I'd want you adhere to modestly well today we're going to look at a song you
know how to arrange series which is i how to arrange produce engineer you name
it would look at a song by the band at the WHO and it is called El Capitan this
is a fairly simple soul there are three piece so its guitar bass drums the
guitar players also the lead singer the LG guys so sing back rows the song is
essentially a single guitar bass and drums through the whole song
up until like the bridge section where as additional guitar comes in and
explain octaves of the lead part and then there's a couple of identity and
we're talking minimal amounts of overdubs it was all tracked here at my
studio Spitfire so on the 64 Ludwig kit in net you know there's additional
samples etc added to the drums to make a bigger cos to very small and the guitar
it is through the guitar players own amp which is an orange and also my Marshall
as well and he used to Les Paul so it's pretty straightforward stuff we did for
a couple of overdubs on the album use a Pro Junior just for some sort of nasally
kind of searing tones but essentially was all down here very straightforwardly
and check it out as ever please subscribe go to produce a product
comments on of the email list and leave loads of comments and questions down
below I love the discussions we have I really appreciate all of your input so
check out so so as you can see here is quite a lot going on in your arms I use
my sample back here which you can get the email list you'll get an email
telling you how you can download the samples
this is all the samples together
now I will say that I put this in a blender frankly you know I could bounce
set to stereo for home and have once their sample I just like honestly I like
to be able to manipulate them slightly in two weeks I've been using so many of
these cells and I created most of these cells myself you know the first to hear
that are actually dave gergen sales in there from he gave them to me either
from Alice in Chains is first to hear the whole second change recordings and
rooster and all that kind of stuff she saw a man in a box of the first hour
facelift you're you're recognized that snare so that's what he used his four at
then a lot of these like these transient ones here I design
transit design done with the compressor
attack back and then there's the Jerry Kramer sample created the Aerosmith
album is you know various different things and I just from you know making
out so I blend them together but yeah you could bounce as a stereo file
because the ambience is parent left and right well knows
that could be a stereo file and then you wouldn't have to play some ball like
that you know maybe you get my samples you blend them the way you want and then
print them to a stereo far even maybe a little extra compression or even EQ just
pull out some of the high end and then just layin at stereo file as it is for
me I blend in a way I want but it would be easier if you've got a high track him
just about ok so here's to live drums just take it
64 like type drunk house and the other samples cakes the same basic salary
gives us all that attack but if you look on the front kick on the 64 love again
there is no hall so what I do is instead of pretending that I've got a big live
drum room which I don't I have a bedroom size
live from the what I do is I just record the front head and that gives us that
kind of bottom here
that's one of those new Norman 6770 cool like the TLM 67 it's the one with no
transformer it's it's they're inexpensive 67 is still expensive but
they gave it to us to try out so I just stuck in the back of a warehouse the I
Warner is allegedly the Bob Rock soviet artists sample allegedly told which is
quite common so those are the pics are put together a scratch this live picture
and as you know as you should know it's all about the fades
it's all about making sure this polarity is all the same so if I make these you
see here you go to the front of these all these transitions are basically
lined up as accurately as you can to get the good slamming kick sound you're
always going to have slight idiosyncrasies and slight changes
between if you make a living doctors say they'll sound the same inherently but
you know essentially the front of this chick is pretty close and that's really
important if you want good slamming drum sounds transients all line up your phase
relation is good sometimes you know if the phases reverse the polarity reversal
the kick drum you may have the you know the first part the way for opposing and
I can cancel out the kicker make it sound really thin so be really careful
your face that I use addictive and I use melatonin to create a MIDI cause I found
it very accurate but I have recently got the slate trigger
which I hear is incredible and we try that out soon if you have any experience
with a slight trigger please let me know because I'm gonna try it out and see how
it works
oK so that's that's our kick ok if we go to our snare live stats let's have a
listen to that I think super compressed really by my standards 6 on it I've got
a little bit of a ring taken out of it 255 it is actually get on it cuz he
played relatively light and it was a lot of high happily so I just took that out
as you can see it's a small seventies drumsound which was great but you had to
snare and this is what its massive difference that's my his
but I have a lot of different discussions about this but the thing is
just like I have a small drum room in there and i couldnt open it up make it a
little louder but I'll never make it sound like it's recorded in a massive
live rural towns of ambience so for me the lesson is is like I take a small kid
I can make it small tight and seventies when I did not result record it for
soldiers last album he's very organic artist Trevor hall is a very organic are
too soft on two hours with him using their drum kit and we didn't do much to
it at all the only kick and snare samples are used on Trevor's album is
essentially the kick and snare that was played in the room just against it to
give it some more and maybe a little bit of addictive in there for maybe a bit
more attack on the cake so it's all about flexibility you know you whatever
i've got i've got the room in there I've got simple amount of Mike's never there
there's no more than eight months on the kid I could probably get away with four
to six depending on how I want to make it and then I can add or subtract you
know mics and add different samples etc to get different drum circles and you
know it's there's nothing better than as you know we you know I going to some
sites around the time of going there today
