In-between major projects, I offered some friends of mine some time in the studio so we can all have some fun together!
We ended up deciding to do a quick acoustic cover of 'Bare Necessities' from the Jungle Book with just a Ukulele and vocals. With practiced vocalist Katy Craine, and budding Ukulelist (or Ukerainian if you prefer =P) Rob Leeder, we set out to have fun recreating the nostalgic tune.
Prep:
Preparation before heading into the studio is key, it will save you a lot of time and energy if you know exactly what you'll be doing, and how you'll go about it. Even though this was a basic session involving only two recording sources, I still researched techniques used by professionals in the field, regarding both recording and mixing (read on for what I found!). I went into the studio with a plan of not only having a great time, but a process to get a wicked track that I could be proud of. I'd already had a discussion with the artists about what sound they're were after and what they hoped to achieve in the session, decided upon the techniques I'd be implementing with what mics and ensured I knew the signal flow I planned to use for each of the stems - from the mic all the way through to the DAW.
Have a listen to the track here while you read!
Ukulele!
Recording: Starting off with the Ukulele, my idea was to get a clean recording with some a slight stereo feel. So I went for an AKG C451B mic placed 10cm from the uke, pointed at the junction of the neck and body with a complimenting pair of Rode K2's placed 2m away on either side of the uke to capture the room sound and give the recording that spacey stereo image I was after. After trial and error moving the mics around I found a nice spot for the room mic and indeed the c451, yet I was wanting a thicker low end. I achieved this by placing a SM57 around 8cm from the uke but pointed at the end of the body, which did indeed compliment the c451 with some nice thickness to the low frequencies. Phase issues are possible here, which can be fixed by moving mics around, or in the box during the mix - I did both.
I tried to get Rob to play to a click track at 85bpm. Quickly realising that he's not quite there as a musician, I asked, and Rob and Katy said they were happy to go without the click. We were able to get several takes of each section, and use those to do a rough comp before continuing on to vocals. Though Rob's playing could have been better as he's an amateur, we got some decent takes and besides, we were there to have fun and experiment!
Mixing:
In my favourite DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) ProTools, I started off by checking the phase issues between the mics (the two close mics are the most important), which actually didn't need much touching up.
I'm glad I spent the time in the studio positioning the mics appropriately! I then did a final comp on the tracks, getting the best sections and crossfading them in to fit nicely together, and finally some timing adjustments to align the vocals and the uke. This process brought up some concern for me as I was hearing some resonant frequencies in the ukulele that sounded pretty horrible, and thus begins struggle city.
The quality of the ukulele was the problem factor here being a lowish-end model. I have tried my best to work through it, removing as much of the trouble freqs as I can without affecting the depth and range of it too much. It was a losing battle though, I ended up opting to keep some of the resonant sounds present as it began to sound too thin if I completely removed the unpleasant ringings.
In the end, I've done what I can and I've told Rob that next time a higher quality Uke will help things sound much better!
I hit the stems with some EQ to taste which I've made different from verse to chorus, light compression to minimise large transients yet preserve the raw dynamics, and then blended the mics together to my preference. On top of that I've duplicated my Ukulele bus for parallel compression! I used SonicScoops recommendations for parallel compression - A fast attack, paired with an EQ boost at the lows and highs, then mixed the compressed uke in with the uncompressed, I usually prefer to have the compressed signal quite low which is what I've done here. Check out that SonicScoop video here.
Finally, Using two sensitive condenser microphones for the room mics means that they have a low signal to noise ratio. This was evident as these mics did indeed raise the noise floor of the recording to an audible level if you're listening on a pair of good quality monitors! So I hit them with iZotopes De-Noise and De-Hum plug-ins using their 'learn' features. I've continued to be really impressed with iZotopes noise reduction products and really recommend them, they reduced the noise flow by a huge margin, really bringing this track up a notch in terms of quality.
Vocals!
Recording: Again I aimed for a clean recording, with he option to add some space into it, so I set up an AKG C414 with a pop filter and left one of the K2's from the uke recording on as a room mic. We experimented some with distance from the mic, and we ended up going for around 8cm away from the C414, giving us the clean high quality sound that I wanted. I also angled Katy to be singing toward to corner/side of the room, rather than directly at the glass where unwanted reflections could be introduced.
Mixing: I wanted to do something a bit different with these vocals, something that I hadn't tried before to challenge myself, and I recalled watching one of Dave Pensado's 'Into the Lair' episodes on Mariah Carey's vocals where he shows a cool trick to bringing out top end in vocals, so I gave it a go! Here's what I did:
Here I've got the main vocal (Lead Vox. cm) with some compression, EQ and a send to a reverb. This track also has been melodyned for minor pitch correction, and I've also committed a Massey de-esser, because the trial plug-in doesn't save =P.
The '3rd Above' track is a harmony I created from the lead vocal, that I've transposed to the third above, heavily pitch corrected and drastically reduced it's pitch modulation. I did this all with melodyne editor, this effect helps the harmony sound different from the lead, and also ensure that it's dead on pitch. I used ValhallasFreqEcho (its a free plug-in check it out!) to delay the signal by 60ms, further separating it from the main vocal. This harmony only comes in on choruses and I've left it in the background to compliment the lead, I found that a decent reverb also works well for backing harmonies.
'Lead Vox Highs" is where I've implemented Pensado's trick that you can see in the video here. It's a duplicate of the lead vox, with a HPF placed around 4.5kHz so only the high frequencies are present. I've then followed that with a compressor thats knocking off 5-7dB, Pensado uses a de-esser here however I've opted to manually cut out all of the unwanted sibilance noises. After that I used Softube's 'Saturation Knob' applying a gentle saturation to the high end and lastly Avid's 'AIR chorus' that I've used to add some colour and movement and also reduce any harshness.
It took a fair bit of fiddling to make it work, but I really like the end result!
There is also some volume automation to smooth out the vocals and help the choruses feel more energetic than the verses.
Hope you've enjoyed the mix, and possibly even learnt something from these techniques! =P
- Andy Leeder
Bibliography:
YouTube. (2015). Two "Secrets" to Effective Parallel Compression. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-cY4EQMoU [Accessed 15 Jul. 2018].
YouTube. (2018). Mariah Carey Vocal Top End - Into The Lair #181. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaXly7Iv5gE&t=7s [Accessed 15 Jul. 2018].
Softube.com. (2018). Softube - Saturation Knob. [online] Available at: https://www.softube.com/index.php?id=satknob [Accessed 15 Jul. 2018].
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