For my current projects I have been working on an EP. My style of writing is something like indie rock, dream pop shoe gaze vibes. I have been jamming out with Mike playing drums and I have been singing and playing guitar. I have looked into so. recording techniques and how some of the best and some of my favourite shoe gaze albums have been produced. I have also listened to a lot of songs that I am using as references for certain parts of the production. This is an overview of some of the cool techniques I used to process this track to give it the shoe gaze dreamy feel.
I found this video that ran through a bunch of over head micing techniques. I was really looking for something that would capture the over all drum image as well as the hats and some of the skin sound hits.
This video was a great reference for hearing these very head techniques one after the other. After watching this I decided in conjunction with some more over head mics I would try the Gyln Johns technique. This seems like a simpler but effective way to avoid spill from the crash but also sounds super clean and tight.
After reading about the benefits of both minimal, close mixing and ambient mic techniques. I decided that I would do all three. I found some really great info on how room mics can be suer useful when wanting to get that beautiful washy sound. I read this article about some different ambient room mixing techniques. It really got me excited to be experimental. There were a lot of cool techniques. One of my favourite was called the Shure thing. It is a really simple technique by placing an sm58 facing towards a corner of the room about 30cm from the corner. This captures a lot of the bounce and reflections from the lower frequencies. I was interesting in trying this. But I figured for my project that it might not suit the drum style I was aiming for but thought it was a cool idea. I remembered that I had access to some PZM room mics that I had used before when recording an orchestra. Although the environment was quite different I thought I'd so some research into how these were used if at all when recording drums. I read on some forums at a fair few people had used the PZM mics for recording drums (Tedr,2008). So I decided to give it a go. I had wanted to use them for some band stuff for a while.
Here is a diagram of my drum set up!
I have used some of my favourite mic's such as AKG C414's and Nt5's. I find they really capture the brighter sounds that I am after in this production. Although a lot of shoe gaze and dream pop band in the 80's and 90's used drum machines I wanted to capture the over all drum image and then use effects and potentially some one shots to replace anything I wanted to change after. I figured so long as the beat was there I could really mess around with the drums later. I feel like shoe gaze although is about production is also just about how it is played as well. The drums I captured were basic and lazy sounding like a lot of the dream pop music I've listened to.
(Fumo, 2018)
After the recording took place due to how the songs we tracked I realised that I had made a little bit of a mistake. As I am playing guitar and singing on this project I also had to be doing this while Mike was playing drums. As the idea was to get a really good sound and practice some techniques rather than getting the best performance. I spent along time making sure the sound of the drums was dope in the control room. I used a little bit of tape EQ on the snare and kick drum. I boosted the fundamentals 80hz for the kick and 500hz for the snare just to make it sound a little bit rounder. Everything was sounding great and I through I'd have a really solid few takes to work with having taken the time to work out these few minor adjustments to make sure everything sounds great. However during the recording process as no one was in the control room checking the sound during the hour of doing drum takes the kick drum had moved closer to the kick out microphone placed on the beater. This caused a buzzing horrible sound and had pretty much ruined this technique I was trying. I was thinking that if I placed an Sm57 on the outside of the beater then its might give my a punchy player I could blend with the kick in. I read this article last year that explains some of Tame Impala's recording techniques and mic choices. Kevin Parker used an Sm57 here as a kick in mic juts placed on a pillow. I have tired this a few times and had worked out well. I thought that by placing it on the outside it would had maybe a similar effect but would allow the sound to develop for longer and get a different tone. Anyway it sounded okay until I realised that the takes were ruined (sad face).
So I had a few options, I could used trigger software at uni to fix it up or do it manually with a kick one shot that I liked. There was no doubt about it that I had to completely scratch the original take. I thought I'd fix it as soon as I could. However I woke up the day after with a very bad cold and decided not to go in to uni to use the trigger software. So I used my time while I was sick to replace the kick's for all three songs my hand. I listened to my reference track and found a kick sound that I thought was similar in my little collection of one shots that I was going to use. I then did a little research about the fasted and most effective way to do this. I came across a few handy resources. This video explains using tab to transient and the importance of grouping the tracks in order to make this process easy.
Here is this a little summary of how I replaced the 'kick out' microphone and then added another layer I could blend in.