United I go to his great tracking rooms but the budgets these days you know
aren't there to always been a massive tracking room so if you've got a spare
bedroom or a garage or something you can convert it and you know make a little
drum room and then using these techniques you can change the drum cells
and still get great great chance to listen to the whole thing together so
eternally group all drums so here's all of the drugs together
climbing drunk driving that's really helping
dresses and all that and what's interesting about this song is you
probably just heard there is a massive tempo changes which is really cool so I
i I put a little tempo map there to help the drama play along with it
great said the base sound is very typical of what we do for same ashdown
based on this is an active five-string base and I'm blanking on the name I
think it was either a Yamaha Ibanez active base so carried away his daddy I
the bottom and out of the TI said the first thing we did was time it's just so
we laid it back so that the polarity was good between the amp here so it's just
delaying to the amp average here it depends on the notes being played but
there is a seven samples at different points wider but essentially I just
dragged it back just enough so the polarity the phase is good where 114 or
another 67 kind of an average between it here if you're not sure what I'm doing
here please leave questions we can talk about it so what I'm doing is dragging
this di to stop track here
dragging it back to be better but a priority with the air so that's what I'm
just doing you could do it visually I posted issues that I'm just and then I'm
never mess where it's recorded at some people drag it move it back that's what
you wanna do you want to that the overheads or anything that's fine but I
like to use the time just as just me I leave the audio where it's placed then I
use plugins but you could do it physically movie I've seen people do
that I've seen people create side chains by moving files backwards or forwards to
transients are created in 24 places compresses work in different ways of all
kinds of fun things you could do okay here's the req
what I've done is wiped everything above 150 not super super strong but you see
it's a role here this is something a trick I stole from a many many great
mixes you know the great great mixes do this kind of stuff so it's a DI
I'm sending a signal of 156 and below last year old off into icy for NYC
former multiband compressor as you can see it's like quite aggressively
compressing and keeping an even amount of low or below 200 but I'm controlling
the signal going if I take this on its popping out and get back to being clean
and then just the double-double I'm using my Mac DSP to compress
downloadable once and twice
you might think that's crazy it is crazy but there is one doing it's a five
string and there was some load there was some notes that we just saw like and
then there was some high stuff that had no real thickness of it so that multi
multiband compression
the first was really drastic the second one slightly more aggressive and the
last was hardly doing it at all I have a tendency to do that a lot of compression
what if I do use compression learned that from from working on records over
the years where you know small amounts of compression together could do some
wonderful things obviously you know things like vocals and stuff like that
there's nothing better than vocal writing you know actually just taking
volumes and pushing them so when it hits a compression it's nice and even the
whole time you'll notice on vocals a lot that I do little volume automations or
click gaining just about to do a Christmas crystal algae video you'll see
soon one of the things Chris talks about his clip going he does a lot of clip
going so he hits his compression is console very evenly so it creates a much
more even so oK so that's what's going on there and then I have the app and its
doubles to the first one of the ampere is a double of it
for men taken off just to add some of that class
with the same EQ setting up by seven runs and pasted together is this
onto last but not least our guitar W kind of tricks here I've got you know
the orange am here
driving this a little bit with my come out in five petal it's called the fuzz
and it's an awesome battle I like to come out of hospital personally also
have a big mouth and a little bit much as well the reason why I like the fuzz
primarily because frankly it's modern it's built like I'm gonna sweat is built
like a brick shithouse what that means is built really well as a power supply
built into it and when it's not fun seeing it's pretty quiet I love my
Electro Harmonix is one of the best-selling first battles ever but
there's a tendency to just put out a plan which is cool some of the time but
for a lot of modern rock records it's nice not to have to go in there and
clean up and just have you know if I go here to listen to this decay for
instance
I mean that's pretty science
you know and all the files paddle as good as they would be like
which honestly don't get me wrong it's actually kind of cool sometimes it's
nice to have some lawyers ok that's that's the essential to get a sound it
was a 57 through my 1073 using aspect Spectrasonics compressor but not a lot
going on as you see there's a lot of transients there it wasn't squashed
really heavily giving it supposed now too but it's duplicated the file is
duplicated and its
expand to the other side and I put on some echo boy 64th mix full so that
means a little slap going on since the two together
I also got a reverb and I'm using the revolver the new Mac tears people of all
new to me just pretty awesome in that span over to the right
usual tricks I have a guitar primary on the left and in this case a little slap
to the right and that gives us some wit so it means that you know essentially
the soul which is predominantly up until the sort of bricks Bridgend solo section
here one to talk about drugs going on the whole time so it's just check it out
when you listen to the internet through the first first with the temperature
change so it stayed at Corus tempo change for the so now the Sun Goes you
the guitarist's out there probably recognize that that is good
old-fashioned Digitech whammy battle which is pretty awesome toy to have at
your disposal is employed quite heavily the end of the song as well the thing
about the Digitech for guitar players so fantastic inserted third or fifth
octaves and not only is it like a harmonizer policy plan to place a third
above two minor or major or whatever you choose it is variable so put down I turn
it on its playing a third if I wanted to go back I can go where stocks started
