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This week productivity has stagnated slightly as over the last couple of weeks my motivation has had ups and downs mostly due to the current situation at hand with lockdown etc. To help with motivation, I took a few days off from playing guitar as I felt that I wasn't progressing much, although thankfully I was able to submit a decent amount of work for my formative. About my productivity this week, I had an interesting lecture this week on procrastination which was insightful as it showed that there isn't one type of procrastinator. With this, it allowed me to understand that it is my current way of thinking that is causing lack of productivity as I am a perfectionist so this way of thinking is hindering both the learning and writing process. Where this is coming through is my writing process for Track 1 as I have been struggling write a solo section for it. My main struggle has been making it sound interesting. I've tracked ideas into our Logic session so I can listen back to them in context of the track, but this has proved challenging as I haven't been able to write a part that fits. I will show the rough Logic takes next to this diary. The initial idea is targeting the third of the chords as this is something I have worked on in my 1-1 mentoring with Pat Heath. In this mentoring, we worked on the thirds idea as Pat explained how it can help me to create interesting lead parts that fit with the progression. using this thirds idea also helped me to create a melodic solo. I will need to work on it though because it is still quite messy as the audio track shows - I'm repeating a lot of lines and my bends are a little flat.

For my second track "So Lonely", taking a break has helped as I have  been able to go back over my formative track and build off the feedback. My current plan is to use Logic to record myself playing the parts so I can listen back and critique my playing. One thing I have noticed listening back is consistency as I am finding it challenging leading into the lead and rhythm parts. The audio track linked will show there are too many gaps between the rhythm and lead line. A way I have decided to fix this is to track the lead and rhythm on separate tracks so that the parts have more consistency. This will also help me to play the lead lines more accurately. To put this into practice I have linked another audio file where I recorded the rhythm and lead separately which I felt had a better feel to it. My next plan for this track is get a drummer, a bass player and a vocalist involved. I'm going to message musicians on the course to see if they can help out.

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Rhythm and lead for "So Lonely" played on separate tracks (Week 7)

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Rhythm and lead for "So Lonely" played on separate tracks (Week 7)

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So Lonely Rhytm and lead played seperatle

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This week, I messaged a bass player (Gus Crawley) and a drummer (Tommy Bisson) to ask if they could  track "So Lonely" for me, as I wanted to get the rhythm section down  before I track my guitar. My reason for doing this was that my formative feedback suggested that I should make sure my guitar playing is more present, as the backing track I used still had the original guitar audible in parts, which is the main reason why I got musicians involved so I can  create a live feel for this track. Even though each instrument will be tracked separately, I think that I should still be able to deliver a decent track with a live feel to it. I also  requested videos of them tracking to evidence their contributions.

Tommy and Gus were very prompt  and sent the takes within a few days of me asking. One issue I am running into is syncing with the other instruments as when I put the takes into logic the bass didn't quite sync up with the drums. So I've messaged  Gus and asked if he could re-record to Tommy's drums. I also feel re-recording will help to create a live feel, much like the vibe of the original, as from critical listening there is a lot of human timing errors which give the original track the punk feel The Police are known for. Another reason for this is that with my other track "where did all the colour go? " I am recording with a click as this track will have more modern production elements and I am not using a click for "So Lonely" as opportunity to show contrast with my tracks by having one track determined by the click and the other the interpretation of the musicians' tracking.

