Recording and processing the acoustic elements for DODGE.

A couple of days after we came up with the vocal idea for DODGE, Zac and I returned to the MIDI studio to record the final take of the vocals. We had fortunately had access the Shure SM7B Microphone, which Zac recommended as it has a very tight sound and doesn’t pick up much background noise. This was great - considering someone decided to record their rock band a level above us on the day. I’m personally a big fan of doing everything in post, I’ll want to get the driest vocal sound possible, and create all of the room digitally through reverb (as opposed to those who like to get natural reverb). Zac and I ran through a couple of warm ups and then began doing some final takes of the vocals in Logic. We also hadn’t written the rest of the track at this point so the bridge of the track was written pretty much as we were recording that section. I also got Zac to sing the top melody of the song that is played in one part, so that I’d have something to work with later.

After getting a couple of takes of each vocal, we sent the logic session through to Zac's laptop as he is particular with his vocal sound and how it is tuned. We went through and comped the vocal on his laptop so that I could leave with as minimal files as possible, we wanted to have it so I could process just one vocal track rather than having a bunch of the random takes all other the place.

After comping the track, Zac actually uses a combination of two tuning plugins, WavesTune Live and Melodyne. I was at first confused as to how and why he did this, but saw that he actually uses the live version of Waves Tune that can tune your vocals as you sing rather than having to transfer it in. He then likes to transfer this data into Melodyne and correct the notes that are slightly off etc.

After comping the vocals and showing me his tuning process, Zac left me with the tuned vocals so that I could process them with effects.

I then went on alone to get an idea of how I can process these for the track, by dropping the vocals into my Ableton session. From my previous experimentation with the plugin, I usually decide that the first thing I like to use on my vocals to make them really loud and to stand out is the CLA (Chris Lorde-Alge) Vocals plugin from Waves. I had seen this being used many times in pop records, for instance It was shown being used in the vocals for Roses by The Chainsmokers.

I used the “Start Me Up Dry” Preset as I had once seen this recommended online as a good place to start with the plugin. I then started tweaking the parameters around. I pushed the compression slider up quite a bit, as well as the treble (I love vocals with a lot of High End). I then added another compressor, the CLA-2A by Waves to help keep things a bit more cohesive, and added the Waves Vocal Rider plugin to ride the volume of my vocals and to keep everything levelled (I had learnt this tip from Daniel Newstead’s Lecture at my University).

I finally added the PUIGTEC EQP-1A plugin on the vocal chain as this allows some knobs for me to get a little more high end and adds some body back into the sound.

The SM7B had quite a muddy sound to it so I then EQ’d out the frequencies that didn’t need to be there, for instance I took out all of the low end and I thinned out the vocals by taking out some of the mid range.

I continued to process these vocals with more effects later as the mix continued, for instance I also added a C4 plugin, in which I just used the preset “Pop Vocals” to give it some more detail.

Then as for the room in the mix, I added some reverb onto an Auxiliary through Ableton in the mixing stages, and automated this depending on the section of the song. As for the crispy delay sound however, that was actually on a completely seperate audio track. I created a track with a 100% wet delay signal with H-Delay by Waves, and then used the plugin to cut the frequencies so that It was only a delay of the upper-mid frequency range. I then took sections from the end of each phrase in the vocals, and used this in a way so that it creates some cohesion with the start and end of the phrases, rather then it going completely silent.

Lastly I had to process the guitar elements that we had actually recorded when writing the song. We grabbed an electric guitar from the tech department and ran this through a DI into the MIDI Studio. We then recorded the dry signal, which we used a Guitar Rig (An amp simulating plugin by Native Instruments) preset to get a feel for the sound, just so that Zac didn't have to record the guitar elements with a basic, non amplified signal. When taking these home I played around with some more presets on Guitar Rig and added a "Wah Pedal" to give it a funk type guitar song. This was then bounced and became one of the instruments in the track which was moved on to the mixing stages.

This are a majority of the ways I processed the vocals for DODGE, I think that they are sounding really good at the moment and am looking forward to the final product.

Thanks for reading!