Pre-Production
So coming into the AUDIO 4400 Music production assignment, i was told to go out and find a band, and record one of their songs, As much as I don’t doubt my social skills, I decided to take a slightly different approach than the standard “Hey, I'm in uni and need a band, want some free studio time?” that seemed to be going round the class.
I found a young upcoming artist called Shannon Gillespie and asked her if she would like me to produce a professional demo track for her to help her advance in her career, she naturally said yes, I mean what young singer-songwriter would turn down a free professional track, in this crowded market young musicians need something to make them stand out.
However, this left me a situation where I had a talent for the vocals, however, no track for the vocals to be sung to… ‘Perfect’ i thought to myself! Having had the pleasure of working with musicians before I knew how if I booked a band to record the track, they would want to have an input to the mix and this could lead to arguments both inside the band with each member wanting their part to be the loudest and externally with disputes about the direction and flow of the track from the band to the producer (me). So to avoid conflict I booked separate session musicians for different parts and recorded them on different days with the help of my assistant Sam Cooknell.
After a few chats to Shannon discussing her influences and aspirations, we mutually decided on a cover of a song we both knew well, Christina Perri's a thousand years. Here is a link to Shannon performing this song at an audition last year.
After choosing the song, the first major decision I had to make was whether to record to a click track or not. The major benefits of recording to a click are that multi-tracking become significantly easier as all musicians can record at different stages of the process to the same source. This actually makes the drum sound tighter as in time drums are already half the battle. However, the soft and gentle flow of the track, with singer/guitar player using a lot of rubato to accentuate different phrases from the original and put her own spin on the song, combined with the musicians selected to track the remaining instruments (drums, bass, strings) were very talented musicians with the high-level professionalism and the ability. forced me to find a compromise. I decided to go down the route of creating a guide track; this entailed the artist singing and playing at the same time to a metronome set at 138 bpm in 6/8, without any backing music. This approach lets Shannon put around twist on the song elongating certain phrases unlike In the original however it still remains at constant beat and in time.
Next came the booking of all of my session musicians, which is much so much easier than trying to book a band to turn up on time, I simply rang around a group of musicians I know and have worked with in the past. Below is the table I used to organise my sessions and keep track of when I had musicians in the studio
As those of you who saw my session plan may have noticed, this is different to the timeline I outlined in my first submission, this is due to musicians letting me down on multiple occasions.
Wish me luck on tracking!
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