10/98

Days 3 and 4

Because of some syncing equipment issues we were put back a day.

Days 3 and 4 will be used to start laying down scratch templates to the 16-bit ADAT. These will consist of sequenced tracks that the artist and producer have been working on in pre-production. These tracks will be for reference only. Due to the fact we only have one 20-bit machine and more than 8 separate tracks to cut, I can't mix back the separate tracks to the 16-bit machine. So it makes the most sense to internally mix our reference tracks within the sequencer for this first pass. The purpose is so that we can monitor the tracks from the 16-bit and have the entire 20-bit machine open for recording. I could run them virtually from the sequencer but that's another syncing headache in addition to our syncing the two generations of ADATS.

How We're Working

We are working song by song. We laid the mixed scratch tracks in two stereo pairs from the ASR. One with the whole sequence and the other without cymbals. This is because the producer (also a drummer) wants to overdub the cymbals live for the final product and it will be easier to do so with a cymbal-less track. Lastly we laid a straight click to track 8 of the 16-bit ADAT. Once that is done we laid the individual tracks to the 20-bit ADAT in sync.

      HANDY TRICK: Although the two ADATs we're using were
      from different generations, the new machine is completely
      compatible with the old. Also if you're using both machines in 16-bit
      mode you can still use the digital dumping feature. This way I could
      buss tracks from the console to the older machine and then put the
      new machine in digital-in mode to make back-ups or bounce
      essential tracks. If the newer machine were in 20-bit mode this
      digital bounce feature does not work.

To keep the tracks sounding clean and very NON-Mackie, I'm running the sequencer thru my Brent Averill refurbished Calrec mic preamps on it's way to tape. The Calrec's have 1/4" Hi-Z inputs on the front and will handle either mic or line inputs. I'm also using the API Lunchbox that I have for review for the same purpose. I'm also gating all the tracks going to tape through a Compex gate when possible to keep the noise of the ASR to a minimum. Having only three of these types of inputs is not the ideal situation but I'm willing to take the pains to do it because of the quality input to tape that it affords us. I'd rather have 16 of these and two ADATS so the process would go quicker but that's the point of this series, making due with the resources you have.

One More Problem

While laying down these tracks we noticed a random "hiccup" that the sequencer would put down. This is a minute interruption in the sequence that is quite audible. Knowing from experience that the Midi TimePiece is rock solid I have to blame the ASR. At this point I'm quickly learning NOT to like this box. The producer has lamented the fact that he's had many OS upgrades already and has had to deal with many bugs, he too is unhappy with it. All that aside I worked around this by listening VERY closely to the tracks as they go down and if there is such a problem I replay the sequence and "punch in" the problem area. This is certainly keeping me on my toes but I'm still confident that we'll get the results we need.

Project Diary Part 3

Dateline: 11/17/98

Here We Go!

I had some genuine reservations about recording in this environment. I explained earlier that it is a school bandroom and although it followed the rules of non-parallel surfaces well it was very live. We noticed this right away when I tried to do a live hi-hat overdub in conjunction with some cymbals miked with two overhead mikes. The hi-hat leakage was extremely ambient and really out of control. So it was time to fix up the room. Luckily we had about 35 panels of Sonex foam laying around which we tacked up around the room on many of the open walls. I also drew up some plans for some cheap gobos that we'd use around the drums and later for the other overdubs we'd do. The plan was as follows.

      Four sheets of 3/4 inch plywood ripped down to 4'x6'
      Six door hinges
      "L" brackets for stability (shelve braces)
      Handles for ease of moving
      Thick nap carpet and a staple gun

The pieces of plywood are hinged together then the carpet is stapled down to one side. After that is secure you put on the L-braces near the ends on the floor for stability. Next put on the handles and voila` you have a simple gobo.

