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This is my original and really rough demo for the track I am going to use for my assignment. I found this deep in my notes from 2021 and thought I'd revisit the idea.

As for the differing versions of the track I'm thinking of creating an acoustic version similar to this demo as I've been inspired by Elliot Smith a lot recently. For this side of my project, I am going to research what techniques Elliot Smith used in recording to get his unique sound. As well as this I'm going to aim to make a full band version with my bandmates from Bleeding Daphne (my band) as I believe we will be able to make it very different in structure and tempo forming it into our own style.

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Q1. What is the biggest reason you want to work in the music industry?

The biggest reason I want to work in the music industry is to have an outlet to be creative with other people and make products I am proud of.

Q2. What skills do you want to learn or hone in order to become even better in your desired are of the music industry?

I want to hone on my ability to produce a professional-sounding mix for bands I am either in or working with in order to be seen as professional to higher-ups in the industry.

Q3. What skills do you already bring to your desired area of the music industry?

Skills I bring to my area of the music industry is that I am a proficient guitar and bass player of 12 years, I am also able to write songs collaboratively and use a lot of different ideas in my creative output.

Q4. What motivates you in your career?

my career is motivated by seeing other people do things and achieve things that I also want whether that is streams or professional promotional videos, etc.

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To prepare myself for a session where I am the producer/engineer I would:

make sure I am refreshed and nourished before getting there on the day,

I would also ask for the artists being recorded to send me some rough ideas or a track list to put me better at ease before starting,

I would make sure I've met the artist(s) before the date of the session so I have a better idea of who I'm working with,

I would book the session a while in advance to give me more time to prepare myself and to not feel rushed,

I would book a space that I am familiar with to avoid any possible conflict on the day when trying to access the equipment,

I would request a track listing and what kind of equipment the artist would like to use so I can sort it all out and arrange in my DAW how the track will be set out,

These are techniques I will aim to put into action for my own recordings for my summative project submissions

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Elliot Smith recording techniques for Demo

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Elliot Smith recording techniques for Demo

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For this section, I am going to analyse 2 Elliot Smith songs from my judgement using the knowledge I have from my recording and capture classes. I am mainly going to look at songs with differing tempos and moods to see what recording techniques stayed prominent in his tracks. The songs I chose were:

1. Somebody that I used to know

2. Independence day

1. In Somebody that I used to know I listened and aimed to look at how the vocals and guitar are recorded. In the track, it is quite obvious that he's double-tracked the vocal in the same pitch and has them panned to each ear using a quite sensitive microphone, possibly a condenser, that allows you to hear every detail in his voice even going as far as picking up the breaths in between the lyrics. This also tells me that he most likely recorded his vocals in a single take for each verse. the guitar sound on this track sounds quite warm as well as having the string brilliance and top-end of the guitar showcased, double-tracked, and panned across both ears. From this, it sounds to me that he most likely used 2 separate microphones in an AB configuration of two condenser microphones pointing at the resonance chamber and further down the neck at the 2nd-4th frets where he would be playing these chords. I have looked into recording acoustic guitar in this configuration in my recording and capture class this week and know that it is a perfect way to pick up all these details of his fingers picking as well as the subtle buzzing of the strings where he would be playing.

2. In Independence Day he moves away from just vocal and guitar with a percussion section playing tambourines, bass drums, and snare. As well as this he also has a piano and an electric bass guitar extremely subtle in the back of the mix. As for the drum sound, it seems that he is using a dynamic microphone for the kick drum with a high pass filter over as it is lacking a lot of low end that you would typically hear with another microphone on the snare but quite far away as you can hear a lot of the space in the room with each hit. Again in this song, I notice a vocal double track panned left and right which is really helping him achieve his signature sound. There are piano overtones playing bass notes and the melody in the choruses giving a much fuller sound to this track over some of his other songs.

From analysing these tracks I have found that Elliot Smith makes great use of double-tracking various instruments most notably his vocals to give his signature feel and piano in the back of the mix to fill out areas that other instruments couldn't as well. I am going to aim to incorporate these techniques I have spoken about in my alternate version of the song I am creating.

