Superstition Multitrack Recording

Drums

I trimmed all of the drum parts, cutting out the 4 bar drum stick click in, and i also manually cut out the long periods of audio unused by the tom mics, leaving just the tom hits.

To start with, I took the right overhead and panned it hard right, and the left overhead, and panned it hard left. This gave a nice wide stereo image and a full representation of the drum kit. I had to play around with the panning a little to get the snare directly in the center, but eventually i got the sound that i wanted. I used a bit of light compression to give the overheads a little more punch.

Next i brought the kick up and began experimenting with its level in the mix. the kick is relatively snappy, so i boosted some of the top end to add to the click. I boosted a bit of the low end too, in order to add some more bass. I compressed it fairly heavily, giving it good presence in the mix.

next came the top snare and bottom. The bottom snare i almost literally did nothing with, aside from compress it slightly. I wanted it to have the main body of the sound. The top snare i changed around a lot. I heavily compressed it, to get a very boxy, roomy tone, and added some subtle spring reverb. with the snares combined together, the result has a lot of snappiness, but still has some body and character. i ran a super low pass filter on both snares, taking out everything below about 30hz.

And lastly, I panned the toms 45 right and left, the left tom left, right tom right. I boosted some of the mids on the toms, and applied some light compression to even them out. I also used a fairly large but dry reverb, which isn’t too obvious in the final mix, but i think it helped to add presence. again, i cut out the very low end, from about 30hz down, in order to remove any rumble.

Guitars

I began by cutting out all of the low end on the guitars, rolling off from about 50hz.

After playing around with the 6 guitar tracks, i eventually decided to just delete everything that i didn’t need. so i got rid of both of the room mics, and two of the close sm57 mics. I kept the mic pointed at the inner cone for one take, and i also kept the the mic pointed at the edge of the cone for another take. I decided that the different takes and the slightly different mic sound would be enough variation to make an interesting mix without destroying the guitar sound. I panned them both left and right, at about 60. I heavily distorted both of the guitar sounds, much more than the original clean tone. I used the Eleven amp sim to get the tone i wanted, a patch called vintage crunch. I also used a fair bit of spring reverb on the guitar sound, to try and create a vintage 70s feel.

Bass

I used both the DI’d bass and the mic’ed up bass. The DI i used as the main bass sound, compressing it and bringing it up in the mix. I had the bulk of the bass, so i left the EQ alone on it. I brought the amp’ed bass up to slightly below the DI bass. I cut a fair bit of the low end, from about 50hz. i kept the high end information though, as it had a lot of the character of the amp. I boosted the mids as well, just slightly, to bring out the warm tone.

Clav

I actually left the clav as it was, mostly. I used the higher clav as my main part, compressing it and bringing it up in the mix. I brought up the second take, on a lower octave, and panned it to the right slightly. On both of the clav parts i cut a lot of the low end, so it wouldn’t occupy the bass frequencies in the mix.

Vox

With the vocals, i did a fair amount of editing. i started by comping my favorite takes together onto one comp track, using the playlist tool. I went in and cut out all of the blank background noise inbetween the vocal performances. I also cut out the breath inhale before the performances, but found cutting out the exhale at the end of the line made it sound unhuman. I compressed with a vocal setting, and used the EQ to boost the lower mids and upper highs, to add presence and sparkle to the sound. I used a slapback delay effect to add a bit of vintage slapback. I felt this made the vocal sound a lot more like the retro 60s/70s ‘processing’ with echo chambers etc. i also used spring reverb and the lo-fi plugin to the same effect, the regrading the sound sonically to give a lot of the character of the early tape recordings.

Sax

The sax was the last thing i processed. I found it difficult because the sax was very powerful and yet very dry. I used one room mic in the center, compressing it heavily to add character to the sound. with two of the close mic performances, i panned them left and right, at about 50-60, and brought them back a lot in the mix. I cut a lot of the low end, and boosted some of the highs. I also added a bit of artificial reverb with a long tail. I think the overall sound is good, they are not massive in the mix but still fairly prominent.

Sadly i decided not to use the ukulele track we recorded, as i couldn’t fit it into the mix.

And finally, we recorded the sax. We let the performer get comfortable and warmed up, and we discussed mic placement. We decided upon using two mics, one condenser to pick up the room ambience and one dynamic, to pick up the main body of the sax.

We used a AKG414, at about a meter back from the performer, set to omnidirectional, to capture the room sound. The room sound was absolutely excellent; the loud alto sax lit the room up with acoustic information, and the results were a very tight, but quite wet ambient sound.

We used a sm57 for the main closeup sound of the sax. We pointed it at the main body, the keys, about as close as we could possibly get without the performer hitting it. The sound was again, excellent, a nice clean, sharp tone. The sm57 picked up a fair bit of mid information, giving the sax a lot of body and character in the recording.

We had to do a few drop ins to correct performances in certain places, but the majority of the performance was fantastic, giving an absolutely lovely sound to work with in the mix. We double tracked the entire performance, giving a lot of choice when mixing.

Next we recorded the vocals and the clav.

The vocals were recorded on a Neumann U87, a classic choice for vocals, and we set it up with a pop shield. We let the performer warm up, and we began recording. The takes were good, we had some issues with the headphones distorting but we overcame them eventually. We double tracked a lot of it, using pro tools’ playlist feature to record multiple takes to ultimately construct a comp track comprised of the best elements of all of the takes. the vocals were strong throughout.

We also recorded Clav from the keyboard. We DI’d the keys straight in with an XLR, and only had time to do 2 takes. We did one on a higher octave, and one on a lower octave. There were a few minor mistakes we had to drop in and record over, including a bad xlr cable, but overall it was a great take.

Next we recorded the electric guitar.

We used a vox valetronic amp, which we placed on a chair to record. We ensured the guitarist was comfortable and ready to perform, and that the guitar was in tune. We hid the performer behind a baffle/screen in order to minimize the noise he produced, fret/string noise, strumming noise, foot taps etc.

We used three main mic positions on the amp;

we used two sm57s as close mics. One aimed at the center of the cone, and one pointed at edge. These provided the raw, closeup, loud take. although the amp was loud, we used a relatively clean setting when recording.

we also used a AKG 414, set to omnidirectional, placed about a meter back, to capture room ambience. we reversed the phase, as there were some phasing issues with the other mics.

We double tracked the guitars, resulting in 6 tracks of audio. we had to correct a few places, so we dropped in from the right place on pro tools.

we recorded the ukulele with the AKG414 in order to capture the delicate high frequencies. The sound was good, and we got it down in one take.

Next came the bass guitar. We ensured the bass was tuned and set up the amp. We used a DI box, coupled with a beyerdynamic m201. The condenser meant we were able to capture a lot of the low end information, whilst attempting to capture some of the character of the bass through the amp. We also used the DI in order to get a clean, full frequency take of the bass. We used a hardware rack compressor, the drawmer, on the DI with the ratio set to 5:1.

We checked our levels and set to record. the takes were mostly good, we had to drop in on pro tools in a few places in order to correct minor mistakes. Overall the tone was great, we ended up with a great bass sound.