For my other track "Where did all the colour go" I have received my  formative feedback. The feedback for this track said it had potential but the ideas needed to be heard in context with other instrumentation, so I may message other musicians again to track for us but first we"ll need parts for them to play so we have begun programming rough MIDI drums using logic's drummer function. We spent some time getting the MIDI drums to fit the swing rhythm of our track. This was quite challenging as they didn't quantize as much as we'd have liked them to so there were timing glitches in the track but the main idea for a drum part is there. Next we need to send it to a drummer who can develop it for us on a live kit. We have contacted a drummer Fin Anderson who may be able to track for us. Alongside writing out a drum part, we also experimented with some arpeggiated chords to go over the single note riff in the verses. It is a fairly simple part as I am just arpeggiating the verse chords but in their first inversions using the higher strings in their A, E, D shapes from the cage system. Creating this part came about as I was attempting to familiarise my self with barre chord voicings on the D string, which I started doing because I felt that up until working on these my chord playing was stuck in the E and A shapes. For this I used the book "Modern chord progression" by Ted Greene, a resource recommended to me by Sam Bell in our 7th chord theory technical development lesson.  The book featured a harmonised chord chart with D string voicings. This chart helped me to visualise voicings on the string and helped me to create ambient parts for "Where did all the colour go?" and "So Lonely" as I found targeting the higher strings helps me to play the rhythm parts cleaner. Along with the D string voicings I created an ascending and descending guitar harmony using the root and thirds of the chords in my original track, "Where did all the colour go?". I then expanded on this idea for our post-chorus because we needed a good way to come back but not lose the momentum as through writing this track with Fran we decided that we needed a good break from the chorus. So to keep things simple we repeated our intro riff but added a harmony in thirds. I had the idea to make the third harmony louder so it stands out more and creates lots of tension before we drop back to our verse. To practice and log this idea I tracked it over our rough track with MIDI drums a few times to see how it would fit. I'll experiment more next week.

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Tommy Bisson Tracking drums So Lonely (Week 8)

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Tommy Bisson Tracking drums So Lonely (Week 8)

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https://waterbear.instructuremedia.com/embed/eeb9c8f5-6900-44aa-bacd-f36c1788a1a6

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Gus Crawley tracking bass on "So Lonely" (Week 8)

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Gus Crawley tracking bass on "So Lonely" (Week 8)

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https://waterbear.instructuremedia.com/embed/946a433b-6206-4b80-8220-445761716de9

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Post-chorus Guitar Harmony idea Tracked in logic (Week 8) 

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Post-chorus Guitar Harmony idea Tracked in logic (Week 8) 

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This week I received the new bass stems for "So Lonely", so I added them to the logic session and now they fit better as Gus has tracked with Tommy's drums and now they are locking together better. I then did some mixing to get the volumes right with the bass and drums before tracking my guitar to the new stems. I have also drawn out a recording and mixing schedule for the remainder of WBO3. Using this schedule will help me to plan out the rest of my time for recording "So Lonely" and "Where did all the colour go?". Following this schedule I tracked rhythm guitar fully for "So Lonely". The recording process was relatively easy but I did run into some issues with stamina as the rhythm parts are all down strummed in a reggae style - this was hard because my down strumming is not as strong, but I over came this by running though the parts in logic then when I felt I was warmed up and had worked out any inconsistencies I did a few more takes and ended up using them in the final track. I also made sure to warm up before tracking to help my stamina, so once the rhythm was tracked I then tracked the lead parts which I did a few takes of as they follow the vocals, which was challenging timing-wise with no vocals tracked yet - instead I am using cues from the drums and bass. Another challenge was to make the lead parts my own as I had trouble finding parts that fit so I decided to only improvise on the solo section which I will track next week. For the lead parts in the verses I kept them pretty close to the original but I then improvised parts of sections after the key changed in the solo and final chorus.

For Track 1, "Where did all the colour go?", I built off of the harmony idea from last week and added a low octave guitar part in the post chorus to fatten up the guitar sound on that section. I then began experimenting further with solo ideas tracked into logic eventually settling on a solo that I might keep in the final track as it fits well overall. Our bridge section is pretty much the same so we are keeping that as it is but we have written a section comping out the solo which is a call and response playing the Db root note and then adding in two power chords A and Ab. This new section leads us into our final chorus where we are creating a wall of sound as we want this to be a climactic and huge ending. To create this wall of sound idea I played the original chorus chords but I used 16th note strumming with distortion so that we can build tension as we reach the end of the song. I then added the D string chord inversions underneath and played them in triplets and made them blend in with the other parts so there is just a large distorted tone going through out. Next I added a single note idea into it where I tremolo-picked the octave of the Db. In doing so there was a lot of tension going over the end chorus before finishing with the track going back to our same chorus. So currently we have a solid track with only vocals guitars recorded but we really want to have other live instruments as the MIDI drums aren't working with our new ideas. I've messaged a drummer and Fran is contacting a bass player, so for now we are going to hold off on further tracking as we need to double track vocals and guitars but desperately need drums and bass. Any further ideas will possibly need to be re-worked into the live drum and bass stems we are hoping to get.