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For the initial demo recording of my focused track, I set up my desk where I would be recording with the purpose of being very tidy to eliminate risks and distractions. For this, I made sure there were not any loose cables dragging across my desk and made sure I had ample space for a notepad and any equipment I would be using in the process. You can see this on the right side of the photo above as I have all connections to the Macbook running around the back of my desk to ensure they are out of the way. I am hoping this minimal setup will enable me to be as focused on recording and no outside factors as well as make me able to move my equipment around without any wires getting tangled and disconnecting my guitar or interface mid-recording.

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This is a quick plan that I made in my study group class of how I would like to set up my padlet page for this project. With this I went for a simple approach to make it easier for myself and the marker to identify and find any written pieces they may want to be looking at. I made this plan as before I was slowly finding myself loose certain areas of research and evidence I had embedded at the time and thought it would be more professional if I had a layout I found easier to refer back to as well as build upon.

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As I am in week 4 now I have dedicated my day off to complete a simple demo of my song I want to use for my submission. I am going to aim to make this demo in the style of my band, taking inspiration from dinosaur JR, and Nirvana whilst using their popular recording techniques for recording guitar and bass. I am also going to create an empty logic project with the channel list to ensure I am well prepared and don't get anything muddled up in the process keeping it neat of professional looking. In addition this will be one of my first attempts creating MIDI drums for any project I have done and will be researching new ways to make them sound more realistic and using my knowledge from production classes to help also.

UPDATE - I have decided to move away from MIDI drums on my demo as I very much struggled to get the right sound and timing on the beats, as well as this I didn't like the unnatural sound I was producing with the drums. In the future, I want to be able to learn properly how to put MIDI drums together to better enable me to put together demos.

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This is the simple channel list I have made for my demo. I got the idea to do this and prepare my session from my production tools class with George as it is an effective way to record what you need to without getting confused or stopping your workflow to make new tracks and deal with the technical side of making a logic project.

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Complete demo adding more sections to my full band version of my track in Logic X by 01.11.24

Make a start on my Elliot Smith inspired version for a demo in Logic X by 01.11.24

Begin and finish my navigating the music industry essay on the police & Royal Blood by 24.10.24

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Medal - One thing I learnt about this week is how to identify microphone choices for different sound sources and the sonic PH scale to balance out any source.

Mission - One thing I found difficult this week was finding my way around MIDI drums for my demo track. I found it difficult to keep track of where I was working as well as copying the beat to loop it and make it sound natural.

Application - I used my new-found knowledge of the Sonic PH scale to record guitars for my demo in the amp and microphone simulator. I decided to use darker-sounding mics for brighter sources and brighter sounding mics for slighlty darker sounding guitar tones

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For the music in my project, I want to collaborate with the singer of my band Leon Albert. I am going to be collaborating with them for all the aspects of my recording that I do not have access to (mainly a drum kit). I am going to send them back and forth my Logic X file and some ideas I have for drums for them to work away with and send back to me. I want to collaborate with them on this as we've got a deep musical connection over the years we have known and played with each other and I trust them to take what I'm imagining to the next level.

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This was the amp simulation i used for my base for a clean guitar track. When laying down the basics i was experimenting with microphone choices and playing around with George's idea of the sonic PH scale. With this knowledge I made the decision to use a large diaphragm condenser microphone to give a lot of clarity to the top end of my clean track.

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These are some amp simulations for my Crunch Track guitars on my demo. For this, I wanted a slight amount of drive so I went for a classic Marshall clone on logic with a dynamic microphone placed in the sweet spot of the speaker cone. I made this decision because this amp was very heavy on the high end cutting through the mix and I thought going with a condenser instead would've made it too harsh for what I wanted.

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After recording bass layers of the guitar for my track to cement the structure, I went back and recreated the guitar tones with my amp instead recording it through a dynamic SM7B. I did this as I struggled to get a realistic tone with the simulations that I was happy with. Making this decision also helped me create the current demo as it added a lot of nuances in my guitar playing that I otherwise wouldn't have had due to my pedal setup and the dynamics of being in the room with the live amp.

