Hi guys,
First time poster, long time lurker here! I'm a freelance producer/arranger and engineer from Finland!
So far, I've been loving this thread! Props to all the great raw sounds everyone has posted here, sounds absolutely killer!! I have waited for a thread like this for a long time :-)
I'm gonna post a raw mix of a song I did about six months ago with an indie artist (= Jo Angel) here from Finland. She wanted to do a sort of promotional CD (she already had loads of label interest, she's been signed to many major and indie labels before in other projects). She wrote the melody and lyrics, I arranged, produced and recorded the rest. In the recording session I also had an engineer-friend of mine working with me (I hate doing large sessions on my own if on a tight schedule, hoho).
We did four songs in 3 days. First, piano/wurlizer and bass were played together, overdubbing drums the next day and all of the guitar stuff in the third day. Vocals were cut in a smaller studio the following week.
The players were from the singers band.
So here goes:
Piano:
Yamaha CF Grand piano, spaced pair of 414's (6 inch from the hammers,
7 inches up, spaced pretty wide)
Wurlizer:
Nord Electro thru a 1990's Vox AC-30 miced with a Beyer M-160 close up and center of the cone
Both were tracked thru the desk preamps (Trident Series 80A) into PT
Bass:
Fender P-bass, split to
1) Boss DI -> desk preamp -> PT
2) Ampeg B-15R + SVT Classic head, miced with a Sennheiser 441 (an inch from the grille, off-axis, approx 25% to the right of the center, height middle of the cab) -> desk preamp -> PT
Drums:
(cant remember the exacty brands,models,sizes etc, think it was mainly mapex, yamaha or pearls heh. Hey its been awhile - but they rocked! new heads were used.)
Kick in -> Shure Beta-52 -> API 3124
Kick out -> Neumann U-47fet -> desk
Subkick -> desk
Sn top -> Beyer M-201 -> API 3124
Sn dn -> AKG C-451 -> desk
Hh -> DPA 4006 -> desk
Rtom, Ftom -> Sennheiser 421's -> API 3124
Oh's -> spaced pair of 414's -> Neve Portico 5012
Kit mics-> Thomann Ribbons TB-500 (about 1 foot from the kit, spaced in the outer edges of the kit, chest height, facing the floor) -> Art Dual Tube preamp
Room mics-> Neumann U-87 in ORTF (15-20 feet from the kit, neck level, right to the kit (drummer perspective), pointing at the snare) -> some Avalon preamp
Drums were cut to tape (otari mtr 90 mk2 2") then into PT.
Guitars:
Larrivee 6-string steelgtr (cant remember the model), some cheapo acoustic tuned Γ la Nashville and a mandolin ->
AKG C-451 on the bridge/soundhole and some large diaphgram (U-87 or 414 I think) on the 12th fret/neck meets body -place. Both were a bit further away then usual (for me at least), about 1-1.5 feet away.
Neve Portico as preamp -> PT
Elec Gtr (the picked "bubbleguitar" in the 2nd verse) -> 1990's Vox AC-30, miced with a SM57 1 inch away from the grill, center of the cone -> Neve Portico preamp -> PT
Vocals:
HandCraftedLabs Faust-microphone into Neve Portico preamp into PT.
(same used for doubles, bgvox etc)
Percussion (tambourine, shaker, claps):
Rode NT-2 in ORTF, 2 feet away -> Neve Portico -> PT
Other notes:
-Basic Digidesign converters were used in all of the recordings
-Tape was only used on drums
-Everything except vocals&percussion were done in a really cool Finnish studio called Soundtrack (
Soundtrack Recording Studios) and the rest in Studio Init (
STUDIO INIT). I had some of my own gear in both studios.
-A kickdrum-tunnel was made out of two Marshall 4x12's in the outer edges of the kick (frontside facing outwards of course:D) and a matress bended between them, forming a tunnel. Looked pretty cool!
I think we used some light compression on the bass di with a dbx 160 and maybe some pumping to the room mics with Urei LA4's. Other then that, it was compression-free and on some sources just a teeny-weeny amount of the desk EQ's.
The mix is basically just a faders-up type of mix (with panned instruments though). There are some plugins though (hipass on the drum/keyboard/guitar buss, lo-mid shelf cut on the doubles/harmonies, a bit of L2 on the 2bus aswell as a graphic EQ cutting/boostin 0.5db here and there). The only thing that was compressed ITB was the vocals (2 compressors and one limiter), because they were pretty much all over the place (dynamic-wise

. Other than that, its raw!!
Rock!!
P.S. Everything was cut to PT 7 HD in 44.1 / 24bit.
P.P.S This version is also without edits/programming etc that might have occured after these raw sessions ;-)
Janne