juan60music-blog

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The teaser done by the video editor was not quite right and in order to stop him from wasting more time on something i wasn’t happy with I did it with Joe Baker who has been learning to do video editing. This way we were able to collaborate on ideas for how it should look and put the finished audio in it 

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Music video

The music video process was parallel to the recording session and editing collaborating with a videography student. The videographer had the idea of using tape cameras to encapsulate some of the lack of technology in Cuba, this way it would be cheap for me to buy one for the trip to Cuba. 

throughout the entire process, Joel was very reluctant to edit with me, he always said he preferred to do creative things by himself so I was happy to give him the creative freedom. I was able to guide some of the shots and take some in Cuba so I assumed he would be able to take the clips and make something cohesive with them, however when I got the first edits back, I was increasingly worried about it becoming something I didn’t like. I organised a meeting to do some editing at my house and we went through a few things that I didn’t like about the video in a constructive manner however he quickly told me he had to go home to let his house mate in and he didn’t get round to doing any of the edits. Unfortunately, the next version was not much better and I begun to realise that he just wanted to fi be done with it and finish it, which made it much harder for me to get any changes.��

Despite this, the video may be put out anyway although more as a documentation of the process rather than a music video. The main contraversy is the wanting the Juan60 page to look smooth and the video is far from that so theres a chance it may be detrimental more than beneficial. The promotional video will be uploaded even if the music video isn’t uploaded in the end 

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Mixdown and Master

Mixing down was approached mainly in the grouping stages, the individual elements were just equalised rather than compressed or saturated, this was done in order to address problems in microphones or channels, mainly resonances or taking away an unnecessary part of frequency response. 

Another important process was to do individual gain automation especially with vocals in order to not trigger the compressors too much during louder parts of the tracks. 

I did all of these things and prepared the mix groups, however for the final mix, i took the stem’s to Joe Baker’s studio for accurate monitoring and to separate the final mix stages. this was invaluable because he was so detached to the track he was able to see it objectively. the first thing he noticed was that there were a lot of out of tune notes in the double bass part which made it hard to pick out other instrument as their harmonics were smearing the fundamental frequencies of other higher elements. He took the good parts of the bass part and did a comp of about 16 bars which brought much more life to the track. the bass was now ‘hugging’ the track (Joe Baker, 2019). 

He continued to strip back sections that were clashing with each other or unnecessary, giving focus to the vocal. after a quick final balance he began to process the groups. Systematically, he would compress and saturate as a way of decreasing macro dynamics and increasing perceived loudness. For the drums of each track he would create a bus and start by compressing the peaks with fast attack and fast release, this evens out the peaks, then he would saturate the drums on a parallel channel or with a mix knob and use this to remove a couple of DBs from the peaks, in turn creating a higher RMS to Peak ratio, this meant that the track in mastering could be turned up without the peaks of the drums or percussion triggering the limiter way before everything. a small amount of compression and saturation on the mix bus was the final thing done to the pre master, preparing the mix like this lined him up to do the mastering without any problems.

BS34 Mastering

The mastering was done through a multi-band effects chain where each band had a separate aux bus, this meant each band could be processed using plugins that Joe likes for the job, for example a valve compressor for the low mids and a FET for high end allowing different tones to be gained from each band. after compression, he eq’d and de-essed any frequencies that were problematic, the mix was then glued together using a saturator of his choice and the driven into the limiter. 

Sitting in on the mixdown and mastering sessions allowed me to have input over creative decisions while learning about objective decision. it was important to have Joe mixdown and master in order to detach me from the tracks and push them to the finish point. 

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Roots version

Initially the roots reggae version was meant to be another interpretation of the cuban track however it simply ended up being a reggae track in the same key as the cuban one with cuban injections. this meant that because it stood out as the odd one out, and the verses really took from the energy of the track, I decided to not include it in the release and have it as its own release to come out following this one as the second ‘Juan60 presents:’ this way, the project can present a different selection of artists who are more dedicated to reggae and push the reggae idea more than the cuban one. It felt like in this case less was more and to have the track nearly done is god enough but to release it without it being ready would have been a mistake.

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Recording vocal

The lyrics for both vocal tracks were left down to each singer to write. Indira took charge of the content for the cuban track while Hannah took care of the roots one. After hearing drafts of both, the decision to accompany Hannah with the lyrical content was made in order to clarify certain areas of topic and ways of approaching them. The idea of personifying Cuba and America’s relationship from Cuba’s perspective helped to fuel the lyrics of the chorus however, the verses struggled. For an insight into the relationship between these two countries see Cuba and the Cameraman (2017). After two sessions writing lyrics for the roots track, Hannah went home and wrote the verse herself. It was clearly a hard thing for her to write to such theme keeping it subtle. I asked her to have another go at it but she was going to be leaving the country for a months the week after so we did the session. 

the session went really well in terms of recording, however the verse continued to take from the rhythm track. A Neuyman KM183 microphone was used for close mic and spaced pair of Coles 4038 were used for room mics (Coleselectroacoustics.com, n.d.; En-de.neumann.com, n.d.). The reasoning for mic choice was that the small diaphragm of the KM 183 picks up the top end accurately due to its 9db boost at 10khz, while the Coles have a natural gradual high cut due to their ribbon design. this means that when the two are combined, the KM183 always sits forward. 