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Rhythm and lead blended together for "So Lonely" (Week 7) 

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Rhythm and lead blended together for "So Lonely" (Week 7) 

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Recording and mixing schdule for "So Lonely" (Summative) 

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Recording and mixing schdule for "So Lonely" (Summative) 

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"Where did all the colour go?" Thirds solo idea using bridge chords for week 4 tracked in logic with click (Week 7)

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"Where did all the colour go?" Thirds solo idea using bridge chords for week 4 tracked in logic with click (Week 7)

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Verse arpeggios and guitar harmonies (Week 8)

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Verse arpeggios and guitar harmonies (Week 8)

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Here is the arpeggio idea with me tracking with our rough track as practice.

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Recording and mixing schedule "Where did all the colour go?" (Summative)

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Recording and mixing schedule "Where did all the colour go?" (Summative)

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Recoridng and mxing schdule Where did all the colour go? 

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Post chorus guitar Harmony with added low octave (Week 9)

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Post chorus guitar Harmony with added low octave (Week 9)

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Here is the new refined guitar harmony with the low octave from week 9

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Old chorus parts for "So Lonely" that didn't fit well (Week 10)

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Old chorus parts for "So Lonely" that didn't fit well (Week 10)

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Gus's old Bass stems with drums  for comparison against the new ones. (Week 9)

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Gus's old Bass stems with drums  for comparison against the new ones. (Week 9)

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Gus's new bass stems soloed along with Tommy's drums "So Lonely" (Week 9)

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Gus's new bass stems soloed along with Tommy's drums "So Lonely" (Week 9)

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Here is Gus crawleys new bass stems locking in better with Tommy Bisson's drums

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Gus's new Bass stems locked in with drums

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Harmonised D string chord voicings chart from Ted Greene's modern chord progressions (Greene, n.d.)

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Harmonised D string chord voicings chart from Ted Greene's modern chord progressions (Greene, n.d.)

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This week I found a vocalist to track vocals for "So Lonely". I needed to find a singer who was comfortable with the range of the track, so I contacted Fran as we are already co-writing on my other track so she was easy to contact and was willing to track for my session. The tracking of the vocals went well as Fran had learnt the parts and we tracked them in a few takes. Currently I have the vocals tracked and my next task is to get her to track backing vocals but through listening to the track there are some guitar parts that aren't sitting well with the track so I have decided to re-track them. Mainly it is the chorus as I noticed when tracking the vocals that the guitar went out of time  because one guitar was over-playing on the chorus. I decided a way to fix this was to re-track them with a simplified part on the chorus. This helped to create a guitar tone that worked better with the other instruments. I also tracked the solo this week. For my practice of the solo, I first listened to the parts to get the idea as I am planning on improvising the solo in parts. To practice this, I tried to solo by tracking it into logic improvising with the D major pentatonic and the relative B minor. As this section has a key change from the key of C major up to D major I decided to record as seprate track so transition is smoother. I also used the  arpeggios of the chord progression in places, such as A major and parts of G. This process was made easier as we had discussed super-imposing triads and playing over chord changes in my technical development classes, a theme that is common in "So Lonely" due to Andy Summers' jazz influences. A big challenge was implementing these ideas but still keeping the vibe of the solo, as I found it hard to get the start of the solo right. So I borrowed the starting note which was a bend on the minor pentatonic of the natural minor as these is a very obvious part in the original solo. Another challenge is that the solo has quite a clean tone, something I don't use very often so that has been a big challenge as a lot more of my mistakes and string noise came through on the previous takes but as the original has lots of human mistakes I have chosen for my final track the one that had a good performance despite the mistakes. I think keeping them in adds to the vibe and energy of the track. To show my attempts using the solo, I've linked the logic solo practice next to this diary. After a few run-throughs in logic I tracked properly to the track and went with take 8 for the solo section of the final track.