The Sessions

We put up the gobos and along with some that I brought from my own studio they made a nice little "booth" around the drum kit. It tamed down the room considerably and made for some nice drum sessions. We recorded the bass and drums together for the bed tracks. Budget didn't allow involving other players at this point. The trade-off is that you don't get input from all the players at once but you save a lot of money by not having to use a larger studio and pay for the players to fly in from out of town. Our plan was to involve as many out-of-town people as possible to keep the project from sounding "local". As you'll see and hear in the coming weeks, this worked rather well. The bass and drums for all the tunes were laid over a three day period and went off with only minor problems.

The Next Step

My next consideration was to prepare tapes for our trip to Los Angeles. The studios we were going to be working at only had two ADATs at most. Wanting to give the players as many tracks as they'd need I'd have to consolidate our first sessions to one work tape and leave the second machine open for overdubs. I mixed the drums down to stereo and put them over to a work tape that contained the bass and scratch guitar and scratch vocals. I then formatted tapes for the trip. These included blank tapes designated as guitar reels and keyboard reels. Due to the fact that our mix studio, the only Neve V-Series in town, did not have 20-bit machines and it was going to cost a considerable amount to rent some I've re-thought my original "all 20-bit" project scenario. I've opted to just put the live drums and vocals on 20-bit machines and go with 16-bit conversion for the guitar, keyboard and other overdubbed tracks. This is a bit of a disappointment for me because I really like the sound of the new machines but circumstances have forced me into a corner. This kind of stuff is what goes on in a project where you're trying to get the best out of the least, it's making decisions based on the realities that are tempering your original concept. Next week I'll cover our trip to the coast and how I coordinated the work tapes as we went.

Project Diary Part 4

Dateline: 11/24/98

The Plan

We've got 9 songs to cover and I've allotted 3 days for guitar overdubs and two days for keyboards. The great thing about this trip is that we're working at the home studios of two great LA players. Guitarist John D. and keyboard man James S. John played for years with Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. He's a songwriter as well and has a good musical sense as well as being a great all-round guitar player. In recent years he's been touring with Kenny Loggins. John is the consummate pro and has all the tools of the trade. James is also a great player and has worked with R. Kelly and Sophie B. Hawkins among others.

We traveled with our own ADAT machine just as a backup. Speaking of backups I can't stress enough the importance of NEVER traveling with original tapes. Always make a work tape or travel with a copy. X-Ray machines at airports, lost bags and other problems could rob you of your work, better to be safe than sorry. We also brought clearly written charts for each song and track sheets.

Day One in LA

I came into John's studio space and liked it immediately. There was a window that was double pane so the studio was naturally and well lit. Inside was a Mackie 8 buss console, two ADATS and a few reverbs. The key to using a Mackie is having something nice at the front end to go to tape with so you only rely on the Mackie for monitoring. John had the Focusrite Red7 preamp/compressor and a nice tube mic made by Soundeluxe. He put on a CD for me and fired up his monitors and it sounded awful. It was a new environment for me and I was thinking the worst. Not wanting to insult our host I nodded and smiled when John asked if I liked the speakers, inside I was thinking that this was going to be tough working in this room. John left to go get us some coffee and I put up our tapes and started listening. Something was wrong and I finally decided to check the wiring of his system and found the problem. The speakers were out-of-phase. I kicked myself for not figuring this out immediately as I'm a NUT about recognizing the difference. It was however a brand new room for me and not one that was acoustically perfect. All in all though I was happy that I found the problem and fixed it immediately by flipping the wiring one one speaker's terminals from plus to minus. Right away we also had a problem synching up one of John's ADATs and we pressed our own machine into duty. It was worth while lugging it on the plane after all.

The Outcome

We started in on song one and found that John's guitar and amp collection was making for some nice colors. The key to cutting great guitars is to have a variety of instruments and amps to record. The more colors on your palette the more your production is going to be varied and interesting. Beg or borrow to make this happen in your own studio.

The first day went slowly as we were finding a work groove. We started out working on one song at a time and changing setups as we went. This became cumbersome and we found that laying acoustic guitars on a few songs at a time became a more efficient way to work. This reduced setup and tear down time and we got much more work done on day two. After three 8 hour days, some great lunches and lots of great playing we got through all nine songs and moved onto the next phase. Tune in next week to see how keyboard recording went in Los Angeles.

Project Diary Part 5

Dateline: 12/1/98

The Plan

After three days cutting guitars in Los Angeles we were ready to carry on and record keyboards on all 9 songs of this project. The keyboard player had his own recording setup just as the guitar player did. By the way, this is becoming very common especially in Los Angeles. Now that the price of recording has come way down you find players investing in themselves and setting up their own recording environments. Because of the portability of the format you can easily get tapes from around the country or world for that matter, put down guitar tracks and then send them back.

The Setup

The keyboard player's setup was a bit different from what we'd just experienced. He rented in two adjacent apartments in the valley. One was for living and one for recording. The loudness of what we did was definitely a factor as he had close neighbors. When you walked into the "studio" it looked like a bomb had hit it. There was a B3, Wurlitzer, Grand Piano, Fender Rhodes and misc synths. All these instruments sounded great by the way it's just that the environment was a bit chaotic and cramped. James monitored through a pair of Tannoy PBM 6.5's which I don't care for but for this it would do. He had a Bheringer Eurodesk 48 input in-line console.

Most of the tracks was going to be direct input into the console. However, miking the Leslie speaker from the B3 organ presented a problem. I didn't bring any microphones and I only had one AKG 414 and an SM-58 available to me from James the Keyboard man. Luckily I was able to call on a friend and borrow two line level B&K LINK microphones.

The Procedure

As I laid out in my last two features, I organized the tapes very specifically in a modular fashion so we could take one tape as reference for the musicians and have another complete tape for their overdubs. At the end of the guitar sessions, the last thing I did was to "comp" the guitar tracks back to the main reference tape so James could hear all we'd done so far. A comp is a submix down to one or two tracks. This is not used for the final mix but just as a reference. By the way the best thing to do would be to make copies of all the tapes and send them back separately but we didn't. This was a decided risk and I know now that next time I will take pains to make this happen. We could have wasted the whole trip if an unfortunate accident or loss of the tapes had taken place. It's worth the cost and time to do make the safety copies.

We went through each song and asked James what he heard it needed. In addition the producer had some ideas of his own. We had to quit early the first day and got 5 of the songs done. Because of the thickness of the guitar tracks there wasn't much room for keyboard parts and we didn't foolishly add parts just for the fun of it. When we got to the B3 parts I used the line level B&K mics and the 414 with great results. We had to wheel the Leslie into the hallway to the bathroom and close the door. I was worried that the tracks would sound boxy. I put the 414 near the floor at the back of the open cabinet (a 1967 tube leslie cabinet that was tweaked to perfection). Then on stands I put the B&Ks at either side of the cabinet near the ports. This rendered a very nice stereo picture. Because of the thinness of the walls and the situation we had to monitor very softly and still I got low-end leakage from the speakers in our "control room".

The Last Day in LA

After all the keyboard parts were done we went out for a nice meal and called it a day and a trip. We jetted back to Phoenix with the songs well fleshed out and ready to carry on with the other overdubs we needed for the project. Next week we cover those and more as we carry on with our Project Diary. Stay tuned.