KM183 Freq resp

Coles frequency response

Running the session was relatively easy, and the performance was great for the chorus, however the fact that there were three other people with me in the control room added to her nerves performing, by the end of the session when Joe Yorke went in to do harmony, the atmosphere was much funner which made the takes much better. In hindsight, the control room should have been empty for the vocal takes. 

Parallel to this, Idira had been writing lyrics in order to record after my return from Cuba. This was due to unavailability, however in hindsight this was incredibly important because the trip taught me invaluable skills about how to record vocals for this style of music and how to build the track. The trip made it clear that in order to present the track to the singer I would have to re record percussion in order to achieve the glued sound of people playing in the same room.

When Indira came to the session, the percussion had been recorded and comped, had this not been done her trust in the project would have been much less and her performance might not have been so good.

The same microphone and pop shield set up was used as with Hannah, except a windshield was also used, this shielded from sibilance which in hindsight made it much easier to mix vocals. 

Reference list

Cuba and the Cameraman. (2017). [film] Directed by J. Alpert. Netflix.

Coleselectroacoustics.com. (n.d.). [online] Available at: http://www.coleselectroacoustics.com/images/pdfs/4038Spec.pdf [Accessed 10 Apr. 2019].

En-de.neumann.com. (n.d.). KM 183. [online] Available at: https://en-de.neumann.com/km-183-series-180#technical-data [Accessed 13 Apr. 2019].

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EGREM work experience - The producer

The producer would stand behind the talkback mic and direct the musicians. Using positivity to not affect performance even if the player wasnt doing what he wanted, he would always get a better take from them by treating them with kindness and respect. Reading how the players would react to certain instructions was cruicial for him to individually motivate people. He later mentioned a lot of it has to do with the psychology of getting people to want to listen to you. After all, session musicians are masters of their instrument so they have no reason to listen to a producer through a talk back mic, it makes all the difference to make them laugh, get them on your side, be respectful and friendly to then slowly feed ideas on what you would ideally love them to do.

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EGREM work experience - Studio efficiency

The first noteable contibution towards the recording process were pilot tracks. Each track had been written in midi in order to have stems for the musicians to play to.

The following step was to record each section of intruments as the stems were. So if the piano had its own stem it would be recorded by itself but if the percussion was all one stem then the percussionists would be seperated into different rooms but play together to a click and a top percussion part (maraca or guiro). The same was done for the horn section. The difficulty of this style of recording is managing each player to play their part along with the other players being recorded in order to get the best takes from everyone at the same time.

When I had thought about this style of recording the thought of directing a player to play exactly what I wanted was off putting I felt much more comfortable using my editing skills rather than directing the musicians in the studio to play my composirions. After this session it became extremely clear that in order to work quickly and efficiently, music should be written before the recording session and recorded in sections which overlap in order to have at least 2 bars of crossfade options.

When I had recorded on my project I had relied heavily on loop record and looping sections in order to create backing tracks for the next instrument, this proved to be messy and unorganised as some parts ended up not flowing into next section because transitions were missing. As well as this, it meant a lot of editing in post, meaning there had to be a lot of time between sessions. In order to avoid this, Nathan and Felipe (west one recording engineers) worked with the punch in function in pro tools, this meant that the players could play until there was a mistake and then they would be punched in 4 bars before that mistake. What this meant was that the space to fade between sections was 4 bars which enabled a sensible fade choice to be made, as well as this, by the end of the session, the instrument would need very little comping as it had all been done during recording and there was no need to scrol through playlists to choose the best takes because the producer was doing this in real time during the recording. This trimmed the time spent between sessions edittong which in turn enabled the recording of 10 full tracks in 5 days. For my project this way of working would have been ideal seeing as the editing processes have taken far too long as well as stripped the track of the humanising aspect of the musicians playing the parts.

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EGREM work experience

After meeting with the singer who is from Havana and playing her the track, to then get the strangest look i've ever seen from a person, it was obvious this is not how Cuban music is composed.

This brought the realisation that although the effort put into this is has been a lot, the entire project lacked structure from the start, amd the effort had been concentrated on the wrong areas. In order to find out more about latin music recording, decipher rhythms, melodies and structure it was cruicial to gain some work experience shadowing someone who does that.

I spoke to an old family friend working at a library music company called west one music knowing that they had a sub label of latin music called SOMOS. I explained my passion for Cuban music and sound engineering and she directed me over to the production team who had been planning an album recording session in Cuba. After a breif introduction and a meeting they agreed to have me on the team as Assistant Engineer for their recording in Cuba knowing this would be invaluble experience for me and my assignment.

The session took place over the course of 6 days from the 17th march - 24th and was a total eyeopener for comercially recording as well as working with Latin music and musicians.