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In these next couple of pictures, I just wanted to talk about the health and safety precautions I took in my band practice at small pond whilst we were rehearsing and creating my track into a full band project with all instruments instead of just guitar and bass. In this session, I made sure to use sufficient hearing protection to make sure I wasn't exposed to high levels of noise for the whole duration of the two hour session.

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This is some cable management I did for my lead guitarist and vocalist to make sure we could be creative and workshop my song without the risks of tripping hazards. This also made it so we could all move freely without getting tangled up in other equipment like microphone stands or pedal chains.

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As I only have access to one microphone in my home studio when I work I am going to research single microphone recording techniques for acoustic guitar as that is something I am not quite used to and have little experience with.

"Placing the mic 6 – 12 inches away from the 12th – 14th fret often sounds like the most natural and balanced sound. Experiment with pointing the microphone more towards the neck for a thinner sound and more towards the sound hole for the sounds of the pick or fingers" (Audient, n.d.)

With this information, I am going to attempt to do just this to record the acoustic guitar for my alternate track.

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Audient, n.d., 5 Essential Tips For Recording Acoustic Guitar, 7th Nov 2024

Ironvalley Axel, 2023, Investigating how ELLIOTT SMITH got his sound, 16th May 2023

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This is an example of the kind of correctvie EQ I am implementing into my logic project. This is quite a new concept to me that I have been taught about in my production tools lessons that I have already been able to use and see the effects of. In this example, I have cut a few fine frequencies that were ringing in the background of this guitar track. Doing this really helped unclutter the overall song so far as there is less harshness across all the instruments and way more clarity due to cut low ends.

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I have used the logic space designer plug-in to really add a lot more atmosphere to my song. I have used this on two guitar buses for my overdriven tracks and fuzz tracks. I feel this has really added a lot to my mix and has almost brought the whole thing to life, and I plan to be using it a lot more in the future for mixes I will do.

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This picture here is some of the volume automation in my project. This is a concept I have been using for a while and I believe it really helps be able to add emphasis to certain sections of a song definitely when working in a live band setting. I have used automation in this way to again unclutter quieter parts of my song and also add a bit more dynamic shift without having to re-record performances I was happy with. This has given my song way more atmosphere and has made it more cohesive as a full song.

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This is my entire channel list with all the effects I have implemented across my project. At the moment these are just instrument tracks for Guitars, Bass, and Drums, as I am not sure whether to start workshopping vocals due to time restrictions. However if I decide to add a vocal over the top I will be adding my process later in my diary.

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Following my lesson with George on tuesday, I have gone back to my track and tweaked a few bits with my plug-ins. In this example I have put and Optical compressor on my bass track to lift it up in the mix and stop any unwanted dynamic shifts in the performance. I went for an optical compressor this time as I am personally a fan of the characteristics it gives to a recording with the low amounts of distortion it gives off when working with this bass track. I wanted to track to be clean but still have enough presence to cut through the mix and fill out the low end of the song.

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In the picture above I was using a multi-compressor on my master track just to add a bit of warmth to the entire song. by slightly boosting the low end and mid frequencies where the bulk of the guitars sit. I went for this approach as I was looking into it in my art of production lesson and really liked the way I could so slightly bring my mix more to life with this technique.

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This is just a quick demo of me workshopping some structural aspects of my alternate acoustic track. In this I was just trying to play around and figure out how I can better suit my song to a more chilled out setting by removing the main guitar hook, changing the structure around, and slowing the tempo of the song to better achieve the Elliot Smith like vibe I am going for.

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In these two pictures, I show off some reverbing techniques I looked at in my production tools lessons this week. In these examples it depicted the reverb plug-ins I am using on both my Guitar busses for an overdriven track and my more dirty guitar track. Since this song has some grunge elements from my band's style, I have chosen to go with a room reverb as it is synonymous with the genre. I have also changed the decays and size of the reverb to better suit the track and give my song the overall sonic image of being played in a small room like our past practice rooms and gig venues we've played at before.