For "Where did all the colour go?", we are aiming to have drums and bass recorded this week so we have contacted other musicians to help us do so. Although, one issue is that the drummer who has agreed to track for us has been slow to reply and the submission deadline is getting closer so the longer that we don't have the drum stems, the more our track is falling behind. For this reason, I contacted another drummer who was able to get the drums recorded for us - Ben Morgan-Jones agreed to have it to us by Monday next week. Although this will hinder my recording and mixing schedule we can wait a little longer for the drums. Fran also asked Alfie McKeough one of her songwriting class peers if they could track bass for us and they agreed so even with the set backs of finding a drummer we've managed to have the parts tracked. With our bass part, I first recorded a rough idea with my guitar and then Fran sent it off along with a chord sheet so that the bass player could use it to create their parts.

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This week I began the mixing process of both my tracks. I first started mixing "So Lonely" as I have all the stems fully recorded. I started the mixing process by using corrective EQ which was covered in my production tools module last term and we went over it again in my production techniques module this term. Reinforcing my learning and knowledge about corrective EQ helped me to clean up stems and get rid of annoying frequencies. Although it is a very helpful technique, I found my self falling into a bad habit when  mixing which was over-using corrective EQ. This resulted in my track losing its dynamic range and sounded robotic. In order to get out of this habit I only listened for frequencies that I felt affected  the track too much and then removed them from the mix to clean up the instrumentation. With a track like So Lonely where the imperfections in the original track make the vibe of a track.

Another element that I tried to add  my mixing of this track was performance editing, as this is a new technique I learnt in my production techniques module that I wanted to experiment with how a modern production technique would fit with a classic analogue-tracked song like "So Lonely". This new technique was hard for me to implement as I found through my classes that there are  production standards of genres for instance with something like a pop track, it would have performance editing or pitch correction, but a track like "So Lonely" has no performance editing or pitch correction, so when I tried it on the bass for "So Lonely" it sounded too perfect and lost the feel of the track. So, although I understand that performance editing can really improve performances on mixes, I also understand that it depends on what kind of production standards are associated with a genre, and in the mixing process of both my tracks I found that it wasn't the kind of production I wanted. I've realised that I seem to prefer a tape mentality and focusing more on the energy much like this quote explains: "It’s common that you’ll be working with an artist and there are some bad notes, but the energy and the performance are so good. Marc Weiss, J., 2020. Psychology and the music producer. This quote was taken from an interview with Jon Marc Weiss whose quote helped me to sum up my way of thinking with my two tracks .

So once corrective EQ was done, I  began adding compression on the guitars, bass, drums and vocals. For my guitar takes, I only increased the compression slightly as I already recorded with light compression through a line 6 helix. It was mainly just to tighten up the guitar tone and make it a little more present but it did fight the vocals a little so I used side chain compression on the lead lines so it would duck out the frequencies that were competing with the vocals. I learnt about side chain compression and its uses in my production techniques class and it is a technique I have been using throughout the mixing of both my tracks as it has also helped me to give space to the kick drum and bass guitar. This is a common technique used when mixing to allow space for instruments.

I then panned the guitars so that they had more space as too much side compression cut them out completely. In the mix I panned them slightly for the verse and then hard panned them for the choruses, creating a large guitar sound as it takes a simple almost wall of guitar approach in the original. I then went to a separate lead track for the solo and boosted the volume a little so it would cut through. Next I moved onto bass where I used parallel processing to give it more presence, which was another technique I learnt this term that helped me when mixing bass as in my WB01 track the bass was too quiet and got lost in the mix, something I have been hoping to avoid this term. By using parallel processing I got two contrasting bass tones - one clean through a logic amp simulator and one a little crunchy through another amp simulator that had a little bit of crunch - which I then blended together and sent to a bus where I added compression to give more attack and also side chained to make space for the kick drum. Next I began mixing the drums which was a challenge at first as the take was recorded on an electric drum kit. The drummer, Tommy, sent over the MIDI file so I first had to find the right kit to use. A challenge for me was that the logic kits are limited compared to other drum programming software and I found it tricky to make them sound real even though there was a real drummer playing the parts and  they still sound human but the timbre of them sounded  too digital when compare to the original drum sound. So with this in mind I still got the drums to sound close to  the original track. To achieve this I tuned the snare drum up to 440HZ to give it a  as this is a staple sound of The Police's drummer Stewart Copeland to go with the reggae feel and tone of the track. I then added logics Studio FET compression. I used Studio FET compression as it gave the drums more of a punch and helped it cut through a bit more. There is slight compression on each individual track for the drums, but to have the overall kit cut through more and have more punch I sent the drums to a bus and then added compression to smooth out the sound of the overall kit.