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After giving the track a structure with the bass line and percussion a piano session was organised. Piano is a staple of cuban music with origins stemming from classical music brought to Cuba in the early 1800s, later with the abolishment of slavery a mass emigration to New Orleans lead to the creation of Afro-Cuban Jazz taking rhythms from Cuba and embedding it with the jazz of the time flourishing in New Orleans. ‘Mario Bauzá is considered the pioneer of Afro-Cuban Jazz after composing the track ''Tangá'', which is based around a series of musical improvisations. This song is considered by many musicians and historians as the first single of Afro-Cuban jazz.’ 

Afro-Cuban Jazz revolves around latin rythms with a straight feel, the main outlines about this style of Jazz is the way that the Montuno fits over the Clave beat.

The Pianist I found was discovered at an open Jam night which meant he was able to improvise and cater to many different styles, after approaching him and asking him about his musical understanding he assured me he listened to lovs of cuban music and played with a few latin players. 

In the studio session we took some of the signature styles of Afro-Cuban Jazz such as the Montuno in varios styles (broken chords, stabs)  for the chorus and then a more Jazz influenced sustained chord progression to bring down the feel. However the montuno played was in a very major key as opposed to the minor/diminished feel the pilot track had which changed the direction of the music. 

This lead to swapping the montuno for minor key chord stabs that fit with the clave pattern in the same way as the montuno in order to not take from cuban music so obviously while still borrowing rythm and structure. Besides stylistic choice another reason for this was to distance the music from a cliche cuban sound which seemed to deter the singer.

Reference list

Juliao, D. (n.d.). Afro-Cuban Jazz: History & Artists | Study.com. [online] Study.com. Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/afro-cuban-jazz-history-artists.html [Accessed 12 Mar. 2019].

The Jazz Piano Site. (n.d.). Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz Explained - The Jazz Piano Site. [online] Available at: http://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-genres/afro-cuban-latin-jazz/ [Accessed 12 Mar. 2019].

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Bass session was done mainly just for writing a bass line for the other musicians to play over, this was replaced by a double bass part at a later stage. This session was also used to experiment with outboard gear on low end such as Neve 1063 pre amp and warm audio epqa valve eq.

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Recording percussion by over dubbing to itself has been a hinderance in the arrangement process. Mainly beacuse not enough different solid rythms were recorded making it hard to develope the track without the necessary sections, conga will have to be re-recorded.

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Drum edits

Drum editing is taking a while which is slowing down the process of arranging the rest of the instruments. This is because the session is really unorganised, each drum/percussion part has a few mic tracks and putting things in time has made the session scruffy with lots of chops everywhere.

I decided to start committing to loops and deleting the rest of the audio to neaten up the session, although this means not being able to easily access the rest of the audio files from the recording session, above all the session needed limitations because the different combinations of mics and percussion parts were endless.

Committing to about 4 loops per element has allowed a simple structure to come along, which in turn has helped to move on to the next step of sending to vocalists and starting to get feedback on the track. Senior talks about small studio productions usually having too much going on at the same time and being repetitive, some advice he gives is that the ear can only process three things at once in this case that could mean that the percussion can sit back and let the less repetitive elements take the attention. (Senior, 2011)The next step is to have vocals written by the vocalists while I  finish the instrument recordings and editing process, ready for vocal recording and mixing.

References

Senior, M. (2011). Mixing secrets in the small studio. Burlington, MA: Focal Press, pp.108 - 119.

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November 17th - January 25th

Roots reggae drums developed arrangement started, timing worked to fit to a click track and basic structure layed out.

December 13th 2018

Cuban percussion session with Harrison White who helped with recording, setting up a digital personal headphone system called livemix which allowed Theo to adjust his own mix levels. Harrison also filmed the session on a 360 degree camera as a test for his own project and promotion/music video footage for this project.

December 14th 2018  - January 25th 2019

Protools monthly subscription started

Folders organised on hard drive and everything backed up to Google Drive.

Ongoing work on Cuban, Reggae and Dubstep arrangement projects in Protools

Electric Guitar composition session with Sam Huelin at his house over Reggae track, recorded with Sure Sm-57 through Fender hot rod deluxe III valve amp with a split dry D.I signal also taken.

Bass and Electric Guitar session on Cuban and Reggae version with Ezra Gray (Bass) and Sam Huelin (Guitar). Recorded at DBs studio 6 through Neve 1073LB into Warm Audio EQP-WA into Avalon 747-sp with Valve signal path.

Shadowing work experience at EGREM studio in Cuba recording album confirmed for 16th - 25th of March.

Meeting with videographer to organise filming timeline and content to make the most of trip to Cuba.

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September 20th 2018 - Monday 26th January 2019

Over the past three months the project has developed quickly, some of the main events that bring the project up to date are as follows:

September 20th 2018

Pilot track composed

September 27th 2018  

Contact made with musicians. (Drummer, trumpet player, bass player, guitar player, and Dub mix engineer)

October 13th 2018  

6 hour Reggae drums session in DBs studio 6 with Jake Purdy to a click track

Rough arrange of drums for trumpet session including a guitar skank in key with pilot track.

October 31st 2018

3 hour trumpet session with Lawrence Collier recording trumpet in over Cuban pilot track and in a reggae drums pilot track.

November  10th - 17th 2018

144 bpm Dubstep version of pilot track composed with sample drums and sub bass added.

Artist finished artwork: