The Non Glamorous Parts of Producing a Song

This is exactly why recording is the ultimate dunning-Krueger example. Sounds easy at first, but in the weeds it’s harder than playing the guitar in the first place.

 

Can we hear sound samples of each of these steps? I'm interested to see how it all fits together...

 

Oh. Very technical. I thought this was going to be about getting the drummer to show up on time.

 

OP said tedious. An on time drummer is an impossible task!

 

i'd like to check out some of those drum replacement vsts. a friend of mine who does good work swears by them. i think he's even done a couple sessions with entirely replaced drums. it's like amp modeling for drums, hahaha. it's a lot more interesting to me than those auto align tools. could be really cool to start messing around with stuff that isn't drum samples as well (the tape head cleaner spray for some of the snares on unknown pleasures comes to mind), without having to get a goofy electronic kit.

back when i was recording more rock stuff, i used to do something similar the poor man's way by duplicating a kick or snare track and slapping a pitch shifter, EQ, and a gate on the duplicated track to beef things up really low in the mix. not always successful on kick cause of low end phase weirdness, but usually can make your snares sound gigantic.

 

When the vocalist does a zillion rewrites and retakes that it takes months to get a finished product he is satisfied with.

And he insists on having everything double tracked even though it sounds stupid and amateurish.

Ah, if only I was paid by the hour and not in friendship.

 

Ugh, fiiiiiiine. I’ll send him to you when he wants those vocal doubles done.

I’ll also just add that, unless it’s used as an effect or for some sort of stylization, I think it sounds super corny to have vocals doubled especially for, say, a verse, unless it’s basically imperceptible.

 

Wait a minute!

The Beatles as an example used variants of vox reinforcement
in their recordings over the years with much success.

You can hear straight up singing in unison, doubling, their
own version of harmonic content..... they reinforced what
was needed for the song. Mostly with great results even though
I think sometimes their approach sounded sloppy but they
were at a point where they could do no wrong in the public's eyes.

 

I have the book that details each and every Beatles recording session, and it's a great read. Sure, some parts are rote recounts of what happened on a certain day, but there are many inspiring sections with ideas and techniques that can be applied or adapted to today's recording environment.

In their later years, The Beatles made frequent use of a technique they called Automatic Double Tracking or ADT, for short.

 

Yes... got the same book. It talks about the different signal chains they used and their experiments. Apparently John was insecure about his voice and always wanted to double track it. When the engineers told him about ADT he loved it. I think he always used ADT after that.

 

Thanks for sharing those, matman14. I'm realizing this is way beyond my technical knowledge at this point, or what I'll realistically be able to invest time-wise for my own recordings. But I'm interested in hearing about the process. I liked being able to hear the "individual personality" of the hits, as you say, something that distinguishes these from the canned drum tracks I'm so tired of hearing in music. Nice!

 

At every basics session, I'll always do clean one-shots of every drum for augmentation/replacement at mix time, and some combo kick/crash hits, just in case there's an arrangement change. It's saved my ass on virtually every project I've done.

If I'm limited in tracks, I'll also grab a few Snare Bottom hits, and add them in later. Also, way cleaner with no kick bleed.

 

I spend endless hours on my drum (machine) parts, only for most of the subtleties to be lost in the mix.

Why? WHY?

 

This is an interesting thread; thanks @matman14 for starting it. This is a bunch of levels above where I live in recording detail but it gives me some things to think about. Great audio examples and explanation of what you’re up to, and why.

Sounds like a cool drummer and track to be working with, also. Will there be an opportunity to hear further inspiring unglamorous production details, and maybe the whole track at some point?