Project Diary Part 6

Dateline: 12/8/98

Carrying On

There's still lots of work to be done on all the songs. As of now we have drums, bass, guitar and keys down. Now it's time to take the project to the next level. The producer has researched a lot of current music from artists such as Sean Colvin, Sarah Mclaughlin, Jonatha Brooks, Tori Amos, Natalie Imbruglia, Sheryl Crow and Amanda Marshall. We are styling our record after many different current styles to make sure we are on top of things. He has some very specific ideas as far as percussion, vocals and other ideas to flesh out the tracks. My focus is to get the sounds he wants and also to fix some things that we hurriedly recorded and didn't get well on tape. For instance in our effort to save money we cut drums in our band room/studio. The producer/drummer procrastinated so long in getting his drum kit together that I had little time to get my sounds. His kick drum was a REAL problem. It's a very nice Pearl set that I've recorded before with other drummers with great results. I just couldn't get a handle on his particular drum. First off his style of playing the drum was a but sloppy in that he left the beater on the head too long with each kick and that produced a flamming hit that was not well defined. In addition his kick drum had a muffled sound that was baffling me. I'd asked him if he had any mufflers on the drum and he said no. I just put my hourglass DW pillow inside and my favorite kick mic (Shure SM-91a) and it sounded awful. We were in such a rush because the bass player was there and we had flown him in that I just punted and went with the best sound I could get.

WARNING: Learn from my mistake (I DID!) and NEVER settle. Take
the time necessary to get it right at the front. Don't feel pressured by
players and situations you have no control over. Due to the drummers
procrastination I was forced to quickly get a sound and I settled due to the
pressures of the day and as you'll see in the coming weeks it is a lot of
trouble to make it right.

Finding the Problem

A few days later after the bass player had left I further explored the drum and saw some plastic rings that were suspended inside the drum. These are the holders for Remo mufflers. When he said he had no mufflers in place he was right but the holders were still inside the drum. I had him take them out and the sound improved 100%. Lesson learned. I'd never seen these particular devices before and I hope never to see them again. They are the most ruinious devices of good kick drum recording I've ever heard. This drummer was used to playing live and liked what they did for him in that case. For live ok for recording BURN THEM! When installed they are hidden from view unless you look closely. They are large plastic rings that mount on the rim of each side, inside the drum against the head. I'm putting out an APB! Whew.....sorry to vent but they messed me up. See next week how we used PVC piping and metal tubes to get some interesting
sounds on tape.

QUICK TIP

To quickly bounce tracks digitally internally on an ADAT XT.

      Push and hold the Track Copy button
      Select the source track using the track assign buttons
      Let up on the Track Copy button
      Pick a destination track using the track assign buttons
      Play and record the track to the new destination
      BE CAREFUL not to erase master material in the process

Project Diary Part 7

Dateline: 12/15/98

Looping With Pro Tools

In our quest to use a lot of original sounds on the project we decided to record a drum kit specifically for the reason of looping it. At first we were going to take four bars and simply loop it throughout the song and then use it when we wanted. This later developed into taking the part recorded top to bottom and giving it a looped sound. This way when we did bring it into the track we could use it in transitions as a fill of sorts and it would always be fresh.

Step One

The first step was to record a drum kit. I set it up using a kick mic and an overhead. Knowing I wasn't going for a full kit kind of sound I was confident that this lo-tech approach would be all I would need for the loop effect. We recorded the part from top to bottom, fixing as we went so the part was nice and tight to the track. This would all change later as you'll see. Then on a junket to a local studio to make 20-bit copies I decided to take advantage of their mammoth Pro Tools rig and do the looping as the copies were cooking. I submixed the miked drum part to one track and bussed it into Pro Tools while the tape machines and the computer were in synch. This is very important as you want to be able to easily fire the part back to tape and doing it in synch is the easiest way. By the way you can easily synch using either SMPTE time code or Midi Clock in and out of the computer.

Step Two

One big reason I chose to this in Pro Tools is that there are some very interesting Plug-ins that give things a lo-fi sound very easily. In fact the one I used is called Lo-FI. Lo-Fi lets you choose how narrow you want your bandwidth to be via sampling rate and a few other key parameters that really take the polish off your sound (in a good way!). That in conjunction with a filter and compressor from Waves and my loop was sounding quite "loopy" if you know what I mean. It had that narrow bandwidth sound that you hear on a lot of records out now.