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For some more robust research I watched this video of a quick but deep dive into Elliot Smiths songwriting approach and more importantly his recording techniques. In this video Axel backs up what I noted from my own analysis of his music by saying,

"during the chorus Elliot's voice is doubled and sometimes has a chorus effect on it" (Ironvalley A, 2023)

This mirrors what I said in my own analysis of Elliot's music quite well and confirms to me that it is a technique I want to use in my track.

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Investigating how ELLIOTT SMITH got his sound

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This is my FET compressor on my dirty guitar room bus. I chose to use a FET compressor on this track as I wanted to give it a bit of that tube-like gain and fullness without using the equipment. I think this turned out quite well as now my background guitar tracks are sounding extremely full giving the track a lot of ambience and sonic space.

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In this picture I am showing the VCA compressor I am using on my reverb track for my slightly overdriven guitars. I went for a VCA compressor on this because I didn't want any unneeded distortion on my tracks, as that is not the point of these guitar tracks and I like the clean boost this compressor gives to the tracks just to bring it up in the mix slightly more

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This is a Reverb plug-in I used on my lead acoustic guitar track. I have this track brought more to the forefront as it adds a slight bit of melody ontop of the regular guitar chords. I decided to add this track in as when analysising Elliott Smith's tracks earlier in the project I noticed that he also adds a lot of extra tracks of melodies layering ontop of each other.

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This is some corrective EQ I applied to my Left and Right Panned Guitars. I went for these cuts to remove resonating frequencies I could hear from the microphone I used. I believe the reason I may have had these resonating frequencies is due to the room I recorded in not having any sort of acoustic treatment so there was some reflections coming back into the microphones polar pattern and pickup range. I also decided to take out the very Low end as I want to add a bass guitar track in the future and didn't want any clashing between the instruments.

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<< Microphone positions for acoustic guitar

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<< Microphone positions for acoustic guitar

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Taking my previous research on recording acoustic guitars into account, I have shown some pictures of the position of my microphone. For my alternate track I have set my mic to the 12th-14th fret about 6 inches away from the neck. I did this as I wanted to get a well-rounded sound with high and low end of the guitar with only one microphone.

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In this picture I my FET compressor used on the vocal tracks on my main piece. I decided to go for a FET compressor because I wanted to be able to get as close to that natural tube gain I could with the plug-ins I have available. I think this track being a full band song really benefitted from having a slight vocal distortion as it cuts through the thick guitar sound I have on this track.

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I added this really thin reverb into my vocal tracks as I just wanted them to have a little more space that being right upfront in your ears. This really helped create a better sonci image of it being a full band all playing which is what I am going for with this song.

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This is just a quick picture of my finished track list in Logic for my main track just so you can see all the levels of the tracks and the kinds of plug-ins I have stacked on certain tracks.

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This is my Noise Gate for the Shaker track in my Alternate track. I decided to use a noise gate to get rid of the slow release of the shaker sound as it was recorded to give it more of the snare sound I was going for. This turned out very well as it comes across like a stron hit instead of a slow shake sound.

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To the left I have shown some pictures for my EQ on the percussion tracks,

Shaker EQ- on the shaker EQ I wanted it to almost act as a snare-like sound in a way, to get this effect really prominent I cut out all the Low end until ~1K to avoid any of the low end resonance of my uni dorm whilst still getting the punchy element of the plastic being hit.

Percussion EQ- on my percussion track EQ I took out the top end to avoid any harshness for metal on my desk being hit whilst slightly boosting the bass and high-mids to give the kick-like sound a punch to keep the pulse whilst having a higher tap to go along with my shaker hits.

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On my alternate track I wanted to be able to have a percusssion pulse without adding a full drum kit to stick to the early Elliott Smith vibe. To get by this I used things around my room like a small bottle of pills for the shaker and just my hands on my desk for the percussion track. This gave my acoustic track a really home-made and intimate feelign which is exactly what I wanted from it.

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This is my finished track list for my alternate version of my track. Since it's an acoustic track I havent used many effects plug-ins as I believe it to be better to be slightly raw sounding and wanted it to be carried by the capture rather than fancy production techniques to really fit into the Elliott Smith style track I've been trying to achieve.