1. I picked a kick sample that I thought sounded like one I heard in one of my reference tracks. Here is a link to the track I referenced for this sound.
2. I made sure that tab to transient was selected in the session. This is usually a default setting in protools.
3. I then selected the track I wanted to used as guide to replace the kick. I used the track that I was going to scrap which was the 'kick out'
4. I imported the new kick into a new audio track and grouped it with the 'kick out'. This will make the tab to transient function valid for this track as they are both selected.
5. I copied the new kick I was going to use.
6. The copy-tab-paste functions used in this process is. COMMAND- C - for copy, then TAB to the next transient and then for paste COMMAND- V.
7. The problem with this technique is that there are many little transients between the kick hits that were spill for the other drums. Sometime I'd have to hit TAB 3-4 times to get to the transient I wanted
Over all this process took me a few hours for all three songs but was worth it in the end as now the kick sound I have sounds great layered in with the 'Kick in' track that I used from the original recording.
Something else I noticed from a lot of the dream pop music I love it that the drums have a fair bit of reverb on them. As I used over heads, under heads and room microphones I thought I'd try using some outboard gear to get a cool reverb effect on these. I went into the NEVE to do this process I really lie the presets in the Lexicon so thought I could use this to my advantage rather than doing it in the box.
I sent my 6 room microphone tracks to seperate channels on the desk then out as a stereo mix. I Used an AUX send to adjust the amount of reverb I was using on the tracks as they were coming in their channels. I used the most on the PZM room mics as they were sounding nice and soft with the reverb where as the under heads were quiet bright. I used a little bit of tape EQ on the tracks coming in to the desk. I unfortunately forgot to take any photos as I only had a short space of time to do this but I think I cut the high end on all tracks around 1800 HZ. On the stereo out put of the tracks in protools I printed the reverb with little EQ as I was in a rush I didn't want to make any decisions on a short time span and with out hearing the rest of the mix.
Here is a little clip of the stereo mix I did of the 6 room microphones.
After this I played around with side chaining a flanger effect to this track. This was a weird effect that I just wanted to add in when there was a little bit of space in the song. I did this by side chaining the flanger to a compressor in an effects bus for this print drum take.
Here is a few screen shots showing the routing I have done. All these new tracks are sent to the drum bus also. I first created a side chain bus as send from the print track. I have duplicated this track and panned left and right that is why there is a copy of the track.
I then set the fade on the new BUS to unity and called it 'DRUM SC'.
I then created a new auxiliary track and called is DRUM FLAGER'. I found a flanger that wasn't too crazy sounding to used for this I wanted something pretty slow a subtle. I then after the flanger added a compressor. For this whole effect to work the main step is to make sure the key input on the compressor was set to the 'DRUM SC' bus that I created earlier.
After this the flanger was being fed through the compressor and being triggered by the print track of the drum reverb. I played around the compressor a fair bit to make this work how I wanted. I found that having a low thresh hold was really what was making this effect pop out after the end of a drum fill or in a break in the song. Here is a little screen shot of the settings I had on the compressor.
I am not sure if there is intact a right or wrong way to do this I just played around with the settings until I thought it sound good. I found it cool to use a compressor in this way to created an effect.
Another cool thing I did in my EP on the drum processing was add a gated reverb on the snare drum. This is a technique that was used a lot in the 80's and was very popular in shoe gaze.
This video I used as a reference when creating this effect. This was something I had tried in a previous mix but it didn't really suit the genre I was mixing. I thought that is would be cool to add to get a huge sounding snare.
This reverberated snare sound is super popular in dream pop also my reference track I used for the reverb in my song was this.
The snare is very prominent in the mix. I wanted this effect as I think it suites the wall of sound effect I was trying to capture.
To create this effect I duplicated 'snare top' track. I then sent this duplicate to a new BUS called 'Gated snare' and set the fade to unity. I then created a new auxiliary track and made the input of this track the 'Gated Snare' bus. On this aux track I added a reverb and after a gate plug in. I used a really large reverb to get this effect. I used a church preset in SPACE and made sure that the signal was 100% wet. I then used the D3 gate. I played around with the length of the threshed and the ratio to find where the best reverb length was. I found that because I wanted a large reverb that I had the threshold actually pretty low. Just enough time to anticipate the next hit before the reverb disappeared.
Here is an example of the snare reverb I created.
VOCAL
Another technique I used while mixing this EP was some reverse reverb on my vocals. I really wanted this washy feeling and in the song 'Girls' I thought it would be a really good way to introduce the first phrase of each verse. This really added another layer that differentiated the verse and the main riff. The riff section is distorted, reverberated and there is a synth that follows along with the guitar. However there is still a lot of space in this section compared to the rest of the song. There is a minimal bass line and a tight kick- snare drums beat. The addition of the reversed reverb added 'sucky' feeling to bring in the rest of the instruments and the loud heavy drum beat. I heard this reverse reverb used in a Jack River song. The intro is a keys and vocal section the reverse reverb is introduced before the first verse starts. The reverb used here is on the guitars but I thought that because the instrumentation was different using it on my vocals would sound better than the guitar.
Here is the Jack river song. The reverse reverb comes in at 0.39 seconds.
I used audio suite to create this effect. I duplicated the main vocal centre vocal line only and used this to create the reverb. I reversed the phrase and rendered the file down. I selected the word that I wanted to reverb to be on a chopped out the rest of the phrase. I then when into audio suite and selected a long tail reverb in space. I used a chamber and turned the signal all the way uo to 100% wet. I then rendered the file so that the reverb tail was visible in the audio clip. I then used the reverse effect in audio suite again to render the file back to normal. and had my phrase with the reversed reverb at the beginning. I blended it in to the reset of the main vocal line and faded it out.
After watching some reversed vocal reverb videos noticed that a lot of them blended the reverb phrase back in with the original vocal line. I though that it had less of an impact this way. to instead of lining up the take perfectly I juts took the reverse reverb and lived it up with the beginning of the vocal line in the next track. like this.
Here is a clip of the reverse reverb in the mix I did.
I was looking up some ways I could flesh out my voice while also having the large reverb vie I was going for effective. I came across this cool parallel compression technique that I thought would be cool so I decided to try it.
I first duplicated the lead vocal main track. I sent this and other two stereo mic's I had to a lead vocal bus. So the lead vocal and a duplicated version going to the same track. I then EQ's and compressed the duplicated track a heap I changed the sound completely. here are some screen shot of the difference I EQ and the compression level of the duplicated track.
Here is the un compressed track:
And here it is with the compressed layer underneath.
Here is the EQ and compression I used on this layer.
As you can see it is compressed a fair bit. So there is a lot of nice breaths and a really really difference element that I think adds a cool layer to the lead vocal.
For this track I also added a side chained compressed reverb on the main vocals. I set up two seperate busses for the lead and backing vocals. I then added a new auxiliary to make the verger and side chain compression on. I created a new bus on the 'main vox' and 'backing vox' busses. I added a reverb and compression on the 'compressed' reverb' bus I had created and made the key in put on the compression as the new send a had made on the two vocal busses and called it 'SC' for side chain.
This is an example of the result of this technique.
Over all I think these production techniques I used in my mix really highlighted some of the dreamy and wahsy effects I was after to make this a true dream pop sounding production. I have learnt a lot using these in the DAW and analogue techniques and I am excited to used them on some more productions in the future. Stay tuned for a link to the EP in the new few days!
REFERENCES:
Dunkley, J. (2019). Replacing & Reinforcing Recorded Drums |. Retrieved from https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/replacing-reinforcing-recorded-drums
Roegers, N. (2019). Ambient Miking: Room For Improvement |. Retrieved from https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ambient-miking-room-improvement
Recording Drums - Royer Labs. Retrieved from http://royerlabs.com/recording-drums/
Fumo, D. (2018). How to Record Dream Pop in Your Home Studio. Retrieved from https://reverb.com/au/news/how-to-record-dream-pop-in-your-home-studio
Jamieson, A. (2015). ‘gazed and Confused: A Guide to Shoegaze in your DAW. Retrieved from http://alijamieson.co.uk/2015/10/15/gazed-and-confused-a-guide-to-shoegaze-in-your-daw/3/
Sfirs, A. (2018). Engineering The Sound: My Bloody Valentine's 'Loveless'. Retrieved from https://enmoreaudio.com/engineering-the-sound-my-bloody-valentines-loveless/
Comments