Onto the Next Task

That task accomplished, next I wanted to prepare a trigger track for kick drum replacement. I took my errant kick drum, plugged it into an Alesis DM5 drum module and then took the midi out of the DM5 into Performer. The DM5 and DM4 for that matter takes any audio signal and turns it into a midi event. Just what you want to send into any sequencer and easily manipulate later. Before I put the kick into the DM5 however I gated it. I'll be covering gating more in an upcoming feature. This allowed no false triggers to enter the computer and thus give me a kick where there was none before. I saved the files as plain midi files so any sequencer could read them (I'm using Q-Base back at the studio) and made sure the time start was set to zero so that my file would always be in synch with my ADAT original.

Low End Trouble Avoided

Lastly I wanted to tell you how I'm dealing with a nasty problem in our recording environment. Because of our studio's proximity to the airport, I've had to deal with a lot of low-end rumble. To prevent it getting to tape, I make sure that I rolloff low end if I'm doing a track that doesn't call for it such as a shaker or tambourine. All other tracks that I need low end on I make sure that I listen carefully for ambient noise leaking in from outside. In addition we're turning off the air-conditioning/heating and refrigerator for our sessions to make certain our tracks are clean. With a good ear you can really keep yourself out of trouble later on. Stay tuned because next week we get into some very unorthodox but very cool recording techniques.

Project Diary Part 8

Dateline: 12/22/98

Pipe Dreams

Because our recording space used to be an air-conditioning shop it has some remnants that have remained onsite that we've incorporated into our recordings. This evolved around the fact that we wanted most of our sounds to be originally generated rather than come out of a sampler library. One of the things that I chose to employ was to record some drum tracks through different kinds of pipe. It's not an original idea, I'd worked with a band years ago that sang some vocals through cardboard tubes and printed that to tape with interesting results. This particular application turned out being magic however and I was grateful for the gift.

The Concept

The idea was to get a percussive background part to be an ingredient in one of our songs. It was to be a narrow bandwidth but just tweaking the EQ was not exactly what I was looking for. There were a number of different sizes of tubing around the studio and I tried putting a mic at the far end of a rather large tube for starters. This didn't do a whole heck of a lot so I saw a 7' piece of 3/4" PVC pipe that was laying in a corner. None of the mics I had would fit inside the pipe until I remembered my Earthworks TC30k had a very narrow end on it. I put the mic in the tube and just pointed it at the drum kit. Next I went into the control room and as the drummer played I played with some extreme limiting just for kicks. Through a combination of a 20:1 ratio and a fast attack and release I got an incredible sound. It was of narrow bandwidth and had a swirling effect at a definite pitch because of the pipe. In addition the extreme compression acted as a kind of gate for the major kick and snare hits and expanded the lower level rhythmic stuff. This combined with the regular mics I had on the kit (Shure SM91a on the kick and two AT4041s on the overheads) gave an unbelievable percussive bed. Quite original!

But Wait There's More!

This turned out to be the first step in the process. Because of the length of the pipe, the pitch of the swirly effect was about a half-step down from the pitch I needed to match the tonality of the song. At a later session in another studio I popped the swirly effect into Pro Tools and pitch shifted it up a half step. As you may know, when you pitch shift up or down it adds a delay because of the process. To combat this I just nudged the newly pitched track back by milliseconds until it grooved with the tracks on tape. Then I laid it back to tape and that will be the sound we use for the final mix. Whew!! It may seem like a long way to go but believe me if you take the time and patience to make your productions original like that it won't go unnoticed. It's my theory of Ear Candy. The more the better!

Happy Holidays to all of you, thanks again for making it a great and growing year for the site. I'm hoping this next year will be even better and more and more of you will be visiting. Next week I'll be taking a much needed week off for some R&R. I've got lots more great things to share with you that have come out of these sessions so please come back. The next upload will be on January 5th. Here's to a great New Year for all of you and may your recording wishes come true.