the actual now and then moved to third in this instance its push their it's an
octave above when he's moving in and out there is a continuously variable effect
is fantastic and it's really good for doing doubles in different orders to his
isola
fantastic paddle and one is a slam delimiter on it and I'll one on it just
because to get it to cut through the rest of the mix you know it's basically
just shot off the top of it made it a big blob and it's just going through if
you look at the way for
pretty awesome that's just using a Digitech whammy pedal now if we got will
go to the third verse back to the varsity
so that's awesome so we have them a guitar here
not tracking perfectly
tracking perfectly because it's like that those pedals Jimmy Page fuzz pedal
when he plugged into the first panel then into the mic pre and bypassed any
amp just get that kind of like kind of messed up in and out guitar sound
everybody
Digitech whammy pedal is doing everything else just creating and the
fact that it's not tracking absolutely perfectly just because of all the second
and third harmonics you get when you play guitar gives it that roughness that
screwed up nervous look as you can tell these are great players look at all the
guitar part something like the editing is really minimal and that really helps
you know and to be quite frank you know when you are using samples on kids it's
really difficult on the drum sometimes to get you know it to sound incredibly
natural you was gonna hear that sample I heard on every every time I hear samples
on it I hear it I'm sure you guys do as well so I like other things around it to
be just a little screwed up a little messed up like these guitar sales here
to be slightly in and out of time and pushing and not tracking perfectly gives
you know gives track a little bit more edge necessity is the mother of
invention were in a small room here with small drums are using drum samples to
get a bigger sound would you know where Robert join the record I went to sunset
sound there there was no trump samples anywhere not even natural drum samples
on that recording you know you guys have been mixing that track for me for the
competition and there is no drums but that was a big huge and your room of a
lot of mics and Here I am you know he likes and you know a bedroom size
tracking room so I'm getting inventive so the big messed up guitar sales really
really help you know keep the track twisted an aggressive and we haven't
talked about is the vocals now we've got a lot of vocal videos so you know there
should be a link popping up any second where you can go and check out how i mix
the vocals I did the same thing that distortion trick the west and the octave
you know the thickening trick and then really the only thing that's different
about this song is a lot of great harmonies they're really good seeing as
such it wasn't so much the cheating but we did do was vocal line
Stephen and Jack together call that the car when you start building a call where
exactly it is I love that seconds in there and seven and stuff
second and seventh in a min a major court is pretty crazy that you know it's
because to us to celebrate like this kind of car home soon but the secret
really is we're doing that is like yes you know if you've got a bunch of vocals
and one or two of them are slightly picture here and there you know correct
it where it's really obviously you can hear it out of church but otherwise out
of chewed on led backgrounds is within reason is actually really good because
it creates coercing it creates a much better sound so what I will do first at
all times when doing background vocals before even sharing is vocal a line now
you can use the vocal I'm plugging what you do is you take the vocal and then
you literally just a line the background or the double to it and so all of the
you know all of the phrasing will be in the same price and then any chin-ning
issues are apparent after that that's what I corrected I find that sometimes
your ear hears when vocals aren't quite timed up enough and you think that those
issues that there isn't there so I would always do that first if you're lowering
background vocals align them first before you start changing because if you
end any fuel line and June everything perfectly it will take a big fat white
background and make it sound really tiny robotic so first thing for me is a line
them first then choose them if necessary afterwards that to me create the biggest
vocals now obviously if you're working with singers that a phenomenal
phenomenal singers and they all sing together live all the time you may have
to do neither you might not even have to align and you might even have to chew
again it says it is the mother of invention just do these things you know
when you feel it's important to do it
ok great so that's that's the basic track it's very simple
you know as you can see probably 75% of the soul is one guitar bass and drums
guitar overdubs don't come into the solo and then the outro so all of the energy
is in the track like that as usual will have a link of where you can hear the
finished track and i hear all of these things together thank you ever so much
for watching this time recording and mixing and producing an engineering or
other fun stuff please leave me any questions down below in comments you
know your experiences of recording you know three-piece band doing over dogs
and backgrounds and all that kind of fun stuff I think the me the reason why I
wanted to talk about this one is because there are big loud noisy rock there and
what we recorded it in a pretty small facility in the live room is no bigger
than a standard that you may be small indefinite my wife and i like it
child sized bedroom so that's pretty normal for most of us and watch our show
you what i do to make drum sound bigger sometimes I don't need to because that
simple mic setup on the right kind of artists are organic artists also perfect
you know like I said with my Prasad and travel holy did barely anything and use
more than natural self so it's really just being able to adapt to what you
have to make great sounds with you know what might be perceived as limitations
but with the amount of technology available to us now you know we can
record and mix this really easily you know in almost any environment now I
could have done this before marks on the drums and I have been the past we can do
some of those as well so don't be please don't feel limited by your recording
facilities and the amount of input because you can get really creative so
this talk about that talked about many other things pleasing questions or
comments below and thank you ever so much