AUS230 Post Mortem

Last trimester, Shaquille and I produced 3 singles from our band’s debut album ‘Pastel Palace’. Our intent for this trimesters major project was to record the remaining 7 songs to complete the album’s tracklist. Although this project came with some unexpected events and time allocation issues, we gained a lot of confidence in our recording and production methods.

Having worked together extensively in the past and sharing the same household, Shaquille and I’s communication and workflow is exceptional. Bouncing ideas off of each other is as easy as it could possibly be, although this comfortability and creative freedom began to show itself as somewhat of a burden. I often found myself deflated of inspiration when recording and mixing songs we had already written. As we were conceptualising and planning album two (as per CIU212), I grew more and more eager to develop these newer ideas. Our work on this project took the backseat for a couple of weeks, and our scheduling and time allocation took a hit. Because of this, we couldn’t get full demo tracks to our drummer in sufficient enough time for him to rehearse. This slip also affected our vocal recordings, having to push them back a couple weeks into the final weeks of trimester. Shaquille had also caught a cold in the weeks we had rescheduled for vocal recordings, which meant that we had to settle for vocals that weren’t as precise as we hoped for. In the future we hope to create a more professional environment for us to work in. Even coming into campus more often to record in the studios would help us convert more of our attention to the task at hand, rather than planning what we can do next.

Due to the time constraints our drummer faced, he wasn’t able to construct fully realised rhythms before coming into the studio to record. During this recording time, it was crucial to ensure that the drummer was comfortable. Before he arrived to the studio we had the kit fully set up with microphones placed, rack gear insert sends and returns linked, and rough settings on said rack gear. This meant that upon arrival, only a small amount of tweaking was necessary before we started recording. We used Pro Tools in order to utilize playlisting and recorded 4 takes for each track. Because of the set quick set up, our drummer was never waiting around waiting for us to figure things out (which has happened in the past). In terms of communication, this session provided us with a positive experience and the means to create more comfortable environments for musicians. Instead of seeing the lack of preparation as an issue, we made a choice to splice up the recordings and treat them almost as you would samples. This meant that whatever takes we ended up with, we would be able to consolidate them and create our own beats from them. This choice ended up being a primary aesthetic on the tracklist. I go more into the drum recording and dynamics processing in my two in one blog here. Most of the inspiration for the drum aesthetic came from listening to Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Their drum aesthetic combines R’n’b with aggressive distortion and often sharp cuts and loops. That breed of textural complexity and over compression blended perfectly with the tracks we used it on. Committing to heavy pre tape dynamics processing meant that our effects chains were relatively subtle, as most of the desired character was already captured. Capturing the desired sound pre-tape is something we’ve been working towards with our drum recording in the past, and with this success also comes a greater sense of confidence in our methods. I hope to take this confidence into future recordings and experiment further with mic placement, phase and natural distortion.

It was mentioned in our scope document that we would be utilizing the synthesizers in the Tascam studio on campus to bounce midi to and record. This was initially one of the main aesthetic choices for the album. While this would have been fun to do, I had also spent a lot of time creating my own presets and layered synths in Arturia’s ‘Analog Lab 3’ plugin and wanted to use the synths that I had spent time collating. This plugin features over 21 instruments, including the Yamaha DX7, Buchla Easel, CS80, Solina and more classic analog and digital synthesisers, replicating all with tremendous precision. We also used a the Roland Sound Canvas 50 a lot on the album, as well as sampling it and programming our own Kontakt instrument featuring 12 of it’s presets. We are already in the process of finding more old rack synthesizers to play around with in the future, as well as starting a collection of vintage dynamic microphones. In the future I would also like to experiment with synth amping and using stereo guitar pedals to effect the synthesizer pre-tape. Overall I’m happy with the synth sounds on the album, although I would have liked to experiment with the processes of recording them, rather than writing in the midi notes and using vst plugins.

Finishing off ‘Pastel Palace’ has been a huge learning curve for us as we seek to take on a career as professional music producers. Being able to create the exact sound I have in my head through recording techniques has given me a lot of confidence moving forward. I aim to be a producer that is constantly trying new techniques and pushing for exploration through experimentation. This trimester has also shown me how to not be professional in regards to scheduling and time allocation, which through critical analysis became an important lesson.