Project Diary Part 9

Dateline: 01/05/99

Getting Ready for Vocals

Because of the low-tech nature of our studio we've only had two ADATS at our disposal for most of the project. I've dealt with this deficit by doing careful submixes of the existing tracks as we go to one machine and then use the open machine for new material. Needless to say that gets harder and harder as you get more and more tracks. At this point it's time to make submixes for the vocal sessions. Now is the time you want to spend some money and go to a studio where you can have all the tracks up at one time. I also asked that the singer be present so that I can get her opinion on what she'd like to be prevalent in her mixes. This usually would be done at each session but I don't have individual control because of the lack of machines.

Behind The Scenes

Some of you have asked for all the details of the sessions so I'd like to alert you to a sub-plot brewing. The relationships on the project have become more challenging as we've gone along. The producer has wasted a lot of time and money by not being prepared and being late or not showing up for some sessions. This has really put some stress between the parties involved and the quality of the tracks has suffered because of it. This is where I want to stress that your job as an engineer is first and foremost to have allegiance to the music. There were many times where I could have really just thrown up my hands and taken a nasty tack but I've bitten my tongue in all but two situations. Even those times I tempered my response and let my feelings be known without being nasty. This serves to set you up as a cool-head that can handle anything and finish the project. I've entertained ideas of walking out or being more demonstrative but I've maintained my pro game face and in the long run for me this is the best way to work. Anyone in the past I've worked with who worked this way has always gained respect and trust and that's a good thing.

Case in point was a session scheduled for last Saturday. I booked the studio with the producer present and the date was set. It was scheduled for the day after Christmas and the studio owner really didn't want to come in but for us he made the effort. A half hour after downbeat on the day of the session I called the producer and got his machine, he called me back in a sleepy voice and reminded me that the session was Saturday. I then reminded him that it WAS Saturday, yesterday was Friday and that we were there waiting. Knowing his slow response time I called the session off and neither I or the studio owner were happy campers. Dealing with these kinds of things are sometime part of the job but when it happens it really throws a wet blanket on something that should be fun (at least that's why I do it!). It's cool that I chose to share this particular project with all of you because it has it all. The Good, Bad and Ugly.

Under Water Exploration

Getting back to more positive things I'd like to turn you onto a very cool sonic texture. We took cymbals and suspended them in a regular cymbal stand. Then we got a large plastic garbage can and filled it nearly to the top with water. I put up a nice condenser near the top of the can but not too close. Then during parts of the song that called for it the drummer would crash the cymbal and then dip it into the water. This brings an instant change in the pitch of the cymbal over the entire bandwidth. Needless to say it's VERY interesting. By adjusting the speed and depth of how you dunk the cymbal you can get various textures with varying sustain. Check it out if you need that extra weird texture on your next project.

Project Diary Part 10

Dateline: 01/19/99

Repair and Conquer

Because of the nature of the project (recording most parts as separate pieces) some parts didn't gel at all times with the track. So the producer wanted to test the feasibility of fixing some of the parts in Pro-Tools. At first he wanted to move individual drums but I put a stop to that idea because of the nature of live recorded drums. You set up many mics on a drum kit and leakage is part of what makes it sound live. To try to move one of the miked drums around in time would be a large mistake because the leaked drum hits would still be in its original spot in time. So, we opted to listen and see what else could be moved to help the groove. It turned out that the guitar part was a bit off only in a few spots but that was enough to take your ear away from the groove.

Because we only had to tweak one track, I put a submix of the song (minus the guitar) to two tracks of Pro Tools. At the same time I flew the guitar onto the computer using the digital ADAT Bridge made by Digidesign. This transfers the signal digitally locked sample accurate and is the best way to fly. Then we looked and listened to the guitar part and I made minor adjustments to the track in spots to clean it up. This worked well in spots and not in others. On the rebound back to the ADAT I only punched the parts into the master track that we tweaked. This way I was assured the original track maintained it's integrity except for a very few fixes.

Flying Background Vocals

A DAW can also be used to make your background vocal tracks sound very consistent and save you in studio recording time. We recorded two days of background vocals but when we did we only recorded the repeating choruses once. Then at a later time we went in and put the parts into Pro Tools and moved them to the other choruses we didn't record. This is a very common trick and I saw Babyface do it very effectively on some sessions I assisted on. They actually used machine offsets to accomplish it but the outcome is the same. The technique renders very consistent backgrounds and the ability to get more done in the original sessions because you're not wearing out your singers.

Inside Scoop

The singer caught a bad cold when we were in LA and she hasn't been able to shake it. This has forced us to move the mix date back for a second time. In the meantime we're doing more overdubs and trying to keep the pace of the project up. Stay tuned for more interesting developments. I promise you'll not be bored in weeks to come.

Project Diary Part 11

Dateline: 01/26/99

Background Vocals

In preparation for lead vocals we recorded backgrounds over a period of three sessions. There was some controversy about this as the singer at first didn't want to be restricted by any background parts when she sang her leads. She wanted free reign over the music. She had a valid point and there is no "right" way to do this. I've worked on projects where the back vocals were laid after and before. It's her preference. However as the project has gotten longer and more expensive than anticipated she later changed her mind and we scheduled the sessions before the lead vocals were to be recorded.

The sessions were well organized, the producer is a very good singer and he planned out some parts for all the songs. The plan was to use himself and another great local female singer that I knew very well. The combination was awesome. They both can morph their voices into various textures and timbres and that yielded some very nice parts. If anything we had too much going on with backgrounds on every song, however that can always be weeded out or de-accentuated later on in the mix. Better to have more than you need than to later say........awwww! I wish we'd have done this or that.

The Layout

Backgrounds can be tricky because you can paint yourself into a corner if you lay down the parts in an inflexible manner. For instance doubling some parts and not others will make your parts center heavy and could possibly mask the lead vocal. I always like to lay backgrounds in pairs. This way I can pan them off center and still have them balanced. There are several ways to do this. You can split up parts as separate pitches and double them. So you'd have both (or however many singers you have) singers sing the same note on one track then double it. This could be the bottom note of a three part chord. Then move onto the second and then third part doubling each one. This would be six tracks of vocals all broken down to separate parts. This way you can always mix the parts in perfect balance later rather than relying in the singers to keep the perfect blend from part to part.

This time we laid the first part as a doubled two-part harmony. Then we laid two other parts in the fashion described above. This gave me four parts over six tracks. Because of our one ADAT situation this was ideal as it left me two tracks left for step out parts and extras.

Overlaps

Sometime you'll have the end of a chorus overlapping another part that's coming in on the next section. I had this very situation happen and didn't have the tracks to cover two doubled overlaps. What I did was to lay both parts in separate parts of the song. For instance I laid the first overlapping part on the end of B Section One and then laid the part it was going to collide with at the beginning of Chorus Two. This way the parts would never meet in real time. Later on however I had to put all the parts into Pro Tools and make them all work together. I had two overlapping parts each with six tracks. To save tracks I then put them all onto separate Pro Tools tracks and cross-faded them perfectly. Then I laid all the parts back to my background vocal tape and had essentially 12 overlapping parts represented on 6 tracks. You can see how having a DAW is very important in getting the most done with the least resources. It's getting so cheap now to do this on a home computer that it's really something to consider even if your studio is ADAT or DA-88 based.

Project Diary Part 12

Dateline: 02/9/99

Frosting

Chocolate cake just wouldn't be chocolate cake without frosting. Somehow it just tops it off nicely. That goes for recording too. Just having your signal path together, although REALLY important, is not enough. How you build your tracks, your "frosting" so to speak, is what makes it special. Working with background vocalists can be a challenge. Keeping the blend as we've talked about in earlier features is very important. There are also some tricks you can use to make a group sound a bit thicker and you can change the timbre from section to section or song to song.

