Sightseeing

For the track ‘Sightseeing’, my main influence was The Black Keys for the instrumentation and Arctic Monkeys for the vocals. For the mix, I panned it all to represent a typical live band set up: vocals, bass and drums in the center and guitars panned left and right. I recorded the vocals using the NT1A with a pop shield but I also experimented with some of the dynamics as the vocals are quite rough and hard but I preferred the sound of the NT1A. When it came to mixing the vocals I used ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not’ by the Arctic Monkeys as inspiration so I compressed them quite heavily using Waves’ CLA-2A and I took out frequencies below 200Hz and boosted around 4kHz; I used Waves’ Aphex Vintage Aural Exciter to give the vocals some clarity within the mix. I also sent them to a bus with a short plate reverb to give them some space. With the backing vocals I took out the higher frequencies and sent them to a different bus with a longer reverb to make them sit behind the main vocals. On the lead guitar, I recorded it using an SM57 placed slightly to the left of the middle of the cone to get quite a trebly sound and put the guitar through overdrive and distortion pedals. I used a noise gate to get rid of the hum and feedback from driving the amp and then boosted the frequencies at 3kHz to give the guitar some bite, took out frequencies below 80Hz to stop the mix from becoming muddy. I also put it through some heavy compression to make it sound more aggressive and used the Aphex Exciter to give it more clarity. Finally, I put it through Waves’ Kramer Tape which I set up to get a really saturated and driven sound to get a sound similar to ‘Lonely Boy’ by The Black Keys. For the rhythm guitar I used a different guitar, different pedals and a different microphone (PG57) to try and separate it from the other guitar. I used some EQ and the Aphex Exciter but didn’t use any compression as it was quite lacking in dynamics due to the use of distortion. For the bass guitar I used the NT1A as it gives a better bass response then compressed it and used EQ to bring out some bite and then used the Kramer Tape to give it a little bit of drive. I compressed the drums quite heavily with a long attack and release to get them to sound quite thrashy and used EQ to cut out frequencies that made them sound muddy and boosted frequencies to bring out the snare drum and the bass drum. I then used the Aphex Exciter to make it sound a little cleaner and to get it to sit in the mix better. The drums were then sent to a reverb bus to get more of the thrashy sound I was looking for.

I used the SM57 on the left to record one of the guitar parts.