I then used logic's space designer to create a room sound for all the instrumentation to give the impression that all the instruments were in the same room. I found a reverb preset where it mimicked a live recording stage and created an aux track to blend in with the instruments to give the illusion that all instruments were tracked in the same room even though they weren't. I then moved onto mixing vocals. For this I first created buses so I could control the volume of the lead vocal takes and then added compression. I found that the compression made the lead vocals too loud and overpowering so I used a limiter to stop the volume from peaking too much. I then sent them to a live room reverb but to add a bit more colour to them I also created a bus with a plate reverb and blended the two. I did the same with the backing vocals sending them to their own bus and then compressing them, adding the room reverb and then the plate reverb. The only difference was that they needed to sit behind the lead vocals so using a limiter and bringing the aux track volume down a little, I also panned them to give more space.

Once I was happy with everything I went on to add some creative mixing in such as automating the volume up on the master bus so that the chorus and verses sound diffent to each other. I then edited the automation to give a dynamic on the 8th note  build up to the chrous so that it really hit's the listener. I then added mulitband compression on the master bus  which allowed me to bring up or take down certain frequencies in the whole mix which then helped me begin the mastering process. with everything finished i then added a limiter as with the multi-band compressor the master bus was clipping  too much so i brought it down to -14db this was in part due to learning how streaming sites like Spotify etc have a dB limit and if something is too loud it will compress a track to fit the limit. I considered this because if I was to release this cover on a streaming site then not following these dB limits could effect the sound of my track.

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Room reverb "Where did all the colour go"?

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Room reverb "Where did all the colour go"?

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Here is my critical reflection of WB03

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Please see attached Harvard refenicng apendix

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buses and aux tracks  (Week 12 "Where did all the colpour go")

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buses and aux tracks  (Week 12 "Where did all the colpour go")

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Week 12 ("Where did all the colour go?" mixing process)

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Week 12 ("Where did all the colour go?" mixing process)

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For where did all the colour we have now received bass stems from Alfie McKeough and live drums from Ben Morgan-Jones. This is cutting it short as the summative is only a few weeks a way but I have begun mixing as I go with the original stems and the new stems. To save save space for my critical reflection I have condensed the mixing process of this track into one post. Before I began mixing we attempted to re-track to the new drum and bass stems but as the musicians had tracked to the track we sent them, we didn't need to re track everything, just a few parts here and there. Much like the quote I referenced in my mixing process for "So Lonely", we kept that same mentality and kept some of the rough takes as they really gave a good performance. An example of this is the final solo take from one of our rough skeleton tracks but on further listening we felt it really had vibe to it and you can hear it in the final mix of "Where did all the colour go". So we kept some of the "imperfect" takes in and the only things we added were re-tracked and double-tracked vocals, whereas I just double tracked the riffs and rhythm parts.