Pitch Shifting

Most multi-track recorders will let you do some kind of pitch shifting. I often use this to change the timbre of doubles when I'm recording. As we've talked about, arranging your tracks in doubles makes for a nice balance and leaves a hole in the middle of your mix for your lead vocal. What I do on the second pass of a unison double is to pitch the machine either up or down about 10 cents or so. Pitch shifters divide pitch into two adjustments. Course and fine. Course is incremented in half-steps (also called a semi-tone). Like frets on a guitar. The fine adjustment is arranged in cents or 1/100th of a half-step. When you pitch the vocal up on record and then back down on playback it makes the vocal sound a bit deeper but not enough that it's annoying. Especially when it's mixed with an original non-pitch shifted note. If you pitch shift the vocal down on record and back up on playback it makes the vocal sound higher. The overall effect is, for lack of a better term, darker and brighter. To my ear when you pitch up on record it darkens it a bit, and when you pitch down on record it brightens it.

I recently used this effect on a song where the artist wanted a very large sounding background vocal section. So I pitch shifted passes two and three of a three pass part. By pitching down and then up, it layered the timbres and made it sound like a bigger group. It's a misconception to think that simply doubling something will make it sound bigger. The problem is that if the singers are too close in pitch to the original you'll get phase shift and it will result in a smaller sound. When you alter the timbre you help this quite a bit.

Project Diary - The End

Dateline: 02/16/99

Lead Vocals

At this point in time the project was ready for lead vocals. The singer was apprehensive and was having major problems performing. There were a lot of reasons for this, lack of confidence (she's a great singer and writer in my estimation) and she was intimidated and upset by the producer. More about this later.

As for the equipment, I had a Manley mic through a Neve mic preamp and a Manley compressor and then straight to tape. The mic sounded great but I had a bit of a problem with crickets and outside noise in our make-shift studio. If we waited for planes and helicopters and crickets all went well. Also, there was so much leakage on a few of the earlier background vocal tracks that I decided to monitor using headphones. This cleaned up the vocal tracks a lot and I was very happy with the results.

Auto-Tune

Next I wanted to see if Auto-Tune would work for us. At this point I took the opportunity to head for the studio where we'd done most of our Pro Tools work and try out this great tuner. I got to play with it extensively and really got a good idea of what it can and can't do. It's not a miracle box, however it can take a problematic performance and make it more than palatable. I liked it so well that I pitched it to Pro Audio Review for a feature. They already had another writer on the hardware version of the tuner but didn't have anyone working on the plug-in version. So I got the job and wrote it up. It's featured in my product of the month and it is worth checking out.

The End

As you could probably tell through this series I've been having real problems with the producer. Without going into a lot of detail, I found his personal style very toxic. I was not the only one having this reaction and for my own sanity I decided to back out of the project. It was a good time to do so, vocals were just starting and the mix was to come. I didn't know at that time that I would not have been able to finish the project anyway because of other developments in my life and career. I'd never quit a project before but it was taking a toll on my personal life and I had to do it.

The New Beginning

In the last six weeks I've been negotiating with Pro Audio Review about a position they had open and that they were interested in me taking. I'm proud to announce that starting March 15th I'll be the new Editor-in-Chief of the magazine. I'm very excited about this and it came at a great time. It means relocating to the Washington D.C. area and a whole new life. I'm most excited because I'll be attending all the domestic and European audio trade shows and that means I'll be on the cutting edge of new gear. I'll be sharing all this with you as it happens. I'll still be keeping the site as it is, just taking it in another direction.

As for the immediate future, a lot of you have been asking questions about EQ and mastering and that has prompted me to do a Mixing series. This will start very soon so stay tuned. Thanks to all of you for all your support.