I then began mixing by starting with corrective EQ on the instruments the same as I did with my other track but this track had a lot more annoying frequencies that stood out especially with the live drums as a few jumped out and caused the track to be muddy. I spent a fair amount of time looking for these frequencies but made sure the tracks still had dynamics within them. I then began adding compression to things once the corrective EQ was done. I started by first bussing the parts of the drum kit and panning the over head mics before adding compression to smooth out their sound. I sent all the parts to one bus and called it drum volume I then added compression to that bus so the whole kit cut through. Alongside this I used an EQ preset called vintage drums and tweaked it as the preset didn't quite work the first time around. I then created a bus for snare and kick compression and blended it in until it fit with the track. I then used parallel processing to the bass so it fit well in the mix but had a more intense tone and blended in as compared to my other track where it was just to give it presence I did this by having quite a crunchy bass tone using a logic amp sim then having a  fuzz tone and blended the two. The result was a very punchy bass tone. I came to this decision by using Muse's "Uprising" as a reference track for my bass tones. I then bussed both bass tones and added compression to smooth them both out. I also used side chain compression as I ran into the same problem as my other track with the kick drum having no space in the mix so side chain compression has really been helping me out.

Next I moved to guitars and where I did corrective EQ on the frequencies that stood out and then added compression. To control the guitars volumes I bused them separately to one called lead guitar and another called rhythm. I found the compression on the separate track muddy the sound and brought up the muddy frequencies again so compressing them on a separate bus helped me with the guitar tone. next I panned the double tracked guitars. when I cam to double tracking I used different guitars for different tones one was a humbucker semi hollow guitar and the other was a single coil telecaster. so when it came to mix them I got the humbucker loaded guitar to heard more on the main riff and then blended the double tracked riff which was in the same octave so there was a little more clarity. I then panned the double tracked rhythm guitars so that they had space in the mix panning one back to centre as it was the main rhythm part. next I panned the guitar harmonies which was challenging as the was lots of them but I got around this by again busing and panning them and using the buses to control the overall volume of them all. By panning the guitar harmonies that sat a little better in the mix but didn't over take anything else in the mix. Once I was happy with the guitars I then moved onto reverb.

For the lead guitar I again used a bus to create an aux track and then a send to blend delay with it as when I tracked the solo, I only used a Marshall amp sim form the Line 6 Helix and digital distortion. I used an echo effect to give the lead lines some nice repeating 8th note flurries. I then added some light compression and EQ to help it cut through. I then sent it to the  guitar room reverb.

For reverb I used the same idea from "So Lonely" where I sent each instrument to their own simulated live room using logic's space designer and blending the reverb with the takes by creating a sends bus. In parts, the reverb became too intense and peaked causing unwanted distortion so I corrected this by using a limiter on the reverbs so the unwanted  clipping wouldn't come through. For the guitar and bass, the room sound just needed to be pulled back a little but for the drums it made them sound too distant so I brought up the dry tracks so they were a little louder and pulled the reverb so that it had presence in the mix but didn't burry the drums. Another issue I ran into was that the snare dipped out in places (mostly in the solo) so I had to increase the compression a fair bit and used EQ on the snare track so that the mid and treble frequencies could help it cut through a bit more.

Next I moved onto vocals. The vocals were the most challenging of all as Fran recorded a lot of harmonies on our bridge section which sounded really cool but were tricky to mix. This was due to that they all were fighting for a place in the mix. So what I did was bus them separately and then panned the tracks so that they each had their own space. I then added different levels of compression to both the lead vocals and the harmonies, although when I added compression, Fran's double tracked vocals created timing issues as the tracks sounded a little out of time. I took it to an academic 1-1 with Megan Sayer and she suggested that I find the vocal take I like and then turn down the double tracked vocal so it blends with the original lead vocal take. This helped greatly as this fixed the timing issue once I did what Megan suggested although it did take a little bit of tweaking to get right. Once this was completed I did the same with the double tracked harmonies to avoid this happening again and it resulted in the vocals blending well especially when I added compression as it smoothed them out and brought them to front of the mix. I then created another bus and called it a vocals live room, then working with Fran, we used some reverbs to create a stereo image where some the backing vocals sat behind the lead and others at the side creating a choir like effect. Along with this I added a little bit of a plate reverb so the vocals weren't too dry.
For the mastering process, I used the same technique as I did with "So Lonely" where I used multi-band compression on the master bus to give the track a little more stability and I then did some automation on the master bus so that the chorus and the verses where contrasting. I then used a limiter and brought the limiter down to -14dB taking into consideration that we may want to release this at some point. By doing this, it helps us with releasing the track in the future.